Nov. 10, 2009

Coach Hoke's opening statement:
"Last Saturday we played a tremendous football team and didn't play as well as we'd like to in a lot of different areas but at the same time I thought we stayed together as a team, played hard. I think [in the] second half we played maybe a little more confident to some degree and that's something that we've got to keep working on and winning helps that. This week we've got a heck of a challenge. Wyoming's done a great job of building [Dave Christensen's] program and his philosophy and we've got our work cut out for us."

On injuries:
"We're fine. Everybody's in. [Romeo Horn, Logan Ketchum, Alec Johnson won't be back.]"

On Brandon Sullivan:
"I think he's running really good vertically. I think he's making the one move in there and his vision. I thought he ran really well with vision a couple of times and really went downhill. That's what kind of back he is because he's a decent-sized guy and he can run with some power and take on some safeties in those situations and punish some people."

On whether he expects more strides in the running game this week:
"I don't know. I think we made strides last week. We've got to keep pushing that to the limit and I think we ran ball 29 times last week. If we can keep that going and keep [as] close as we can being balanced, I think we're better as a team."

On defending Wyoming quarterback Austyn Carta-Samuels:
"He's a dual threat ... when he goes back to throw the ball you don't know where he's going to end up because when you look at most of his rushing it comes from him dropping back to pass and doesn't feel comfortable in the pocket for one reason or another. He's very active with his feet and does a lot of good things."

On whether he'll use a linebacker to "spy on" Carta-Samuels:
"We'll do some different things. You've got to count on your front getting off blocks and doing a good job of their effort throughout the play."

On the defense the past few weeks giving yards in chunks:
"We've probably had bigger plays than we'd like to give up but that goes down to a lot of things from if it's a run, fitting the run correctly and making sure we're getting the ball either bounced out or turned back in. When you look at the throw game, it starts up front with rushing the passer and doing a good job of beating one-on-one blocks in the pass protection. We haven't done that very well and that's something that we've got to get better at."

On what he's been seeing from the defense the past couple of weeks:
"I think sometimes we lock on a guy instead of really pushing to make another move or whatever it might be in what we do. I think some of it is that we've got to get better burst off the line of scrimmage."

On talk of needing two more wins [Wyoming and UNLV] to be bowl-eligible, whether the players are talking about it:
"What about Utah? You guys talk about it more than we do. Our big thing this week, for us, we're always going to play and coach for our seniors. Our seniors are playing their last home game in their stadium. As a guy who played the game and played at the college level, that's significant, because I can still remember my last home game and the last game you ever play. I think that's significant and when you talk to our seniors, how fast the time went by, whether they're a fifth-year guy or guy who came from a junior college. It goes fast."

On the offensive line's play against TCU:
"I thought they did a nice job, I think a couple of things. I think Al [Borges] has a nice plan. I thought when you looked at some of the split-back stuff that we hadn't done before and the use of Walter [Kazee] and [Brandon Sullivan] in backfield at the same time together. I thought [TCU defensive end] Jerry Hughes is guy you have to contend with by turning the protection to him sometimes. I think it helped by putting a back on him at times. I think that helped. I didn't feel him as much as you maybe expect to feel out there on the field."

On plan for Wyoming defensive tackle John Fletcher:
"I think we'll have a good plan to make sure that we can do a good job and the other thing I think I should have mentioned is [that] Pete Nelson has really improved over the course of the year and that's the exciting part. He's a senior. He's a guy who played defense for the majority of his career and I really like his work ethic every day and his leadership in what he's done."

On Vincent Brown's role since he's been out:
"I think he does a great job of coaching those guys up. He sees things during the game and he kind of isolates on guys. I think that and in practice he's running around and doing some things, keeping himself going too. Vince is a great kid. He cares deeply about his teammates and it's obvious when you watch and interact with him that it's a mutual respect. He's done really good job for us."

On the timetable for Vincent Brown's return:
"I think we're getting closer every day."

On whether the first series of penalties against TCU set the offense back:
"I think it always does when you look at the momentum and the peaks and valleys and shifts of a football game. That's a little bit of us last week.  I thought when you get the two consecutive false-start penalties, that says a little bit about maybe you're a little tight and maybe you're flinching a little bit. That's something that we have to get through. Obviously, it'd be nice to take ball down the field and score in that first series but we've got to keep fighting through it and getting better."

On whether the penalties were due to nerves:
"You shouldn't think that every game. I think at Colorado State, a lot of it had to do with the wind and us not being able to run the ball early enough. At the same time, I think last week we just missed the long ball on the first play from the play action, which is something that we like to do and if we hit that ball it's a whole different story."

Players: Ryan Lindley, Peter Nelson, & Luke Laolagi

On his postgame reactions to watching film of TCU game:
LINDLEY: "I think you've got to give them a lot of credit. They're a good team, a lot of talent.  All we see is the defensive side of the ball. That's all we evaluated. They've got a good team but we shouldn't ever have made it that lopsided. I thought we did a lot of things that we'd fixed in the past couple of weeks. We took a little bit of a step backward but we come back to work this week and just make it up."

On whether confidence has been shaken:
LAOLAGI: "I think we put that one behind us and like Ryan said, we give them a lot of credit. They did a lot of great things. We're just looking forward this week. Wyoming's a good team. They have the same exact record as us, I think, and we have a big task at hand."

On the last home game as seniors:
NELSON: "It's really exciting. What more could you ask for. It's kind of sad in a way because it's the end, it's our last game as a senior group, but we're really excited for it. We're going to prepare really hard, do everything we can to help ourselves win this game. We're really excited to get to play in the stadium one more time and hopefully make the best of it."

On whether they're think about needing two more wins to be bowl-eligible or just focusing on one game at a time:
LAOLAGI: "We're thinking about Wyoming right now. That's in the future, if it's there, but right now we're focusing on Wyoming and we're going to do all we can to try and get a win this Saturday."

On what they wanted to do coming into the TCU game that they weren't able to do:
LINDLEY: "I think it was a lot of execution, like you said. There was some misdirection stuff that we worked on that at times we executed and looked pretty good. I think we found some things that we added to our offense but it really just came down to us making plays and making the routine plays to keep the ball moving."

On whether they're more comfortable with the run game:
LINDLEY: "I never really was discouraged or worried about the way we were improving as far as the run game goes, but it is exciting the way we ran the ball this week against a defense like that, one of the top in the nation, and that we could open up holes like that. It's really just a testament to how our offensive line's been working and how hard they're working day in and day out to open up and improve this running game and I think it's really going to help out our offense in the long run."

On how he sees the run game improvement:
NELSON: "We're trying to become more consistent every week, that's what we've been working on. I know Coach [Darrell] Funk preaches that a good offensive line is consistently good. That's sounds really cliché or generic but you've got to just work every day, every week getting better at it. I think that's what we're doing; we're improving every week and that''s what is most important is that we think about improving every week, getting better every week. I think we're doing that. We just need to keep getting better every week and keep improving."

On whether a healthier Brandon Sullivan helps improve the offensive line:
NELSON: "He's running really hard. He's running really hard and he's finishing runs and he's been playing great so I think that's been helping a little bit. All our running backs are good running backs and they're able to do the job, but Brandon's been running really hard and it's really good to see him doing well."

On whether the first possession of the TCU game threw off everything they were hoping to do:
NELSON: "It was just a lack of concentration. You cannot have that and we've done that the past few games and that's something we need to correct. You don't let it carry your confidence because you've got a lot more to do, you've got a lot more to play. You can't let a few plays bring down the whole party. Just got to keep playing and playing hard and we just need to work on starting better and faster."

On playing [Wyoming quarterback] Austyn Carta-Samuels:
LAOLAGI: "He's a good quarterback. They use a couple of quarterbacks, actually. He's a young guy. He's an up and comer and he's done pretty well. We're excited to get after it and get in today and the rest of this week and work on it."

On what they'll do different against Carta-Samuels than they did against TCU quarterback Andy Dalton:
LAOLAG: "We'll have a couple of new things scheme-wise but our defense is the same. We could do so many things with it and throw so many things at you so we're looking at that."

On the inconsistency of the defense the past couple of weeks, things that they're not doing the past couple of weeks:
LAOLAGI: "That's exactly what it is; it's just guys playing together consistently throughout the game. The past couple of games we've come out a little slow and we'd settle down, and we'd pick it up a little bit. That's all it is; we've just got to keep working together and keep trying to find the right fit."

On whether Coach Rocky Long has installed new plays on defense as they have been going along or whether the defense is still in the "infancy" of the 3-3-5:
LAOLAGI: "That's the beauty of the defense. You can throw new wrinkles in every week for whatever opponent you face. That's what Coach Long tries to do every week and that's what we've just got to get better at; consistently meshing with the new defense he throws at us."