Nov. 19, 2005
Air Force head coach Fisher DeBerry
“I”m very proud of our football team.” (New Mexico) coach (Rocky) Long’s comment was “Boy, you just kicked us good.” I’m very proud about some comments that were said about our football team that are our players will never give up and you just never give up on the people you love.” They won for each other today.” The underclassmen about played their hearts out for the upperclassmen and I thought the upperclassmen played their hearts out for the underclassmen.” Our whole focus today was that we saved the best for last.”
“I thought the game plan was masterfully constructed by (offensive coordinator) (Chuck) Peterson and his offense.” We ran an offense that was predicated upon them hopefully showing us what they were going to do and then we made the call from the press box to the sidelines to the player.” All of our players today played off wristbands which takes a lot of concentration.” I thought our offense handled that extremely well.” I thought our defense, except the last drive that (UNM) had, I thought they played extremely well” and we didn’t have any critical breakdowns.””
New Mexico head coach Rocky Long
(on what he told the team after the game):
“I told them that we played poorly and that we didn’t deserve to win. If you can’t play better than that, you’re not going to win and obviously we didn’t have a good enough game plan going into the game or we didn”t have enough time to prepare the game plan because it didn’t work the way it was designed to work. I thank the seniors for what they’ve done. Win or lose, this senior class is something special and I don’t anyone in this town realizes that. They’re the first group that has ever gone through here with five regular season winning records. If you look at the history of football and the University of New Mexico, that’s an unbelievable accomplishment.”
(on whether he asked the team to do more than it was able):
“I don’t think we asked them to anything they couldn’t do today. I thought Air Force executed a whole lot better than we did. Toward the end, I thought we kind of gave in a little bit on defense. We fought hard for a long time, obviously Air Force was better than we were. By our own experience, we play better after a bye week too.
(on why Kole McKamey dressed in the second half):
“We were down to one quarterback, so we asked Kole,” if something happened to Bryan (Clampitt), if he would just hand-off. Bryan was going to play the whole game unless he got hurt.”
New Mexico senior running back DonTrell Moore
“Obviously it’s frustrating. Anytime you lose a game it’s frustrating regardless of the juncture (of the season). Any game that’s a loss is a tough game.”
(on the Lobos deserving to go to a bowl game):
“I think we do. We never gave up when the season looked bad. A lot of people wrote us off in a lot of games, but we never gave up.”
(on his career):
“I’m happy with the career that I have had. The class of 2005 has done a lot of things special here. Hopefully, we’ll leave a legacy here that will live forever.”