University of Connecticut Athletics
UConn Football Hosts Media Luncheon
10/22/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
October 22, 2002
STORRS, CONN. - The University of Connecticut football team held its weekly media luncheon on Tuesday at the Putnam Dining Hall on the Storrs campus as the Huskies prepare to head to Nashville to face Vanderbilt of the Southeastern Conference. The following are some excerpts from the event.
Head Coach Randy Edsall:
Opening statement
Regardless of where you are in that conference to be a member of that conference you have to be a pretty good football team and you have to have pretty good players. Vanderbilt’s a team is in a situation this year where they have a first year coach, a guy who’s a very proven coach, and you can see that they’ve gotten better since we say them early in the season against Georgia Tech to where they are now. They play very hard on defense and run to the ball very well. On offense they have a very good package in terms of running the option and spreading you out with an athletic quarterback in Jay Cutler. We’re going to have our work cut out for us. They run the ball well. They average over 200 yards a game rushing the football so we’re going to have to play better run defense. We’re going to have to play very sound, fundamental defense and do a better job than we have been doing in the past few weeks.
What was the mood of the team after the Temple game?
Everybody was frustrated. Frustrated and disappointed. We talked and they should feel that way. All of us feel that way. What we have to do is eliminate the turnovers, the mistakes, the penalties, all those things. If we do that we’ll win games. From that standpoint they understood. There’s two things when you lose. If someone flat out beats you and you play your best game, maybe you’re not as frustrated. But when you lose because you’ve made mistakes at least you know that you can go out and win if you eliminate those mistakes. By the time we go to the practice field last night, I thought we have put that game behind us and have moved forward. I thought it was upbeat last night as we went to practice. Again, we can’t dwell on what happened Saturday. We’ve got to move forward. If we do that we’ll give ourselves a chance. If we start feeling sorry for ourselves and wondering about the what ifs and the could ifs then we’re not going to be in the right frame of mind that we need to be in when we play on Saturday. I think this team will respond and go out and play very, very hard.
Any reason why this team has done better in the second half than at the start of games?
I wish I could really pin point it. I thought we came out fired up and ready to go. It’s just that we made some mistakes. I don’t think it had anything to do with intensity coming out. It came out with just mistakes. I don’t know if it’s a confidence thing when they first come out or what. I’ve been searching for answers for weeks now to try and pin point it. It’s mind boggling a little bit to wonder why you can do that as much as we’ve done. We’ve got to get out of that mode and I thought we were doing some of that the other day except for the mistakes.
On Vanderbilt QB Jay Cutler
Their quarterback runs the ball quite a bit in this offense and does a good job. He's a good athlete. I've been impressed with him on file. He does a good job and handles himself very nicely. He doesn't seem to get flustered with anything and reads the things that they ask him to read. We're going to have to make sure that we know exactly what he's doing all of the time.
On the play of fifth year senior cornerback Roy Hopkins
I think Roy's playing very, very well. When you take a look at some of the guys that are playing the better football for us, they're seniors and they're guys that have been through the wars. They're the guys that know how to prepare. They know how to get in and watch the extra tape. They can pick up what the coach is telling him and pick up the tendencies. I think Roy's played the best of anybody on defense consistently throughout the year. On offense we don't have a lot of guys that have that kind of experience and on defense we do.
Sophomore QB Dan Orlovsky:
What's the mood of the team?
It's still the same has it been all year. We're still upbeat and confident. We were a little frustrated over the weekend. In five games this year we've been so close and we only got two of them. There's only so long that you can keep losing close games. Eventually you're going to get one of those and it's going to snowball into a bunch of wins. It's just a matter of playing hard.
On QB turned WR Keron Henry:
It's been entertaining. The first day he got out there was actually pretty funny because he couldn't get into his stance. Then he'd run his routs and he was slipping all over the place. But, he's gotten a lot better. He's learning how to run routes. I think he's picking it up very well. He's a smart kid. I think he's going to be an eye opener in the future...I know how hard he works. He works extremely hard in the class room. He's an engineering major and he'll sit down and talk to me about school sometimes and I'm like 'what are you talking about?' He's a real intelligent kid. It was better for him, with the kind of athlete that he is and the offense that we run, to go where he's on the field. I think it's going to be a benefit to the offense. Everyone on the team thinks Keron is going to be awesome...He's a strong, physical kid. He runs a 4.4. He's a prototypical wide out. It's just him learning to be a wide out. He look pretty smooth out there now but he's going to be unreal.
