Richmond Post-Game Quotes

Oct. 18, 2008

Head Coach Don Brown's general comments on the game

Ultimately, we just did not get enough done. We can not have blocked punts. We made a mistake in the protection and it really hurt us. It was back and forth, and we were right there in the game, and I thought that killed us. We did not get enough accomplished in the run game. Richmond is a very solid football team. Our guys fought really hard up until the end and I'm very proud of our effort. We did not get it done on third down. You cannot be five-of-sixteen on third down. Defensively, we made some plays to keep us in it. The guys stepped up to the challenge pretty well, but that wasn't enough. We just could not get enough done. I thought Vaughan showed that he is a very good back, which we knew coming in. Obviously, his numbers look really good, but I thought he got on us early on the 46-yard run. If you remove that huge run, you can ultimately be pretty happy with the type of day he had. That is about what we expected. We are going to back to the drawing board and restart. Hopefully, we can respond with a great effort next week and start a new win streak at home.

Coach Brown on game's rhythm

I did not think we had much rhythm today. Usually, we get better as we move forward through the game. When Liam went down in the second half, it breaks up our momentum. He came back for that one series, but I give all the credit to Richmond because they beat us. On Liam, we won't know until tomorrow what his status is. Medically, we have to give him 24 hours to judge where he is at. The injury is on his non-throwing elbow.

Coach Brown on punting game

I did not want to give him the chance to kill us on a homerun. In practice, we tried pooching it. We shoot to land it between the 20 and 25 yard line. We were trying to short-kick and keep it away from killing us in the kick return game. Today, the punter outkicked us. He hit a bomb and it becomes a difficult punt to cover and the 45-yard return hurt us. That changes the game and the specialty position. When you give him a circle and practice it all week long. (Brett Arnold) is a great young man that takes his job very seriously, but I would have like to seen a little better job of spotting the ball. We kicked low and right to him, which is disconcerting. In reality when you have to defend against marquee players in those kick return scenarios, you run the risk of giving their offense decent field position.

Sean Calicchio on game

We are bringing it a little bit, but we stopped them a couple of times. We still gained positive yards ... We just kept going and moving the ball. We are not going to stop what we do best, and that is run the ball. We did it well at points and it is always like that, you take what you can get from each game.

Head Coach Mike London

General thoughts on the game

"Obviously it was a big win for the program. We played a UMass team that is well coached. They have a lot of good players and I have a lot of respect for Coach Brown. I just knew that we had to start out fast. We couldn't just start out the game just kind of seeing what they were going to do and how they would respond to certain things. We had to start out fast and I thought we did that. We were able to run the ball, which was an added plus for us. They stuffed the box a little bit and blitzed a little bit and we were just fortunate to catch the creases."

On his team's defensive effort

"I think defensively we wanted to make sure that we rallied the ball and didn't give [Tony] Nelson too many opportunities. I think he had 70 yards rushing. He's the CAA's leading rusher, he's a dynamic player and we just wanted limit explosive plays and I think we had an opportunity to do that, so I'm tremendously proud for the players."

On the significance of the win

"This was a great UMass team. To beat them on the road with other things going on with homecoming and the 1998 championship team being celebrated we knew there was going to be an atmosphere that people were going to be excited about and that we had to take the crowd out of the game. We just stuck to our game plan and I felt that the coaches and the players did a great job executing the game plan."

Tailback Josh Vaughan

On Richmond's character coming off a loss last week

"Last week we felt like we just didn't finish. We came out and we played hard for only fifty seven minutes. Coach appreciates it when we finish and that was our motto all week: finish, finish, finish. We came out and we got in front early and we just weren't going to let this one slip past us, so we just finished the game off."

On whether or not he puts the team on his shoulders

"I don't take any credit for that. My offensive line up front was blocking and so was my fullback and our wide receivers so it was just a team effort. The defense played a heck of a game and the offense from start to finish we just tried to get as much push as we could up front and we just kept it going."

On their offensive game plan

"There was no change. We always come out and try to establish a run and when we get it going early we just keep coming back to it and I think that's what we did all game. We got it going early, we got it going often and we just kept it going."

Scoreboard

University of Massachusets Athletics

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