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Rice University Athletics
Ken Hatfield's Monday Quotes
11/7/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 7, 2005
Opening Statement -- "I thought the key to the (SMU) game would be the kicking game. If we really played the kicking game well, that would make a big, big difference, especially on a windy day like that. As it turned out, they won the toss, deferred, and we had to take the ball into the wind the whole first quarter. Before the quarter was over, we had given up three scores. Unfortunately, one of them was after a muffed punt that allowed them to have a six-yard, short field, which wasn't good.
"Other than that, we settled down defensively with some things we didn't do well early. We continued to fight hard defensively. The biggest thing I liked defensively was that we continued to believe something good would happen, even to the point where we got the two turnovers late in the game. A lot of that is we were still fighting, trying to be in the right place to make something happen.
"Our kicking game was good. Jared Scruggs averaged 49.7 and four of them were over 50 yards. We covered them well.
"John Syptak had a tremendous game. Andray Downs had six tackles, including a tackle for loss and two on the punt team. Chad Price had another outstanding game, caused a fumble. Lance Luedeker did a great job, and Quinton Smith blocks a kick. I think this is the fourth year in a row that we have blocked a kick against SMU. The other three helped us win the game, and this one gave us a chance. And the big stick of the game, Jared Gilbert hit a man on kickoff coverage.
"The biggest disappointment was the ability not to score, naturally. I never felt we were out of the game, even when it was 20-0. When had plenty of chances to get the ball in the end zone.
"(SMU) was the fourth team we've played that had two weeks to get ready for us. They did an outstanding job in what they were doing. Their goal was to not to let Joel Armstrong run the ball and not to let 'Q' have the ball outside."
On the Tulane game -- "We have Homecoming coming up with Tulane. We haven't played them in a long time. They were the first opponent we played here 12 years ago in my first year here, in a driving rainstorm.
"We've got a lot going for us right now, and we're to look forward to what this game can do for us as a team. We have a three-game season going right now. We have only two seniors starting for us; everyone else is preparing to improve, to see if they can play better in these three games to give us a shot in the arm for starting off next year with all of those guys coming back.
"Tulane has played better than us at times. They beat SMU 31-10 earlier in the year. They've had four games in which they've almost held their opponents to under 300 yards; they've played really good defensively. They have great receivers, and they can run the football well."
On Jarett Dillard -- "Jarett has the ability to be one of the most exciting receivers ever to play here at Rice. With his 39-inch verticle jump, he always finds a way to be in position to jump up higher than everybody else. He's not that tall, but he has a way of gathering himself."
On Rice's challenges during the remainder of the season -- "I think it's psychological more than anything else this point in time. We have 15 players that we had planned to play this year that are missing with injuries. They're out for the whole year and we're not playing them anymore. We have about 12 other guys where it's hit-or-miss whether they play this week.
"You get to this time of the year, both teams have a lot of injuries. You have people who don't practice as much, or don't practice at that position. A lot of times now, you find teams scrambling to be sure to get execution. If you get people playing who haven't practiced much, it makes it lot more difficult to execute.
"We practice people at different positions during the week just for the 'what-if.' What if this guy goes down? What if this guy's pulled hamstring that looks like it's well, isn't well, or what if he pulls it the first play of the game? We try to figure out what we can execute if a particular thing happens."
