Mizzou-Eastern Illinois Game Quotes
9/13/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 13, 2003
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Missouri Head Coach Gary Pinkel
on the win:
"I think that overall we played well defensively but offensively we struggled. We were fortunate to get good field position with turnovers, which is nice to see, but we gave up two turnovers which is the downside. Now all I want to do is win the next one."
on blocked punts:
"Blocked punts change football games. Your chances of winning go up dramatically if you can block punts. It's encouraging to see that and hopefully we'll be able to continue it thorought the year."
on the passing game:
"We started off with some poor throws in the first quarter. I'll tell it like it is, it wasn't very good. We had guys open and missed some, we might have had some poor routes. I have very high expectations. We have to start faster on offense."
on the two-minute offense:
"I love to be able to drive the ball with one minute left and only use one or two time outs. That's why it's so critical to have three timeouts left. If we had blown then earlier in the half because things were unorganized, we'd have no chance to score."
on the shutout:
"That's a prized possession for the defense to do that. It's very difficult, you can average 13.5 points a game and your defense would be top ten in the nation. We decided last week we'd put our backups in and if it go too tight near the end zone we'd bring the starters back in to try and preserve it."
Missouri junior wide receiver Thomson Omboga
on the role of receivers:
"It's fun to show that we can come out and get a lot of catches and win the game at the same time.
on the slow offensive start:
"Penalties, not getting together, and not converting on third downs really hurt us."
Missouri sophomore quarterback Brad Smith
on starting 3-0:
"It feels good to accomplish it, and now we have to concentrate on going 4-0."
on over-throwing passes early in the game:
"It's part of the game. It happens, you just don't want to do it every time. You keep playing and more than not complete your passes."
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Eastern Illinois Head Coach Bob Spoo
on field position:
"Up until three minutes in the half it was 0-0 then we turned the ball over and they only have to go 35 yards for a touchdown. Then they block the kick and it's about the same field position. So field position and turnovers hurt us the whole day today."
on Missouri's defense:
"I thought our quarterback was going to have trouble with their blitzes and he did. We had a number of balls batted down. It's very unfortunate he's not 6"4, he's only 5"11 and it hurt us. It was our inability to get anything going offensively that crushed us."
on the rest of the season:
"As I just told our guys, Western Kentucky started out 2-3
Last year and went on to win a National Championship and that's our goal."
Eastern Illinois senior linebacker Nick Ricks
on the game:
"I think we played them really tough and towards the end there was a fumble or something and we got down on ourselves when they got in the endzone on us. We played great defensively. We just have to bounce back. Missouri is no push over. They have a Heisman candidate in Brad Smith. We played pretty good against those guys today."
on special teams:
"We go over special teams a lot in practice. They got a couple of special teams plays on us, but it is nothing we can't correct. We still have ten games left this season, so we just need to correct those mistakes and just play football."
Eastern Illinois sophomore cornerback Terrance Sanders
on defensive performance:
"We played really good. We just wanted to show that we belonged on the field with those guys, that we could play with them. We accomplished that, but there were a couple of guys that got really tired as the game wore on. We had to bring in some backups and unfortunately they weren't ready. Hopefully, next week we'll talk care of that."
on the difference between of team sizes:
"The amount of people. They just have better backups. Our backups weren't really ready whereas theirs were. They were able to move the ball on offense."
