University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Southern Miss Football Weekly News Conference ? Dec. 2
12/2/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
Southern Miss Football Weekly News Conference ? Dec. 2
Director of Athletics Richard Giannini
Opening Comments:
?We have been offered the invitation to attend the Houston Bowl. We received the official letter this morning inviting us, and we answered them very quickly that we would be glad to come to Houston on Dec. 27. I want to congratulate Coach (Jeff) Bower, the assistant coaches and the players for an outstanding season. When you are able to go to a fifth bowl in six years and have a winning record for the ninth consecutive season, it says volumes for the football program that we have.
?I think that Houston is the ideal situation for us. It is not only a major league city, but it also gives us the opportunity to play against a Big 12 opponent. It will either be Oklahoma State or Texas Tech. I think playing in a brand new stadium is also very attractive. The other thing about a bowl game that is so important to your football program is that it does give the team an extra spring practice. Not only is it a reward for the team and the coaches, but also it does give the chance to get in a lot of extra practice days. I think that is something positive for everybody.
?I want to also make our case that we want all of our alumni to be sure to buy their tickets from the University of Southern Mississippi. Part of our bowl revenue comes from the sale of tickets. Every ticket that is purchased through our ticket office benefits the university. If those tickets are not purchased through the university, then it won?t help us. So we really encourage all of our alumni and fans to purchase the tickets through Southern Miss. The tickets will be on sale on our website, SouthernMiss.com, or they can be ordered through our ticket office. The tickets are $57, but out of all the bowls that we have been to in recent years, we have the best ticket allotment that we have ever had. We have outstanding tickets this time. In other bowls, you are kind of mixed in the number of quality tickets that you have, but we have some outstanding ones this time. Again, we encourage every one to buy them through Southern Miss.
?The other factor is that the bowl game gives us another national television exposure. This will be the 11th time in the last two years that our university has been exposed on national television. That is tremendous. Since Conference USA started, we have been on national television 36 times. You can?t buy that type of exposure. It means a lot, not only to your football program and athletic program, but also to your university. There are a lot of tremendous positives about going to a bowl game, and we are just thrilled to be a part of that. Our team will report to Houston on Dec. 23.?
On what the allotment of tickets are:
?We have all the tickets that we need. We have 10,000 tickets available to us.?
On the advantages of going to Houston:
?I think there are a lot of them. First, you have an opportunity to go to a major league city and play in a stadium that is one of the newer ones in the NFL. You get to play a quality opponent from a BCS conference. That is what it is all about. One of the things that Conference USA needs to do, as we try to get closer and closer to the BCS, is to play more BCS teams and beat more BCS teams. Out of all the bowl games that Conference USA has, this is the only one against a BCS opponent. So, we couldn?t have a better place to go, other than going to the Liberty Bowl as the champion.?
On if there were any other bowl offers:
?Basically, that was the only situation. I want to compliment our new commissioner, Britton Banowski, who played a big role in working with the bowls and trying to factor out which school would go where. I think all along, we have indicated that we would love to opportunity to go to Houston because of the reasons that we talked about. Of course, the goal is to always go to the Liberty Bowl, but if you can?t go there Houston is a good bowl. We have already been to the GMAC Bowl. The one thing that we like about Houston is that it is after Christmas. It gives you a little bit more time to prepare. We have exams coming up, and one of the detriments to the GMAC Bowl and the New Orleans Bowl is that they are so early. When you have exams bumped up, it really puts a lot of pressure on your student athletes. This way, our players will have a little more time off to work on the final exams. I also think it is good for our fans because they have time after Christmas to attend the game.?
On what the payoff is:
?In our conference, all of the bowl money is pooled. It goes into the conference and then is distributed. We get an expense allotment of approximately $330,000, and everything on top of that comes through the tickets that we sell.?
On if the Houston Bowl committee has stated when they will finalize the Big 12 opponent:
?Normally, they wait until after the championship game is announced. That decision could be made prior to that, but I don?t know if they will make any announcement until after their championship game. Coach Bower and I, along with several of our staff members, plan to go out to Houston on Thursday afternoon for a press conference which will give us an opportunity to visit with the hotel and our practice site.?
Assistant Head Coach Randy Butler
Opening comments:
?In looking at the last game, it was probably our best total team effort of the season. In special teams, there are 19 goals every week and they accomplished 17 of those. Offensively, we had almost 36 minutes of possession time, including 12 minutes in the fourth quarter. That is in grind it out time where they had to take the ball and keep it away. As far as defense, when our offense stays on the field, we are in much better shape. We played only 52 snaps in the game. You are going to have a chance to win when you only play 52 snaps on defense. Defensively, the bottom line is that East Carolina didn?t get into the end zone. They had 154 yards of total offense and only 63 yards passing. If you watch the game closely, every time the quarterback dropped back to pass, he had to hold the ball and find the receiver. You have to give Coach Hopson and the secondary, as well as Coach Nix, Coach Pollard and the linebackers a lot of credit. They did a great job with their coverage.?
Players of the Week:
?On special teams, it was Michael Boley. He did a tremendous job. He had two tackles on the kickoff cover team.
?Derrick Nix was the offensive player of the week. He had 32 carries for 139 yards and one touchdown. He carried the ball 29 times for 95 yards in the fourth quarter. He had a great performance. We gave honorable mention to the entire offense. The offense had 36 minutes of possession and more than 400 yards of total offense.
?Defensively, we had co-players of the game, Greg Brooks and Leroy Johnson. Brooks played 50 snaps and graded 90 percent. He had an interception and a couple of pass breakups. He also set the school?s all-time record for passes defended. Johnson had 52 snaps and graded 92 percent. He had five tackles, an assist, broke up a pass and was very physical.?
On what the difference was in this week?s performance:
?It goes back to the disappointment after the Tulane game. We had a team meeting on Monday where we challenged the players to get ready ? both mentally and physically ? during the week. The players stepped it up. We had some good practices last week. We went out Tuesday and Wednesday in pads, which is something you may not see at other schools for the last game of the year. We went good against good for a couple of periods. When you have to go out and compete, it brings out the best in you. We challenged the players to play with some emotion and they got themselves ready.?
On what a game like the East Carolina game does for a bowl game:
?Going into that game, we told the players not to worry about the bowl game. This is the last ball game, and we just wanted to go out and play against perfection. But the players knew. If we handled our business in the ball game, that something good was going to happen. We didn?t use that as motivation last week. We just wanted to go out and play as well as we can play.?
On the defensive line:
?I wish I could tell you why the defensive line didn?t play like that earlier in the year. Ronald (Jones) is a guy who came out of junior college and is basically like a freshman. In junior college he played on a defense that played about three or four fronts in a game, while we carry about 75 different fronts in a game. That is a lot to learn. But you can see from week-to-week that we got better and better on the defensive line. We had some injuries, but you can?t blame that on not playing well. But Rayshun (Jones) continued to play better each game. He really played well in the last three games. Terrell Paul has played well. He was consistent the whole season.?
On what the bowl practice scheduled:
?We will probably practice one time this weekend. We have a big recruiting weekend, and when you bring kids in and they get to go out there and watch you practice, it is huge. We have not finalized any plans yet.?
On if there is a limit to the number of practices for a bowl game:
?We have 15 practices. That is so valuable. We have always taken a 20 or 30 minute period at the end of each practice to take our redshirt players and work some fundamentals with them. This is just like having another spring practice.?
On if the bowl and the season-ending win takes some of the disappointment off the season:
?There is no doubt. If you look back, the Louisville game may have been the most disappointing loss that I have ever had. And the way we played in the Tulane game was very disappointing. But to come back and play as well as we did against East Carolina and be rewarded with the bowl game, it is pretty satisfying. Bowl games are fun because you get to go to a big city and play in a great stadium against a good team.?
Senior running back Derrick Nix
On how satisfying to finish off his career with a bowl game:
?It is just a great feeling. Going into the season, we knew we wanted to play in the postseason. We had to readjust our goals during the year, and we still got the opportunity to play in the Houston bowl against a quality opponent. We are all excited about it.?
On if there was anticipation of getting a bowl game:
?We were anticipating it. We thought if we won against Tulane that we would get an invitation. But after everything that happened this Saturday with Louisville losing and TCU winning, we knew that our spot was ready to be settled.?
On the attitude of the team:
?It is a good situation for us. As a team, everybody wanted to go to this bowl, especially since we are able to go against quality opposition. It is a very good chance for us.?
On the chance of breaking the all-time rushing record:
?My teammates were pushing for me to get it in my last drive against East Carolina. But the bowl game is just another opportunity to go out and play again.?
Senior linebacker Joe Henley:
On the feelings about a bowl game:
?Last year, it didn?t feel so well watching all of the other teams playing in their bowl game. We had a chance to really go to a bowl, but it didn?t work out. That felt bad. So this season, that was one of the goals that we had. We wanted to come out and no matter what happened to make a bowl. It feels good to wind down my senior year with a bowl game.?
On what the biggest difference was last week:
?We played with a lot more emotion. Like Coach Butler said, we were going against perfection in practice. We worked hard every day with emotion and enthusiasm. It just carried on into the game. Against Tulane, we came out with no emotion and we were flat, and it showed in the game. We pushed each other to play well against East Carolina, and that is what we did.?
On how to maintain that emotion for the bowl game:
?We just have to continue what we did the week of the East Carolina game. We just have to come out and work hard with emotion and enthusiasm. Everything should carry over to the game if we practice like that each and every practice.?
Junior linebacker Rod Davis
On how to make sure that the emotion continues to the bowl game:
?It is challenge for our leadership. The leaders have been challenged all year to get our team motivated to play. Some week things didn?t go as well as expected. But this last week, our leadership stepped up and everybody took it upon themselves to come out and play hard. Leaders just have to step up and get everybody motivated.?
On how big it was to win the last game and have momentum heading into the bowl game:
?These last few seasons, we started well and we faded away at the end. So, it is just great that now we have confidence going into the bowl game. We are coming off a great performance on offense, defense and special teams.?
On how the Houston bowl ranks:
?Other than the Liberty Bowl, I feel that this is our best opportunity. We went to the GMAC Bowl in 2000 and played a great TCU team, and that was a great bowl. But we have been there and done that. It is just another chance to go somewhere and see where we stand in the nation because we can play a quality opponent. It will be a great challenge for us as a team to play a Big 12 school.?
