Sept. 13, 2004

September 13, 2004

Missouri Head Football Coach Gary Pinkel

Opening comments... "Good afternoon. We're in preparation stages for Ball State right now. Ball State has had a tough schedule. They started out against Boston College and played really well at their place. They played a very, very good Purdue team. Purdue looks like it's going to be one of the top teams in the Big 10 without question. Now they're coming out to play us, so now we're focusing on trying to fix our problems, like we do after every game."

On the players moving past the loss to Troy... "My players do a lot better job than I do. Thank God they do. There's a certain point where you learn, you go on. Our whole football team watched the film Saturday morning, and had our team meeting that we normally have on Sundays. Then we jumped on Ball State right away. When you lose a football game, you want everybody to suffer. Part of being a winner is hating to lose, but there's also a certain point where you let it go, so that you focus on what you have to do to get better. Again, my players are a little bit better at that than I am."

On what the team is trying to improve on for the Ball State game... "I was very concerned by the kicking game because we had a punt blocked. It was just a missed assignment. It's not real complex, and our defense did a great job recovering from it, but those things can't happen if you want to be a good football team. We had some penalties and some stressful situations out there, so you want to eliminate those. We had a lot of offensive breakdowns after the first quarter. There were a lot of errors, and you just want to go back and correct things and work on execution. Defensively, we did some good things, but we also gave up some big plays. One was a trick play, which we worked on often in practice and we just had a defensive player get out of position, and the other one was in the fourth quarter when (Troy's quarterback) scrambled outside and got deep within our secondary and then made that throw and catch. One's a trick play and one's a broken play, but if you're disciplined you don't allow those plays, and we could win the football game if we don't allow those two plays. Some people might look at it and say that the offense had a breakdown and didn't come back, and they certainly did, but as a football team, we look at all different areas and we all take responsibility. That's how you become a good team."

On being mentally tough on the road... "If you're mature enough and you're good enough, you do it. Obviously we're not yet.

On the offensive struggles against Troy... "We got ourselves with some penalties and some long-yardage situations. If you get yourself into too many second-and-twenties or third-and-fifteens, you reduce your chance for converting third downs. We started missing some blocks and we had some problems. We have a couple of young offensive linemen who I think are going to be great players. There was a lot of anxiety out there, which is normal, and they'll get better and learn from it. I understand that when you have two redshirt freshmen offensive linemen, you're going to have some problems, but they also learned a remarkable amount from that and they'll get a lot better."

On Brad Smith staying in the pocket... "It was the same thing we did in the first game. In the Big 12 press conference today, somebody said that we made him stay in the pocket. That's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Does he have to play better? Yes. Do we all have to play better? No question about it. I have to coach better."

On offensive turnovers... "We're continuing to work on it, and hopefully we're going to get that under control. I think we had five turnovers (against Troy), so we made some big plays on defense. You just want to get the ratio in your advantage. All the things that we've gone through as a football team can be fixed."

On C.J. Mosely... "He's playing very well. He's a powerful athlete, and he's playing extremely well. He's very active, making a lot of plays and getting a lot of penetration at the line of scrimmage. We tell our players that if they play well the previous year, you want to have a better performance your next year, and he's one of those guys who's doing a very good job."

On the development of Damien Nash... "He's really done some good things. One thing you have to do for any running back is make sure you get the point of attack block. Towards the end of the third quarter and in the fourth quarter (against Troy) we got into more of a passing situation to play catch-up, but I'm very pleased with Damien. If you give him the ball enough times, he'll do a lot of good things. He can also catch the football well."

On the play of Brock Harvey... "The first game he only kicked it one time, and he kicked inside the five yard line. I was pleased and I thought he did a good job last week. I'm very pleased with his progress."

On what to look for from Ball State... "I've been associated with them for a long time, and their kids play hard. They have good athletes. Their starting tailback is out, from my understanding. They have a sophomore quarterback whose father used to be the head coach at Ball State. He's the son of a coach, which means he'll probably be a great quarterback. He's managing their offense really well. I don't think he's thrown an interception yet. Defensively, they run well to the ball. They're very aggressive, like they were last year, and they struggled against Purdue, but a lot of people are going to struggle against Purdue. They have a very disciplined defense that runs well."

On losing on national television... "I think you earn respect for what you achieve, and, as you're building a program and you lose a game like that, you lose respect. Guess what - you have to get it back. If you're an established program and it happens, you been ranked nationally ranked eight of the last ten years, you lose a little respect. When you're a program building, like us, you lose a lot of it fast. You should lose it. You just have to get it back."

Brock Harvey On his punting so far this season... "You never want to be satisfied with what you did, but I felt pretty satisfied over-all other than that one being blocked. You take that one away, and I think it went pretty good."

On his foot feeling better this year... "It's hard to pin-point as far as pain goes, but I think my technique is a little better this year. The pain is definitely there; it hurts a little bit. It's something that I've learned to deal with, and it's not going to go away."

On what the most important thing in a game is... "The most important thing is going into a game prepared, knowing what you can do, and being ready. Being comfortable and confident when you're on the field, knowing that your guys up front are going to protect you, and you're going to kick the ball forty-five yards down the field with good hang-time."

Brad Smith On getting past the loss on Thursday night against Troy State... "It's always hard, and it's on all of our minds, but we just need to focus on getting past it, and definitely focus on our next game."

On Troy States performance... "They made some good adjustments and started making plays. They did a good job of covering our stuff and being in the right position."

On Troy State stopping him from running as much... "Whenever they're doing something to stop your plays, you always want to push harder and make something else happen, but they did a good job. Whatever play was called and whatever situation we were in, we try to do what's best for that situation. We just didn't get it done."

On Ball State... "We've watched a couple of their last games, and they're a very talented team, and they do well with their assignments."

On winning and losing games to any given team... "It really comes down to us: how we play, how we prepare, and how we take every play. It just comes down to how we do it."

Martin Rucker On playing at Troy State... "It was a little more of a hostile environment, but it really wasn't that bad. The crowd didn't affect me too much. It was just really unfortunate that we got the loss."

On what went wrong Thursday night... "We just didn't play together as a unit, and that's why we lost. When you don't play together as a team, that's just what happens."

On getting back out there... "I can't wait to get back out there. I just can't wait to get back out there on the field again."

Dedrick Harrington On getting past Thursday's loss... "I'm kind of a sore loser, but I think now we've just got to focus on Ball State because there is nothing we can do about it (the loss) now."

On getting frustrated during the game against Troy State... "As a team we tried to stay focused. There were still some things that we could have done differently. There was some frustration. We tried to work through it, but we ended up losing the game."

On Missouri's defense... "We could always get better. We should always be able to stop the other team. We should put it on our shoulders to carry the team as a defense."