Southern Miss Post Game Quotes
12/5/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
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Southern Miss Head Coach Todd Monken Quotes
"I honestly did not expect to be in the position. I don't think our guys did. I truly expected us to play well, and we'd be sitting here talking about our sixth Conference USA championship. So, it stings when you have two teams play that are pretty equally matched, and the team that usually makes the fewest mistakes wins and that happened to be the case today. I give them a lot of credit. Coach Brohm and his staff have had a great year. They've got a really good football team. That's the way it is. You play a good football team and make the mistakes that we made. We got worn out in the second half â€" our defense did. We weren't able to move the football like we are capable of. We got out-coached. We got out-played today. That's the way it is. But, I am proud of our team. We've come a long way. We've got good players. We've got good coaches. We've got a great university. This is where you want to be. Eleven other teams in our league wanted to be here today. There were two of us. And, a good team was going to lose. This one's going to sting, but if you get here enough, you'll eventually win one."
On going up 21-7 and not finishing
"We made a number of plays early. We overcame the first turnover. Right away, out of the block, you don't want to go on the road and turn the ball over but that happens. So, you're down 7-0 on the road, gave them a short field, you come all the way back, you even the score with turnovers and an interception makes it 21-7. But, that's an awfully good football team. We had a chance. I think they had a 4th-and-1 right around midfield, up 21-7, they converted it. We drive the ball, have a chance, we don't get a completion, kind of a low throw and we didn't catch it. We had a chance on third down and punt them down deep, and we let them go 90 yards right before halftime. Ok. All that being said, it's a good football team. Then we got a stop and a score and go up 28-21. We were fine. Were we perfect? No. But, we were fine. That's when we made the mistakes that you can't do. We gave up big plays defensively. We turned the ball over. That's not a great recipe when you talk about the five areas of why you win. Those two areas were critical for us. That's why you end up on the wrong end of the scoreboard."
On losing a number of players to injuries
"(I don't think it affected us.) We have good players as backups. That's an excuse. That's the way it is. We lost players last week and found a way to win. We have good players. We have to do it better."
On whether the team matched his expectations
"I'm not sure if they exceeded expectations, because I thought we could be a good football team. I thought we could compete for the championship. I didn't think we exceeded expectations. It doesn't feel like that right now considering we got here, and once you get here, you're coming here to win. We were good enough to win it. It just didn't go our way today."
On overcoming turnovers in different situations
"I think the momentum changed. Twice we had the ball around midfield. One of them came right after a momentum change towards us. We stopped them on fourth down at midfield. It's a game of emotions, flow and how do you take advantage of that? We stop them on a third down play, get the ball batted, they get the ball back and go down and score. That right there flips it. We're certainly capable of taking that back. We have good players. You're capable of still battling. We turn it over again. We got it down there again. We're moving it again. We had penalties. We did some things that were uncharacteristic of what we've done. We had two holding calls that negated big plays for us. Then, when we were down whatever it was, we get a personal foul by (D.J. Thompson), it just took us out of a chance to get a 3rd-and-10. Foolish penalties and turnovers. Against a good football team, we couldn't overcome it."