Nov. 1, 2008
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Game Action 
New Mexico Head Coach Rocky Long
(On the penalties in the game):
“I think both teams had their share of penalties. I don’t think one team had an advantage because the other team had more penalties. It seemed to be pretty darn equal to me. It was a very physical game. I’m proud of the way our team played.”
“They (UNM) had just as many series as Utah did. They had just as many chances. The offense struggled. Obviously if they had had four turnovers and we didn’t have any we would have won the game. That’s simple math.”
(On QB Brad Gruner’s performance):
“It’s harder than if you have an experienced quarterback, but I thought he did okay. I mean the game was won or lost on 4th-and-3 on the 50-yard line. It was my call. Right or wrong it was time to decide who was going to win the game.”
(On running the ball instead of throwing it on the second-to-last series):
“We were trying to get the first down on third down. It was 3rd-and-3 or 3rd-and-4 and we didn’t get it. No, we didn’t think about using two plays. We thought we could get a first down with the play that we called.”
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham:
“We had a few penalties in the game. A lot to clean up. Bottom line is we hung in there, defense hung in there. We found a way to win. Brian Johnson played some good football. I thought the New Mexico defense played very well. I give them a lot of credit for what they did tonight. They beat the University of Arizona right here on this field and they are a good team. Any time you can get out of Albuquerque with a win that’s a good thing to have going.”
“They are talented. They’ve got a lot of good athletes in the secondary. It doesn’t matter to me one bit (how this affects BCS standings). We are just going about our business to win games. They did a good job mixing up their calls. They are a high pressure defense. They had done a nice job with keeping the run game all night long. We did not do a good job handling that aspect of their offense. Our team was very resilient, handled adversity well, like we have done in two or three other games this season, and that is a gutsy group. We sure were not as productive as we needed to be (on offense). A lot of it was New Mexico defense. They are a good group. We still had almost 400 yards offense, but the name of the game is putting points on the board, and we did not do that well enough tonight. I think the play of Brian Johnson and his ability to throw the ball with the precision that he did was the biggest difference for us.”
New Mexico Redshirt Freshman QB Brad Gruner“I think we got a lot of positives out of [the game]. Obviously, there are some penalties we’d like to have back, but we put in a lot of new stuff this week and I think we really executed well. I think everybody played their hearts out and left it on the field.”
(On the final two Lobo drives):
“You just have to try and make something happen. Time was running out. If we don’t get that (holding) penalty, we’re inside the 50 and we’ve got a good shot at a tie. Penalties happen, so you just have to try to overcome and make things happen out there.”
New Mexico Senior LB Herbert Felder“Defensively, we decided to come out and try to attack it. We know our situation bowl game-wise, so we were going to give it our all. So we came out and just tried to attack and attack. That was our gameplan.”