University of Massachusets Athletics
Transcription from Don Brown's Weekly Teleconference
November 05, 2007 | Football
Nov. 5, 2007
AMHERST, Mass. - Coach on Saturday's game vs. URI:
"When you talk about Rhode Island, you always have to talk about how you stand up against their excellent option attack and we held them to 109 yard rushing. We had six forced fumbles, two that we recovered. We had two blocked field goals and we tied our own record of 2005 with three recorded safeties in a game. You would think you would feel pretty good about that effort, but unfortunately for us, we gave up six points in regulation. We fumbled to start the game on a reverse, at the nine-yard line and held them to a field goal and they had a great drive against the wind. They ht the tight end down the middle and we were poor in our rotation in coverage. We found a way to get them stopped and held them to a field goal there. We virtually shut them out in the second half. We had a couple opportunities. Again we had the three safeties when it was 6-4. We made a decision to go for it on fourth down, the wind had changed and we were against it so I thought that would be our last opportunity. We went for the touch[down], we didn't get it, but on the first play from scrimmage we had them pinned down on the one. The quarterback fumbled the ball on a dive pass and unfortunately for us we didn't recover it. We did on the second play when he ran the QB draw out in the end zone. We tackled him for a safety so we're 6-6 with a chance to go into overtime. They made one pass play in overtime and you have to give credit to Rhode Island, they were ready to go. They play extremely well. We couldn't get anything going consistently on the offensive side of the ball. Throwing it was a chore. I did think our punter Brett Arnold and our long snapper Cesar Rosario did a god job of managing the weather although we did have one punt that was for two yards, which you're not happy about. I thought for the rest of the day Arnold did a pretty good job punting. Rosairo was really solid on the snap, but reality is it's a 12-6 loss and we still have everything in front of us. We've got a very, very good UNH football team coming into McGurik on Saturday."
Coach on the upcoming game against rivals UNH:
"Well, it is a rivalry. It's a game that we look forward to every year as Coach McDonnell's outstanding New Hampshire team does as well. It's a big game for both football teams and I'm sure it will be played with tremendous energy on both sides of the ball. Theses are the games you look forward to playing."
Coach on the offensive struggles of the game:
"The rain was pretty much going sideways and there were 60 mile per hour winds so throwing the ball was extremely difficult. You're trying to throw your screens and trying to get some easy throws, but there were really no easy throws to be had. We only had 22 yards passing. I think the long of the day was seven yards to Mike Omar on a bootleg. At times we did get the run game going. Matt [Lawrence] ended up with I think 92 yards on 24 carries--net 83 but I think it was 92, he did have one loss. We just didn't get anything done. We couldn't contribute on that side of the ball. It's the luck of the draw. Both teams got to play in the weather. We're not going to make any excuses about that and you just have to move forward."
Coach on Matt Lawrence and following in the footsteps of Steve Baylark:
"Matt's a solid back. He was a great contributor on last year's team that went to the National Finals as a full back. He stepped into the role of the main prime back and I think he's had a very solid year. Matt's going to be judged over these last two football games to see how great a back he is in terms of UMass folklore. We need to get two big football games out of him in the remaining two weeks."
