University of North Carolina Athletics
Postgame Quotes
October 14, 2006 | Football
Oct. 14, 2006
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John Bunting quotes after 37-20 loss to South Florida
JB:
Well, it's a beautiful day until the game started. The fans were great, It's great to see them there-and we continue to do not enough things to win and a lot of things to help us lose. It's nice to see us run the ball for some nice yardage in the first half, but to be down 20-10 is disappointing because of the field positions and not doing well enough stopping some of their perimeter game. They out-athleted us a little bit outside. South Florida is a pretty good team and right now we are not. We're struggling, tried to do some things to stir things up. Our quarterback is young, still trying to get better. He works hard and is competitive. We've got to come up with some other things for him to do to make some more plays. Receivers, coaches, everybody. We can't keep turning the ball over and playing on our short field. We're not good enough defensively to do that.Nice to see Connor (Barth) kick a good field goal, our punter (David Wooldridge) punted the ball well, our coverage units were good. But we certainly weren't good anyplace else and we didn't do enough things to get us a win. We didn't get it done. They are disappointed, they're frustrated, everybody's frustrated.
(short week for Virginia)
I have not experienced one of these here. I experienced it in the NFL,
Thanksgiving Day games, things like that. This will be a quick week and we
Won't have time feel sorry for ourselves.
There still is a lot football to be played. This was a very important game, being gone two weeks, coming home, having a great day, having a great crowd, it was real important to play well and win a football game.
(are you worried about your job)
Here's what I am concerned about. I'm concerned about this football team
getting back in here tomorrow being healthy to play and getting ready to
play the Cavaliers.
(on mistakes)
You hope you have everything polished up by Thursday and then you go out
into the game and you hope you minimize the mistakes and take advantage of
the opportunities. That's been our downfall. That's what we are struggling
with. We haven't minimized the mistakes and several opportunities we have
not taken advantage of. You can look at any week and that's where we have
suffered.
(personal fouls)
I'm very upset about that and very frustrated over that. It's something I
addressed in the locker room afterwards. That cannot be tolerated. We're
much better than that.
(offense)
It's a sound scheme. I have all the confidence in the world in what we are
doing with our scheme. We just have to continue to execute-they (the
players) have to got to get confidence in it, probably that ol' C word is
probably one of the things we are struggling with right now. We've got to
pump some air into these guys.
(how are you handling frustration of this season)
I'm handling it. Not very happy with it at all. Makes for a very difficult
Saturday evening and then Sunday. Fortunately for me I've got a lot of
support around me. That's what I draw upon. My concern is with my players
and my coaches. I feel real good about me as a person and as coach and the
things I've accomplished in my life. I am concerned about my team and my
coaches. And obviously for our fans. I am very disappointed for our fans.
That hurts.
(On getting better)
All we can do is look at the tape, find the good, point out the wrong and
make sure we try to get things corrected. There's a lot of football still to
be played and we want to get better-at this level, there are opportunities
and we've got to maximize them and until we do that we are always on that
edge, teetering on that edge and that's when we fall and we can't recover.
And that's what we have to keep working on -taking advantage of those
opportunities. Like the fake field goal. We get three points out of that. We
need seven.
UNC Player quotes after University of South Florida game
Jesse Holly
On the mood at the end of the game: "Disappointed, period. We let a lot of people down the fans, coaches, ourselves. We came out and disappointed again."
On the missed opportunities in the game:
"Dropped balls, interceptions, we're killing ourselves."
On his progress as a quarterback:
"I felt like we played some good defenses, over time before this and they're a good defense too, but I have to play better than that and I felt like I was making progress. Maybe the numbers didn't show it today. Those two interceptions killed us and gave them 14 points. That's just all me. I've got to play better than that."
On what coach Bunting said to the team after the game:
"He talked about the feeling that we are tired of standing around in the locker room after the game and talking about these things. We needed the win and we didn't get the win. We've got a short week this week and we've got to move on once again, but we do a good job of that. He hasn't lost this team and we haven't lost confidence, we've just got to go out and make some plays."
On the two interceptions he had today:
"Well, the first one was a slant, I did not see the guy in there, I should have seen him. I do not know what happened. That was a bad throw on my part. I've got to see him. The second one there was a post and I'm unsure about what happened there. I'll have to watch the video. There were coming out and I can't give them the field position and that was on me absolutely."
On the feeling going into the game:
"We felt very good coming into this game, we were well prepared. We knew exactly what we were going to get. We had a great week of practice. We came out here and penalized ourselves. I threw interceptions, we dropped a few balls, it was just missed opportunities. We certainly want to stop talking about it and do it."
On the mentality of the team after missed opportunities:
"You just can't let it bother you. We're a strong team, we're mentally tough, we know that if we didn't get it back that we'll be making those yards up. We can't let it get to us, we got to keep working, we need have faith in each other and be confident. You have to have confidence to win football games. We got to keep building on it."
On the inability to fight back:
"I know it hurts, hurts the team after the games over and it gets quiet in the locker room. It's a period to think about the game. We're going to wake up tomorrow, it's a new day, and we've just got to not let it get to us. We're going to playing Virginia so it's a short week too. We've got practice tomorrow so we can get going again."
On the frustrations among players:
"We're so together as a team. When we have frustrations, we don't take them on each other because we're team and teams don't do that. We just try to pick each other up and don't worry about it and just go on and play the time. So we know that we're a strong team, we're not letting it get to us too bad. We got to keep working because there's a ton of football left, we just can't let something like this get us down."
On the team's talent:
"We've got great talent. Football is about more than talent and if you don't know where to be and neither does someone else, that's a touchdown. What talent does is correct the mistakes you made. If you know you are supposed to be over there you can't make up for it by getting over there. We got great talent, there's no doubt about that. We've just got to play."
On bouncing back after this game for the rest of the season:
"We've got to come out at Virginia and just win this game. If we win this game it will give us a boost."
South Florida Head Coach Jim Leavitt
Opening Statement:
"I was disappointed in a number of things. One is dropping a punt, that was disappointing and Amarri [Jackson] knows that he can't do that. Missing an extra point field goal- you can't do that. It really really hurts us. I thought after we went up and scored in the
third quarter, for our defense to allow them to drive all the way down and score was disappointing. I thought the real key to the game was- because Carolina was right back in it- our offense using ten minutes on the clock and going down and putting us in field
goal position and Delbert Alvarado hitting it. I thought at that point we had a chance to win because it was three scores separation. You allow a team with a little bit of energy and some momentum and they get going- you can't sometimes stop it, not a thing you can do
about it, so that was my biggest concern."
On being in control for most of the game:
"In the third quarter, we scored the first two times we had the ball in play and that was real big. We talked a lot about the second half today. We really felt like the second half today was going to be pivotal and we really felt like we needed to get out and really play. I thought the guys responded pretty well. I'm frustrated with not getting more sacks and not getting more pressure on the quarterback. Their quarterback runs extremely well and has very nice feet and he's hard to get down."
On getting Ricky Ponton back:
"You can see there's some energy there. You see he's a pretty good running back and really helped us I thought. I think it will be real big for those guys because usually the biggest difference is between your first and second game that you improve. You've got
to remember these guys haven't played in six weeks. It's hard to come back in your first game, so I didn't have high expectations for any of them. Hopefully they'll play a lot better next week because we're going to need them because Cincinnati is an awfully good
football team."
On the importance of the 2 interceptions:
"Big. You can't turn it over- just like when Matt [Grothe] fumbled. That was rough. The fact that our defense held them out twice to getting a touchdown was huge because that was right before the second half. It still secures some momentum- that's the thing."
On the positives of the win:
"I'm looking at our offense, we got some guys back. Richard Clebert played today, another D-tackle. We haven't had Richard since the third game and that helped our front. We were able to play with more guys because we needed them the second stretch. It's a long season. The win's always good- the momentum."
