NEW MEXICO POSTGAME QUOTES vs. San Diego State
Oct. 18, 2008
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
New Mexico Head Coach Rocky Long
(On keeping the team’s focus with such a big halftime lead):
“It’s tough. I have never been ahead that far. All we talked about at halftime was trying to keep you intensity for the start of the second half. I don’t know if anybody has ever come back from that far down before. We played pretty well. They didn’t play well. We got some big plays and some breaks early, and the game got out of hand. I have been on the other side of that too. You like winning, but I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the other side.”
“I can’t remember one where we have won one by that many points. I’ve been on the other side so I know that once that tidal wave shows up, there’s not a whole lot you can do about stopping it. It has happened to us several times.”
“I think that we were able to move the ball so well. The defense also did a nice job and gave the offense a short field several times. They responded and put it in the end zone. We have had trouble doing that up until now.”
(On resting the starters for the Air Force game on Thursday):
“I’m sure it will help us Thursday night. We took all of the starters out after the first series in the second half. We started playing all of the guys that don’t play.”
San Diego State Head Coach Chuck Long
(On keeping the team’s focus with such a big halftime lead):
“It is a tough conversation in the locker room. It has been tough just because everything is going wrong at once right now. All I told them was, `Hey, it was an embarrassing situation and we will see how you respond.’ I’m hoping that this is the lowest point of our season. We’ll find out how these guys respond tomorrow. We have a very fragile football team. There is no question about that right now. There’s not much confidence in that locker room. It’s very, very tough. We have a revolving door with our football team. We’ve got to find a way to settle it down and find some kind of chemistry and continuity on this team. Something. We just don’t have it right now.”
New Mexico Redshirt Freshman DE Jaymar Latchison
(on his first quarter fumble recovery TD):
“Brett Kennedy came through, hit him, knocked the ball out and made a great play. We practice fumble recoveries so much during practice that it was just second nature. Find the ball, scoop and run.”
(on the defense’s performance in general):
“I think the coaches came with a great gameplan and we were focused in practice. We practiced really well this week. It was hard fast and focused and everybody concentrated.”
New Mexico Senior Running Back Rodney Feguson
(on the offense’s performance in general):
“It was great. I was happy that we gelled and came together today. It started off kind of slow for me, but [offensive coordinator] Baldwin wanted us to score on the first play and we did that, and we accomplished a lot of goals that we set out to do. We have great character on this team. We knew we had to come out and play hard regardless of who we played, regardless of what happened last week.”