9/8/2003 - Football
Transcript Of Paul Johnson's Press Conference Following Saturday's Loss At TCU
Transcript of Head Coach Paul Johnson's Press Conference
Monday, September 8 (press conference after Saturday's game)
Q. Your thoughts on the game?
A. I thought we played hard. I'm disappointed we lost the game. We had some chances in the first half and we made some mistakes. Against a good team you can't do that. We could have very easily been up 13 or 16-0 at halftime. If you do that you have a chance. They have a good football team.
Q. You did everything you could have asked for in the first half except scored.
A. We fumble on the two-yard line going in and then we mishandle the snap on a field goal and that really hurt us. We didn't get any points down there and that was big. We knew going in that they had a great defense. They have a bunch of guys that can really run. The first half went like we wanted it. We held the ball for about 20 minutes and they didn't get to run many plays, but you have to finish off the drive when you get down there.
Q. What was the difference between the first and second half?
A. I don't know, maybe we made some more plays. The field position was better in the first half. They came out and scored the first couple of possessions in the second half and kind of got the game turned. Offensively we weren't doing enough to sustain any drives. When your biggest plays are six and seven yards it's hard. They ran us down on from behind on a lot of plays; they have a lot of speed.
Q. You have to feel like this is major progress for the program to come in here and battle the 25th ranked team in the country like you did tonight?
A. I think we've made progress, I told our players that after the game. You are disappointed when you lose and you should never be satisfied, but hopefully we can take this and build on it. We played hard, we just can't make the mistakes that we made. We had a couple of penalties on both sides of the ball, we hurt ourselves on special teams with field position, and we turned the ball over. We can't make those mistakes against a Top 25 football team and expect to win right now.
