West Virginia Quotes
Coach Rich Rodriguez:
"Defensively we played hard and with great effort – we played well enough to win, but not on offense and special teams. The defense got tired at the end a bit. There is a fine line between winning and losing, and especially when you’re playing a fine team, you can’t afford the mistakes."
"We thought of going to Rasheed (Marshall) earlier, but Brad was still doing a good job of reading the defenses, so we stuck with him. He will start the next games, as he has earned it."
"On the fake field goals, we had it open, but he kinda floated it a bit. It has worked 100 percent of the time that we’ve run in practice."
(on the game plan) "Syracuse runs the ball 85 percent of the time on first down and something like 55 percent of the time on second down. Our strategy was to force them into something they were not comfortable with, and we did. If we could have executed a bit better and finished a few drives, it might have been different."
(on Dwight Freeney) "He beat us a few times today, but he’s been doing that to a lot of people. Great players step up and make plays."
QB Brad Lewis:
"These turnovers have been happening to us all year. Give their defense a lot of credit. They have a lot of speed. We had guys isolated in the flat a lot and we couldn’t break them."
(on the first Freeney sack to cause a turnover) "I saw him coming, but thought the guard was going to step up to make the block, and I guess he didn’t get him."
Kicker Todd James:
(on the fake field goal attempt) "It broke just like we wanted it, I might have floated it a bit, since I had him so wide open. I didn’t want to overthrow him."
(on the blocked punt) "We get if off in about 1.8 seconds – I don’t know what happened. I will have to look at the film. I kind of saw him coming hard and fast off the corner and tried to hurry the kick."
Linebacker Kyle Kaden
(on not making a bowl) "We just want to try and finish out 5-6 and get some respect. We just have to keep working hard."
(on the play of the defense) "I wish we would have stopped them to a few field goals and made them turn the ball over. We played hard and didn’t give up a first down until almost the end of the first half. We went out aggressive, I thought we played well."
(on why WVU played the run well) "We just played with a lot of desire and emotion and made plays. I think stopping them on first down, getting them into second-and-12, second-and-13 situations helped a lot."
(on the game in general) "Sometimes you don’t get the breaks and it seems like we haven’t been getting the breaks all year."
