Dec. 19, 2005

Q. How is practice going?

A. It was OK today. I don't think it was as sharp today as it was yesterday, but I wouldn't categorize it as terrible.

Q. Tomorrow is a full scale practice?

A. Tomorrow we will be in shells and Wednesday will be a walk-through.

Q. What has the team done so far?

A. We just got in yesterday and practiced. Last night they just kind of hung out, went downtown, went out to eat. Today we have the Grand Prix event where we will do some go-kart racing. Tonight they will have free and then starting tomorrow we will start to tighten it up a little bit. We will go to Sea World tomorrow and then we will start to tighten up with meetings and curfews and all that. We haven't had any curfews the last couple of days.

Q. So there will be a curfew tomorrow night?

A. Yeah.

Q. What's (Karlos) Whittaker doing out there? Is he an unofficial coach?

A. He's going to have surgery when we get back. He was in the dumps a little bit and we wanted to include him and bring him around and he's kind of annointed himself as a coach. I put him in charge of discipline. He makes sure the guys do their rolls at the end of practice. He's taken that and took it to a new level. He was running sprints today at the end of practice.

Q. Slowly right?

A. Yeah.

Q. Coach, can you tell me how it feels to play in the first Poinsettia Bowl?

A. We're excited. I think it's exciting for our team to be here. Certainly we are playing in an area where we have a lot of sailors and marines. It ought to be fun.

Q. What are you doing to prepare for the game?

A. Practicing just like we always do. We went full pads today and got after it pretty good. This will be the last full pads practice. We will be in shells tomorrow.

Q. How much pride do you have in taking Navy to three-straight bowls after coming into the situation that you inherited?

A. It's rewarding. I think you have to give a lot of credit to the staff and to the players that bought into it. The players bought into the system and they've worked extremely hard. Going to a bowl game was one of our goals at the beginning of the year and you're always excited when they reach one of their goals.

Q. This season in particular has to be gratifying since you lost guys like Polanco and Eckel.

A. Well, we lost 16 starters. The nature of a Service Academy is that you are going to end up being senior oriented a lot of times. Now, this team is not, but you usually have a lot of older guys playing because of some of the restrictions you have at an Academy.

Q. When you came in originally what did you see as the biggest challenge you had in taking over a team that had gone 1-20 the previous two years.

A. Just trying to change the attitude and getting guys to believe that they can win and to work hard. Convincing them that hard work will pay off. Everybody thinks that they are working hard, we just had to gradually show them and get them to work the way we wanted them to work. I think they do that now.

Q. How difficult was it to change the attitude? How ingrained was it?

A. It was difficult, but once you start having success it becomes easier. Quite honestly we probably didn't get as much changed that first year as we would have liked, it was ingrained, but we had a good senior group coming back that next year that really bought in and now we are to the point where we have guys that have been with us for four years and they don't know any different. They know the work ethic and the expectation level.

Q. How much does that help you, I know it's different recruiting at a Service Academy, but how much does that help you getting a higher-caliber player when you have this recent tradition of winning.

A. It certainly helps recruiting any time you win and I think we are getting a little better athletically. Hopefully we will continue to do that.