Oct. 18, 2005

Q. Do you feel better?

A. Do I feel better?

Q. About the team. I know you weren't happy yesterday after watching the tape.

A. I won't be happy until we play again.

Q. Or until they show you something in practice.

A. That game is over as far as I'm concerned. We are moving on. Next.

Q. What do you tell the team in all honesty?

A. The same thing I just told you. We talked about what went wrong, how we are going to try and fix it and we are going to move on. You can't dwell on it. It's over. It's water under the bridge.

Q. As many things that did go wrong at least you won the game. It shows how far the program has come. A few years ago if you would have played like that you would have lost by a significant margin.

A. It's always a positive when you win. It's always a positive. I just think you have to have a certain set of expectations and standards and I'm not going to lower mine. They are going to have to come to me. I'm not going to go down. If you play with fire enough times you are going to get burned and we've played with fire a couple of times and got away with it.

Q. You were able to pull it out.

A. We've been able to do what it takes, but I don't necessarily like playing with fire every week. It's not much fun.

Q. You had mentioned, I think, that there were some issues with the snaps. Can you tell us what exactly was happening?

A. We had two center-quarterback exchange problems, but they were the first ones we've had in a while.

Q. Is there a problem?

A. I hope not. We will try and fix it this week. Both of them were down on the goal line and I think I know what happened. We just have to fix it.

Q. Do you see this as another trap game?

A. This? No. I see Rice as a good football team. If we don't go and play very well they will beat us good.

Q. What have you seen that impresses you?

A. They are very athletic. Their record is deceiving. Look at who they've played. There probably isn't anybody that's going to beat Texas. UCLA is undefeated, UAB has a ton of players, watching that tape they probably have a first round receiver and quarterback and they have good players on defense, Tulsa is 4-2 and they have a great football team, East Carolina is 3-3. I don't think they've played anybody that has a losing record. Don't be misled by their record. They have a good football team.

Q. And they have played Navy particularly well the last couple of years.

A. Yeah. Before the last two years they beat Navy pretty regularly I think.

Q. These teams have to know each other pretty well since you pretty much have played them every year.

A. Yeah, I would think. The game won't last long.

Q. What is it like to prepare for a team a second time and does any of what you did the first time help you now?

A. I don't know, we will see tomorrow. I pulled my file out today and was going through it. We have some more games to evaluate now since at that time they had only played a couple of games and now they've played five.

Q. So certainly things have changed since when you were initially scheduled to play them.

A. Some, but it's not going to change a lot. They know what we are going to do and we know what they are going to do. We just have to get our guys ready.

Q. Coach Hatfield said that you guys have played Air Force, which is a similar team to both Navy and Rice, and he hasn't played a team like that. Does that give you an advantage?

A. I don't know. I hadn't thought about that.

Q. What did you find out about your backup quarterback?

A. I thought he went in and competed and he played very well. I was glad to see him go in and take the team down and score. I thought he did some good things.

Q. What do you think Lamar learned from that?

A. I just really wanted him to settle down. He was struggling, no question, and sometimes if you give a guy a break like that and they can stand on the sidelines and watch hopefully they can get their feet back under them. He was frustrated and I was frustrated with him. It was good for both of us.

Q. You did say that all of that wasn't his fault.

A. No. It never is. The quarterback gets way too much credit and way too much blame.

Q. Are you glad the cramping issues are behind Lamar?

A. I haven't even thought about that since early in the year. That's an old story by now.

Q. Is there anybody that you thought played well on Saturday?

A. Is there anybody I thought played well? Keenan Little played pretty well.

Q. That's it. That's a short list. Is Jeremy McGown going to travel with the team?

A. Probably not. We usually don't travel guys that are hurt.

Q. How about the number of recruits from Texas? Has it changed? It has always been significant, but has it increased at all?

A. We still have quite a few. I don't know if it's increased, because we are taking fewer guys, but we still have a lot of guys from Texas. Coach Spencer does a good job there, Kevin Kelly was there for a while and now Danny O'Rourke recruits there as well. We have a lot of guys from Texas.

Q. Are you trying to increase your presence in Houston, because you've been there so much? You play Rice there every other year and you went to the Houston Bowl.

A. I haven't thought that much about it. We've always tried to recruit that area. We still recruit it the same way we always have.

Q. Are you happy they moved the game time up two hours?

A. I would rather play at 1 p.m. or 12 noon if they would let us.

Q. You said before that it would make it awfully late getting back with a 7 p.m. start.

A. The earlier the better. I don't understand why it's a 5:07 start. There is no TV. Nobody ever starts on the hour anymore.

Q. Navy's games don't start at 1:30.

A. When do they start?

Q. 1:35

A. That's so they can get all the songs in.