Sept. 23, 2005

Q. What's the longest time you've had between games during the regular season?

A. I don't know.

Q. Is it safe to say that you aren't accustomed to having this many days between games?

A. That would be a safe assumption.

Q. Do you have any strategies about how you handle it?

A. We are just trying to practice and stay as crisp and focused as we can. That's all you can do.

Q. Are you concerned about being rusty?

A. You don't know what's going to happen. It's like playing the first game of the year all over again. By next Thursday we will have had 44 practices and two games.

Q. That's a good note.

A. I thought you might like that.

Q. Do you feel like you are going to have kind of a fresh start since you lost the first two games?

A. I don't know about that. We are just ready to play. It's no fun not playing games. I know the guys are ready to play. Things are compounded by the fact that we haven't won and we haven't played as well as we would have liked. We can't wait to get back out there and play again and get that taste out of our mouth. I know next Saturday can't come fast enough for the coaches or the players. The hard part is losing all we had invested. For two weeks we prepared for Rice and we felt like we had a really good plan and we had worked hard on it and we had all that time invested in it and then it's just poof, it's gone. Hopefully there will be some carryover, but the history here is there isn't a lot of carryover if it's more than two or three weeks. It will be like starting all over when we play them.

Q. So, you didn't start on Duke today did you?

A. Yes we did.

Q. Did you really?

A. We sure did.

Q. So did you just review the games they've played so far?

A. That and we played them last year.

Q. I presume they play this week?

A. They play Virginia this week.

Q. Is that a game on television by chance?

A. No. We will watch it on the radio.

Q. The scrimmage on Saturday. How are you going to approach that?

A. We aren't going to scrimmage. We are going to have a kicking scrimmage.

Q. What's that?

A. It's a kicking scrimmage. We will divide the guys up and we will do a scrimmage with just kicks. One team will punt and the other team will immediately have to punt or kick a field goal. All you can do is kick. We will also let each team kick four field goals from different spots on the field and get points. That will just be a part of practice. We aren't going to scrimmage. It wouldn't be very prudent for us to scrimmage one's against one's and get somebody hurt.

Q. One team moved their game up to tonight (Thursday). Would you have liked to do that?

A. We would have liked to do whatever it took to play.

Q. Even if it meant playing earlier than expected?

A. Sure, it would have been fine with us. We had a bye last week.

Q. Good point.

A. I don't think there was any way we could have played the game in Houston. The only way we could have played the game is if they would have agreed to come out and play here and I think we offered that. Chet handled all that deal. I didn't talk to anybody at Rice. I think he offered that, but they didn't want to give up their home game and I can understand that.

Q. You were supposed to be off Oct. 22 and I meant to look and see who you are going to play the next week, I don't think it is Notre Dame.

SS: at Rutgers

Q. Does that now bother you that you aren't off that weekend?

A. I don't know about that. I just hope that since we accommodated Rice on the schedule that they will accommodate us by not playing a night game. A night game means get home at 4 a.m. and have to turn around and get ready for a road game the next week. I would hope they would do that.

Q. Does anybody know when that will be decided?

SS: Right now they are worried about other things than our game time.

Q. Are you healthy?

A. We should be. We haven't played for three weeks.

Q. How about Marco? I noticed he was in a red jersey today.

A. He's okay. He hurt himself wrestling with somebody and acting like he was in the WWF. Somebody put a Stone Cold Steve Stunner on him.

Q. So why did you cancel your coach's show?

A. I didn't. Strasemeier did. Scott Strasemeier cancelled it.

Q. People enjoy that show.

A. Scott Strasemeier cancelled it.