University of North Carolina Athletics
Torbush Comments On FSU Game, Expectations At Clemson
September 28, 1999 | Football
Sept. 28, 1999
The following are excerpts from Carolina head coach Carl Torbush's weekly football press conference:
"Looking back at the Florida State game, I'm very disappointed. I said it after the game too, that I'm very disappointed not only for our football team and our coaching staff but also for our fans. I didn't feel like we gave our fans a chance to get involved in the game, which is really sad because we had a great crowd, a great atmosphere and a great day to play. But after seven minutes when you're behind 28-0 you're basically hanging on for dear life. That final score probably should have been about 28-10. But at the same time, it could've been worse. They had some kick returns that went for some yardage that they got called back.
"I was just disappointed in how it opened up. We made a play at the very beginning of the game and I thought got a little bit of momentum going. But they came right back and we did not recover very well and they were able to knock it in. And then they knock a fumble loose on the next series and score. And we throw an interception on the next play and they score. And then they pop a punt return on the next series and score. So again, being behind 28-0 didn't give us much room for error.
"I thought when we got to 28-3 and started to play better on defense that we had a chance, but their score right before halftime totally took us out of it. So after that we were basically playing for pride and to see how our young guys would respond. I thought they did a pretty good job the second half, but I still was not pleased with the way we played. I thought we did some good things in spurts offensively, but we didn't do enough good things to win.
"Defensively, we were not consistent enough to make the plays we needed to make. I felt like going into the game, the thing that we needed to do defensively was tackle well and eliminate big plays, and we didn't do either one of those. And then offensively we said ball security and our ability to make some yardage on first downs was important, and we didn't do those as well as we needed to. I will say this about Florida State, I think they're as good ? if not better ? than they've ever been.
"With Clemson we're dealing with a lot of similarities in many ways. They're probably more wide open and more spread out, and I'm very impressed what Coach Bowden and his staff are doing there. They'll go with three wides, four wides and five wides. They've got great patience. They're not interested in trying to throw the ball deep every time. They think a four- or five-yard pass is the same as a four- or five-yard. They're receivers are catching the ball very well and showing consistency. And I think the improvement they've made since their first game is tremendous.
"We'll have our hands full and it will be interesting to see how our young guys match up, but I'm excited about it and I think our players are excited about it. We need to redeem ourselves from what I thought was a very average, at best, last week."
Hear the audio from from Coach Torbush's Sept. 28 press conference by selecting "Tuesday's Carl Torbush Press Conference".
