Southern Mississippi/Alabama 9/21/02 - Dennis Franchione druidcityonline.com your guide to Tuscaloosa, Alabama and the Deep South
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of their post-game interviews ...

Coach Fran Prepare to go live with Michele Tafoya

Dennis Franchione (Head Coach - prev. HC @ New Mexico 92-97 & TCU 98-20)

These comments came during Coach Fran's postgame comments to the press pool ...

Good tough, hard fought football game. There’s a lot of things that you could look at and talk about, but you’ve got to talk about our defense and the great job they did this evening. Somebody asked me on the radio a second ago “Who stood out?” And it would be far easier to pick out somebody who didn’t stand out because I felt like the entire unit really played great. The linebackers put pressure on when they blitzed. Secondary covered well. Linebackers ran and made plays. You hold them (USM) to 8 first downs, 35 yards rushing … I think we held (Derrick) Nix to 57 yards rushing, that’s pretty good against a good back. Defense just an outstanding game in so many ways. We got some turnovers. I’m not exactly sure how many we had this evening. Our offense had a pretty solid first half, and then we had three turnovers in the second half. That was concerning in the third quarter. But you have to tip your hat. We still rushed for over 300 yards. Shaud had 135. Ahmaad had 89. Offensive line played pretty well to be able to accomplish that. Ray Hudson did some good things running the football. He got a big kickoff return for us. I also want to bring up Lane Bearden, kicking the ball dead inside the 5-yard line there at the end. And also pulling it down on the big punt rush and running for a first down. Two plays that turned out to be really heady plays and got us some good field position. I thought our coverage units did pretty well all night. Michael Ziifle missed his field goal attempt, so we gave Brian Bostick a chance to come in. Brian kicks our short ones. We may have kicked Kyle Robinson on a longer one. But they were shorter ones and we let Brian do it. He came in, responded, and did a good job. We certainly proud of what he did and how he responded in a tough situation. Always a tough, hard fought game against those guys. This one was no different. I’m proud of the way our guys battled and found a way to win.

Talk about Brodie having to go in that situation (Watts injury), and what you think he accomplished?

Well, he got some great experience. There some plays that he executed very well, and he got to run the offense. That was good to see. I’m sure he’s going to be able to say he learned a great deal tonight. He had to play with the game on the line and make things happen for us. Other than two or three plays, I thought he played a solid football game. He’ll play better, I know that. But the one interception they returned was unfortunate. The ball flew out of his hand and flew right to their guy, and there just wasn’t anybody there to make a play for us.

Does Croyle’s arm, or the threat of it, make teams play you differently against the run?

I think they will. I wouldn’t say our throwing stats tonight are real good, but I think they will. That’s one of his strengths and I think they’ll have to.

What’s the situation with Ahmaad?

He’s hurt. That’s about it. We don’t talk about injuries.

Has the defensive line, the last couple of games, become what you expected at the beginning of the year?

It has. Tonight was very good. That’s a pretty good football team. Pretty good offense, a pretty good offensive line. We got after their quarterback all night. We did a good job against the run most of the evening. It was a pretty darn good performance by the front tonight.

Is Tyler out for the year?

No, and I’m not either. (press room laughs)

Comment some more on Derrick Nix.

Well, he’s a good running back and you know he still squirted out there a few times. But our speed on defense … we ran to him well, we controlled the line of scrimmage all night and didn’t give him any opportunities to get going. He got to the second level, maybe the linebacker level; a few times and people came up and made plays. We made good tackles this evening, I think the defense tackled pretty well. That was one thing we knew we had to do to defend against Derrick Nix.

Could Tyler play if you needed him to?

I don’t know that. I don’t think.

Tyler kind of kept a revolving door at running back and it came up Shaud more than anyone else. What that because he didn’t fumble or were there other reasons?

Yeah you know, when you fumble, you go to the back of the line and somebody else moves up. Yeah, Ahmaad fumbled, but we have tremendous trust in him. Over the long haul, he’s gained a lot of trust. And we trust Santonio too for that matter. But Shaud got into a rhythm and we just felt good about what we were doing, the way we were running the football. We had a lot of confidence in Shaud. Coach Fobbs felt good about what he was accomplishing. He squirts through there sometimes and you think he’s gonna break it all the way. Half the time I can’t even see him when he gets past the first wave. He’s somewhere in there, and I just keep looking for #21 to come squirting out of there, and sometimes he does.

Was Croyle’s touchdown a called option left, or was that the play you called?

It was just great coaching, designed all the way by them (laughs). No, it was an option to the left. They overpursued and he stopped and reversed his field and turned it into a good play.

Was the original game plan that weighted toward the run, or did the game dictate it?

No, it was not weighted that heavy toward the run. We threw an interception or two there in the third quarter. You get a feeling as the game goes along that we’re running the ball real well, and even if we don’t score we’re still going to get good field position. They (USM) still haven’t scored on our defense. So at some point and time, the smart thing to do is to not put our defense in a bad situation and make them have to earn it.

Talk about the pressure the defense put on D’Angelo.

Very good I thought. You know, I don’t how many sacks we got this evening, but there weren’t many uncontested throws for that young man today

How much confidence does it give the guy calling the plays to know he has a defense playing like it is?

It feels very good when have a defense playing like that because you can pick and choose your times. One of the advantages with me being involved in the offense is that a lot of my thoughts are based on how our defense is playing. I’m not going to let our offense put our defense in a bad position. The other thing that you can take a chance knowing that you’re defense will respond for you. And they did that this evening.

What do you need to work on the most?

That’s hard to say without looking at the tape. We didn’t have a lot of passing yards this evening. But we were very balanced going into this game, running the football and throwing the football. We just have to get to where we can be balanced on offense. Probably every area of our football team still needs a little work, especially to get ready to play the people we have to play.

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Click on the name for parts of their post-game interviews ...

Dennis Franchione (Head Coach)

Carl Torbush (Def. Co-ord./LBs Coach - prev. HC@UNC 98-20, HC@LBC 88-97)

Shaud Williams (#21 Jr. A, 5-8 189 lbs. Andrews, TX - Texas Tech transfer)

Brodie Croyle (#14 Fr. QB, 6-2 198 lbs. Rainbow City, AL - Westbrook Christian)

Justin Smiley (#78 So. QG, 6-4 296 lbs. Ellabell, GA - East Bulloch High School)