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Ohio-Bowling Green Postgame Quotes
Nov. 8, 2008
Ohio Head Coach Frank Solich On the offensive approach: We didn’t make enough plays. I think that’s obvious. There are several things that go into that. I think you need to give Bowling Green some credit, I thought they played well and executed well on both sides of the football. I think they’re a good football team. We needed to execute well in order to get ourselves in position to win the game, and at times we did, and at times we didn’t. That’s the problem we seem to have faced all year long. We haven’t gotten enough consistency in what we’ve been all about. We had some drives, but we weren’t able to finish drives off and put points on the board at the end of those drives. We hurt ourselves at times. We threw a touchdown pass in the corner of the end zone, and we were (called for illegal) motion. We get penalized, we bring that back. The real key in the game was when we got the ball at the start of the second half and we get on a drive, get down there and we do not get the ball in the end zone and have to settle for a field goal. Then we kick the ball off to them, they have a personal foul penalty and have 80 yards to go. They went 80 yards and were able to put seven (points) on the board. I think that was a real key point of the game.
On the overall struggles: On both sides of the ball, we were too inconsistent to really get anything done. You cannot be a team that makes a couple plays and then has a couple breakdowns. That seemed to be what it was for us today. I thought they came out and ran the ball out of a spread offense where at times they had no backs in there but the quarterback and we didn’t handle that very well. They were getting six, seven, eight yards with those plays and were able to keep their drives alive. In doing so, they were taking a lot time off the clock which doesn’t give you a lot of time to come back.
On the team’s effort: I didn’t see guys not attempting to make plays. I thought we did not do a very good job at times of making plays, but I don’t know if we did a good enough job as coaches of putting our guys in position to make plays. That’s something we’ll need to take a look at too. There’s probably plenty of blame to go around. I thought we had a very good week of practice. I’ve been pleased with the attitude of the football team, how they’ve come out and worked in practice. I didn’t think that we had a lot of spark. We didn’t seem to have our speed and quickness. Why that would be the case, I’m not sure. We’ve had a long time between games. Sometimes that helps you and sometimes it doesn’t. It helps if you get players back, but we haven’t gotten a lot of players back. Sometimes it kind of throws you off a little bit. I think that we didn’t quite have the energy. I think the want was there, the will was there, but for some reason, we didn’t have enough electricity, enough energy out there to take that game over.
On the offense’s production: I thought the early drives were somewhat nonexistent early on in the game, and it took us a while to get to a place where we put some plays together to get some consistency and move the ball some. Bowling Green played well. We’re at a point where we’re struggling to get done what we want to get done on both sides of the ball. We did not do a good enough job of making good plays. We ran the ball a little bit early on which gave us some hope of having a running game and a passing game, but they did a good job defending us. We were not productive enough to get in the game.
On the upcoming break: I think it will be good for us. They’ve (the Ohio student-athletes) got a lot going right now. It’s towards the end of their season and things aren’t going well. That is an awful lot to handle. They have finals coming up, so it’s a matter of trying to stay focused. I think this team will do that. Mentioning the seniors, it’s a great senior group. They’ve really supplied tremendous leadership for this football team. It’s a great bunch of guys there. They’ve done a great job of keeping this team together. Some time off can’t hurt us right now. They need some rest.
Ohio senior defensive end Jameson Hartke On the team’s effort: I’d be disappointed if we didn’t have a good effort. From what I saw, guys were moving around and trying to do the right thing. Sometimes a guy might not be in the right gap or something, but I think the effort’s there. Guys are working for each other, working for these seniors. I think that the senior class has got the young guys working hard. They haven’t quit on us, and they won’t quit on us these next two games.
On the upcoming bye week: We’re going to have a little bit of time off. I think it’ll be good to have a couple of days to get away from it and just come back ready to work. There’s nothing more we can really do than work hard. We’re not playing for much other than pride and it’s hard to do, but the only thing we have to do is work hard. I think the guys will do it.
Ohio sophomore tailback Vince Davidson On the offensive struggles: They were blitzing a lot. I think that really confused our offensive line. Myself, I had a couple of mistakes, but mostly it was from them blitzing a lot. We weren’t getting the right reads.
Ohio sophomore linebacker Noah Keller On team pride: This team still feels like it has a lot to prove. That’s what we came in this week doing. We were trying to step up the intensity in practice. We always come out wanting to win, and we always play hard. It’s disappointing, not executing the way we should. That’s what it was.
On the upcoming bye: We’re definitely not going to give up. We have the leaders on this team. I can speak for almost everyone on this team when I say they are high-character guys, and they won’t give up. They’ll come back ready to practice. These coaches won’t give up on us, and I hope the fans don’t give up on us.
On defensive struggles: The past two games I don’t think we’ve gotten the ball back to our offense enough. A lot of those drives were long. We need to go three-and-out as much as possible. We’re also not forcing as many turnovers as we need. We have to win the turnover battle. Their defense obviously stresses getting turnovers, and they stepped up and forced some turnovers. Our defense needed to match it, if not beat it, and the past two games we haven’t gotten that done.
Bowling Green Head Coach Gregg Brandon General: We did everything we talked about during the week. We played great defense. We did a really good job of shutting them out. That was huge, and it was a big boost for our kids. On offense, we talked about imposing our will and taking theirs. In the second half, we had two nice drives. We ran the ball well and our offensive line was physical. We did the things we needed to do to control the clock. It was a great team win, and it just gives us an opportunity to play the next one. It’s a bigger game now, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
On the defense and the turnovers: Anytime you get a turnover, it’s big. When you get seven points off it, it is even bigger. For those two kids (Erique Dozier and John Haneline), they are finishing out their careers in a huge way, and they stepped up today extremely well. For the offense to convert those turnovers into touchdowns was big.
On using backup Quarterback Andrew Beam: We had a package that we’ve had all season for Andrew, and we wanted to insert him on the run a little bit today. On the touchdown pass he threw to Tyler (Sheehan), for Andrew to find Tyler in that situation just proves that he is a football player. We want to find runs for him to make plays in our offense because he can help us.
On the defensive pressure on the Ohio quarterbacks: Our front was really blowing off the ball today. They did a great job getting up the field and collapsing the pocket. We mixed in some good pressures, bringing in some linebacker blitzes that they couldn’t pick up. We had a good plan for that going. It’s about execution. We have had a lot of good plans, and some of them haven’t worked, but today the kids executed the plan well.
Junior Quarterback Andrew Beam On throwing his first career pass as a touchdown: It was nice to finally get a pass off and complete one. It was kind of ironic that it was to Tyler (Sheehan). It made it that much more special. He was one of the reads and just happened to come open. He made a great play catching the ball and getting into the end zone.
On his chances of playing in today’s game: I knew it was a possibility because AT (Anthony Turner) was a little banged up and our running backs were bruised, so I knew that I could get a few plays in. I just happened to get lucky.
On the importance of a good start: It was really important. Just like last week against Kent State, we jumped out to big first half lead. It just gets our momentum going and our confidence up. If we can come out on fire, it just helps the team a lot throughout the game.”
On the defense converting turnovers into points: The two interceptions by (John) Haneline and (Erique) Dozier were huge. I think we were able to capitalize on both of those turnovers. The offense is just happy that the defense can create turnovers.
On having a bye week: I think having a bye week gets some guys healthy. We will get AT (Anthony Turner) and a couple other guys back. Buffalo is going to be a really tough opponent, so it nice to have a couple of weeks to prepare for them. |
