Post Game Quotes
Oct. 4, 2008
Miami Head Coach Randy Shannon
Opening statement…
“It was a tough loss tonight. It was a great game. Both teams did a great job of finishing. I thought that we did a lot of great things and a lot of bad things tonight.”
On the offense…
“Offensively, we couldn’t get the run game going. We kind of struggled with that early in the game. We gave the ball to [Graig] Cooper early, but we couldn’t get the run game cranked up the way we needed to. Our passing game started off sharp and crisp. They were doing a lot of good things. Then they started picking up blitzes and we made some big plays off of that.”
On the defense…
“Defensively, we weren’t able to hold them consistently. We got them to third down a lot of times, but then we couldn’t get off the field.”
On the last scoring drive for FSU…
“I thought the last drive that Florida State scored on was a great call. We had two guys find the quarterback. The guys just miscommunicated and [Antone] Smith broke free. The call was to man everybody up and double the quarterback, but Smith came free.”
On special teams…
“The special teams were tremendous. I thought that was the one phase of the game that kept us in it and gave us the opportunity to win. Special teams is the thing that you always say gives you the chance to win the game. That was the one phase we felt going into the game we had the opportunity to capitalize on. We did and it almost gave us a chance to win this game.”
On the team…
“Do we have a long ways to go? Yeah, I think so because we’ve got to win the game. I’m not going to make excuses for it. We’re going to coach these guys hard. We’re going to get these guys back to where they need to be. We’re going to teach these guys what it takes to win and finish the game.”
On what he told his players…
“I told them when you have an opportunity to come back in that sense, you can’t just break down and have one mental lapse.”
On the second half adjustments…
“We made halftime adjustments and I felt that we slowed them down a little bit more in the second half. If we would have come out in the first half and played fast it wouldn’t be an issue. We wouldn’t be talking about this right now, but that’s football. You have to play fast and start fast.”
On FSU quarterback Christian Ponder…
“I wouldn’t say that I am surprised [about his speed]. When you come and play Miami you are going to play like a Heisman winner. As a defense, it is on us. We have to buckle down and make plays.”
LB Glenn Cook
On the team…
“It doesn’t matter what people will say about us, we just have to stick together. We have to go out and perform.”
On Travis Benjamin…
“He did a great job getting us great field position making some big plays. That really helped out our offense getting them rolling. He did a tremendous job for us today.”
