University of Massachusets Athletics
Weekly Teleconference With Head Coach Don Brown
October 19, 2004 | Football
Oct. 19, 2004
Question: What were you impressions of the New Hampshire game?
Brown: Well (UNH QB Ricky) Santos came out and picked up where he'd left off. He went right down the field on us and tucked it in the end zone. Then on our ensuing drive Steve Baylark made a couple nice runs and we're moving it and all of a sudden Tim Day throws the ball and Aaron Thomas picks it off and we're down 14 to nothing before you can blink.
The great thing at that point was our guys didn't panic and what we've been through the last few weeks, that's a concern. We just stayed the course and got back in the mode and played, I think, our best game to date. It was nice to see our offense come out of a slump and accumulate 490 yards. We rushed for 197 yards and Baylark had 40-plus carries. When we can do those things, obviously we can do the others things.
Day was 18 for 33 with 293 passing yards as well and we held what I think is one of the best offenses in the country to a net 266 yards and really played well after that first drive. We gave up one pass play of 35 yards in the 3rd quarter but other than that, we were playing four-to-five freshmen on defense at a time on Saturday, I just thought our defense finally stepped up and played four full quarters.
Question: Are you surprised that they threw the ball as much as they did and only ran the ball three times?
Brown: They actually ran 12 out but three by design. Go back a couple of weeks, they were throwing the ball as well as anybody in the country. In the Villanova game, it was frightening how well they threw the ball. I feel you go with what got you there and that's the route they had gone but the one surprise was watching Mike Granieri show up which didn't make my day to be honest with you. I wasn't surprised that he leaned on the throw game but even with some of our youth and run deficiencies, we were ready to go.
Question: You talked about your defense playing well, what was the difference this week?
Brown: There wasn't much difference. We were 0-0 with JMU almost completely through the third quarter. It was 7-0 after three and we were 7-7 with Delaware and 23-7 with Boston College, I think we've been playing pretty good defense, we just haven't played four quarters and I think for the first time in a while we played four quarters of football.
Question: Can you talk about what Steve Baylark did on Saturday?
Don: We fooled about it over the summer and I told him there were going to be times we want to get you the ball 40 times so you've got to be in good shape and be able to handle the load and we gave it to him 43 times and he responded with 192 net rushing yards and had one of his best games. He did have one fumble, which he wasn't happy about and neither was I, but 43 touches and a very, very productive day for us. He is the A-10 Player of the Week on Offense just as Shannon James did on Defense.
Question: Did you see anything this week that saw the offense turning things around?
Brown: Sometimes it's not the changes you make, it the ones you don't make. We just stayed the course and worked hard in the run game during the practice week even though we were nicked up, we just said "the hell with it" we're going to work on getting better in the run game and get back to the style of football we're supposed to play. After throwing the football 52 times a week ago, which is an embarrassment for my football team because that is not what we do and what we practice, we felt we just had to get back to playing the type of football we want to play here.
Question: What are your thoughts about this week taking on Rhode Island?
Brown: Coach Stowers does a tremendous job. I think they are playing better defense. They had one of their better defensive efforts of the year Saturday and they do a great job of running the ball and their option attack and the uniqueness of it and all the things you talk about on a week to week basis. They have outstanding players in Jayson Davis and Jason Ham, they are outstanding players and the thing about Jason is he's throwing the ball better this year than he has in the past, two of their scores came off nice play action throws, one he finished and the other down to inside the 20 yard line. He 's throwing better, their playing better defense, this is a very good football team.
Question: How difficult is it to prepare a defense for an offense you see just once a year?
Brown: When we went to work on Sunday, we already started on Rhode Island, that's something we never do, start on the next opponent. Usually we start on Tuesday. I was running the scout team getting them schooled up on things we needed to do to get the best possible look we can to try to simulate what they do. As every coach talks about it, it's the uniqueness of their style of play that creates headaches for you and how fast you can get up to game speed and get your guys honed into what you want them to do, is going to determine success or failure.
