Sept. 7, 2005
Head Coach Rocky Long
What problems does Missouri quarterback Brad Smith present to the defense?
“I compare him with (former Colorado State quarterback Bradlee) Van Pelt and (former Utah quarterback) Alex Smith, and obviously we had trouble controlling those two guys He’s the same kind of athlete and now he is in the same kind of offense too. So they’ve got the ball in their best athlete’s hand where he can throw it or run with it. So it’s the same as playing those guys. It’s hard to stop a guy that can do both.”
Is their offense pretty similar to yours?
“In the first game it’s very similar. They will be mirror images of each other. Their coaching staff spent about three days with the Utah coaching staff so it’s a lot of the same we saw at UNLV and a lot of the same as we saw last year at Utah.”
Normally you would have to spy or mirror a quarterback that’s a threat to run with ball – will you do that on Saturday?
“In my history with defense we’ve tried that a couple of times. The trouble with spying a quarterback with his ability is who are you going to spy on him with that can run him down and tackle him. When we played against players like him several years ago, we would put a really good athlete there or a guy we thought could chase him down and tackle him, but they can’t tackle a guy like Brad Smith in the open field so basically you are wasting a guy. You’re wasting a guy on defense, so no we don’t spy. Now if we had a guy good enough to tackle him one-on-one, maybe we might spy.”
What problems does the short turnaround present as far as preparation for this game?
“We’ll see how we do. It’s a delicate balance between actually practicing on the field and how much you add or subtract from your game plan mentally. You spend more time in the meeting room, but you have a lot of trouble spending more time on the practice field because usually today would be our players day off so they could heal up and freshen up before we went back to practice. They’re not getting a day off so we can’t be out there as long and we can’t do near as much hitting as we normally do in a week of practice. It will be interesting to see how it works out. I really believe if we took them out there and practice like we normally do we wouldn’t have a chance because we would be dead-legged. [Missouri] would be so much quicker and faster than us and we wouldn’t have a chance to compete.”
Talk about their overall speed.
“They’re obviously going to be one of the faster teams we play all year. You really don’t know how you compare speed-wise until you get on the field. They played Arkansas State and I have no idea what kind of athletes Arkansas State has. I image Missouri is pretty darn fast and how we compare – I don’t know until we play them. They are a lot like Texas Tech. You know there are a couple of teams in our league that I think are really fast too. I think Utah is really fast and I think San Diego State is really fast. Now if they are as fast as Missouri I don’t know.”
Obviously Brad Smith will get a lot of the attention this week, but talk just a little bit about some of their other play-makers and the challenges they present to you in the backfield.
“Their best receiver is hurt. He had a shoulder problem coming into their first game and he got hit in their first game and supposedly he is missing our game. They have three running backs that they alternate and all of them are about the same. Great quickness that can make you miss in the open field. Their receivers are big. They’re tall and they’re 200 pounds or more and our corners aren’t very big. Our safeties are pretty good size guys, but they didn’t play very good last week so the match up of DBs against receivers will be an interesting thing to see how it goes early on in the game. The worst part of the whole deal is [Brad Smith] because if you drop everybody in coverage he’s going to sit back there for three seconds, see that everybody’s covered and he’s going to take off, and he might go 80 yards for a touchdown. If you want to try to stop him and contain him that means you have to have an all-out blitz so that you fill every gap so he can’t scramble out of there. Then your contain guys have to be disciplined enough to contain it. He sees the blitz coming, he throws it to one of those big receivers one-on-one, they catch it and might shake off one of our 160-pound guys and he might go 80 yards. So with an athlete like him at quarterback you’re in a dilemma.”
What are they like defensively?
“They lost a lot of players on defense. So they are a little bit younger on defense. They are very physical. They’ve got great speed at linebacker and they’ve got good speed in the secondary, but they are real physical up front. The little defensive end is a great speed pass rush guy and in training camp our tackles had trouble with some of our guys that are good speed rush guys on the edge, so that is a big concern. They flip their whole defense so that they have weak side as their best linebacker that makes all their tackles – he’s the fastest guy.”
Senior Tailback DonTrell Moore
How do you and the team feel physically after Monday’s game?
“I don’t think we’re as sore as we thought we’d be. We’ve got a lot of work to do this week, we’ve got a lot of kinks to get ironed out, but I think we’re doing pretty good physically.”
With the short week, what are you missing out on that you wouldn’t have normally?
“I guess just that extra two days to prepare, but sometimes that’s the way things go. You can’t complain about it, you just have to get out there and work with the limited time. We’ll have to make the most of it.”
How did the knee hold up one day after the game, more sore than you thought?
“Oh no, I wasn’t sore at all. It’s fine. I felt better than I anticipated as far as soreness from the football game in general, not just the knee. I wasn’t as sore as I thought I’d be overall, so it felt pretty good.”
What do you know about Missouri going into the game?
“I know that they have really good defense and that they run to the football. I know that they have good linebackers and they play well up-front. They held down their opponent to 17 points so we know they’re doing some things right.”
Junior Quarterback Kole McKamey
How do you feel physically the day after your first game?
“Pretty tired, pretty sore, a little banged up. Everything you’d expect after your first game, after not being hit since your last full game. Physically it felt okay, mentally it felt great. I’m a little disappointed at how it all went, but we got our first win and our first conference game win.”
How much does that help going into the rest of the non-conference schedule, and then starting the conference again, knowing that you’re already one up on everyone?
“It’s a good relief in knowing that we’re not trying to play catch up. We’re 1-0, which is always good and exciting. That 1-0 is a conference win, which is a plus too. The fact is that it will give us confidence in our next game knowing that we won.”
What do you think the team needs to change from week one to week two?
“Mental focus. I think that was the key to Monday’s game – the lack of it. We lost focus, weren’t playing hard all four quarters and it showed. We came out in the second quarter, and most of the second half, and were lackadaisical and acted like we had the game won, which is something that we can’t let happen again.”
What do you guys now about Missouri?
“Not a whole lot. I watched quite a bit of film on them this summer, but I have yet to watch their last game. I know that they have great athletes and good defensive speed, which they use to their advantage. Other than that it’s a surprise to us and it’s whether or not we can handle our business.”
Senior Center Ryan Cook
How important is it to have a good outing, as far as representing this conference and the program here at New Mexico?
“It’s definitely important, especially after last week with a lot of the schools coming away with big wins. To show that the conference is always improving is some added pressure on us, but we’re going to come out and play our game. If we win we win, but we’re going to definitely go out there and give it our all. Hopefully we can go to Missouri and come away with another big win.”
Do you think that weather played a part in what you were doing against UNLV and are you glad that the next game is in the evening?
“Well it was hot, but we had practice all week at that time so I don’t think it really had an effect on us. Maybe it will help us this week, going to Missouri, with the humidity down there. It was a good prep for this game.”
What do you think about their coach (Gary Pinkel) saying that you guys are one of the biggest lines they’ve ever faced?
“I don’t think we feel too big and it’s always a plus to be bigger than the other guys, but they have a quickness that we’ll have to combat against and they’re pretty big themselves on the defensive front. Hopefully it will all work out for the best in the end.”
Sophomore Linebacker Cody Kase
How do you feel abut the team’s performance in game one?
“It’s bittersweet. We got the victory, but we didn’t execute it as well as we’d like. We’ve learned a lot from that game so overall it was a good learning experience for us.”
What do you think can be improved or tweaked from week one?
“I think we need to keep earning game experience. A lot of the safeties and linebackers haven’t played before. We need to work on execution, running blitzes, finding where we need to be on the blitz. We need to get our assignments down pat.”
Was it any different actually starting your first game as opposed to what you were expecting it to be like?
“Yes, the speed out there in the game is a whole different level. Practice and scrimmage is good, but it’s just not quite like the game. The first couple plays are really shocking, but you get used to it.”
Going up against Missouri – they put up a lot of points last year – how do you get ready for that?
“Everyone knows that they’ve got that quarterback that can throw and run. So the main thing is to contain him, don’t let him make any game-breaking plays and I think we’ll be all right.”
What’s the biggest challenge to overcome when you guys go on the road?
“Playing a Monday game, it would be just getting your legs back. It’s just being able to prepare. We’ve got to leave Friday, and we get this feeling that you have to cram everything into a little amount of time.”