Southern Miss-Alcorn State Postgame Quotes
9/5/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 5, 2009
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HEAD COACH Larry Fedora Alcorn State Post Game Quotes
Opening Statement: Tonight was a good solid outing for us, though I thought we still left a lot of things out on the field. We still had mistakes on both sides of the ball and left some points on the field and gave up to many big plays but overall it was a good solid outing for our first game, we are hoping to make a lot of improvement before next week
On the record crowd: I thought it was awesome, it looked like a full stadium to me and they were loud as long as they stayed in the game. I was very proud of them. We will need every bit of them again next week. Thought it was a stadium record, we will break that again next week.
On the defense picking up from where it was last season: I thought they did, they got a butt chewing at half time because they had given up nine first downs, but they had shut Alcorn out. We expect more from them this year. We did not play the way we probably really wanted to play as coaches but we got a win and that's what we really wanted to do.
On the play of Quarterback Austin Davis: He is doing a much better job of managing the game this year, he is not pressuring himself any more. He understands what we are trying to accomplish. Tonight all he did was take the open receiver, he was not looking for one guy, he just read the coverage and took the ball where it should go.
On the running backs tonight: We probably could have left one guy in the whole game and they would have been very successful but we wanted to get all those guys some reps because we are going to need them all season.
On running back Damion Fletcher's health: I did not even ask him before the game because I know he is going to tell me he is 100% one way or another. I do not know if he was quite 100% percent but he looked fine and after the game he said he felt fine. He wanted more reps and wanted to go back in. Tory (Harrison) wanted to go back in, VJ (Floyd) wanted to go back in, but that's a good thing.
On Wide Receiver DeAndre Brown: I am very encouraged after talking to the doctors and everything and I would say that right now I am hoping that we can get him out on the field for the UCF game next week. We will be working live this next week at practice so we will get a full we live to see where he is at. I think he has looked good the last few days, it is just his endurance is not where it needs to be right now.
Southern Miss Player Quotes
Damion Fletcher On crowd: "I like playing in the sea of Gold. Our fans came out and showed a lot of support tonight. It was great."
On health: "I felt good. I'm back to 100%, no problems, felt good."
On O-Line "I think they did a great job picking up the things Alcorn did. They did a lot of twisting."
On breaking record "It's great. I didn't even know that. When you're playing hard, good things fall into place. It felt good to be back out there in front of the crowd playing. It's great to have guys that can come in and do the same thing to help the team win."
Eddie Hicks I thought we played well but we could've done a lot of things better. On ASU QB (Timothy Buckley): "He's a good athlete. At times we thought we had him sacked on third downs, but he was very mobile."
Austin Davis "We came out and did what we had expected to do. We mixed the run and pass and won a very winnable game. We have a lot of respect for Alcorn and they came in and played hard the whole game. I've always heard the biggest improvements were from year one to year two and I felt that tonight. All the plays we're running, we've run a million times. I felt a lot calmer. It's just second nature. At the same time, I have a lot of getting better to do."
On DeAndre Brown's absence: "We have great receivers. No matter who's out there, we're going to get the job done. I just have to be more precise and manage the game better, check the ball down."
On Brown's return: "He's a big time playmaker. He'll do nothing but help our offense."
On UCF: "UCF has a very good defense. If we're going do what we want to do, we need to go out there and take care of business. We're going to enjoy our win tonight and tomorrow we'll get back in here and get ready to roll with UCF."