September 16, 1997
You always say revenge is a poor motivation. Can you tell us what impact if any last year's USL game will have on this year's game?
"Last year's game we turned the ball over eight times. If you do that against most people, you're going to lose the ballgame. So the challenge to me is us. Can we go play this game this year and execute what we're trying to do and not turn the ball over. Last year we had right at 400 yards of offense and they had 200, but we turned the ball over eight times. We turned it over where they ran it in for touchdowns and we also turned it over when we were going in for touchdowns, which is a pretty good swing. You're talking about a five touchdown swing right there, so if we want to get upset at someone, we should get upset at ourselves; get upset at our execution. It ought to motivate us to work harder in our preparation and go out and be challenged by ourselves to perform at a higher level. When something goes wrong, we always want to have someone to blame it on and in this cause we should blame it on ourselves. We didn't play well. That's not to take anything from them or what they did, but I thought we really made things convenient for them."
USL is 0-3 but will they get the Aggies' attention?
"This is not just another team that we are playing. Our team is very aware that this game was an embarrassing loss for us last year and one we had to put up with a lot of flack for. It's one where, as you say, it's on the front of their media guide and they've got posters with our name all over it. They're proud of a big victory and you can't hold that against them, but it's one of those things that we've had to live with for a while too."
You've had a chance to work on somethings since the opening game. Do you like what you've gotten done?
"We're anxious to go and see. I don't think we've got it all worked out during this break. We're not the finished product. Talk to most teams around the country and they would probably say the same thing. We're about to play our second game of the year and we've hopefully made some progress, but there's considerable progress still to be made to get to the point we'd like to be."
What will you be looking for particularly in terms of making progress?
"I'd like for us to be more consistent catching the ball. We had a couple of key drops in the game and we'd like to do better in that regard. We would like to maintain some of what we had in the first game. We were very good in the turnover department the last time and you'd like to do that again. We'd like to execute defensively better, much better. We came out early and didn't execute some of our calls and we'd like see improvement in that area. Like to see improvement in our kicking game. We really didn't threaten too much on our kickoff returns or punt returns. So it's just a bunch of little things you'd like to see improve."
Do you think the losses by Texas and Colorado last week elevates A&M's status and motivates them also?
"We talked about those happenings but I did it more from a precautionary standpoint of saying 'So what?' It really still gets down to us. How much we're improving and us being focused on ourselves and not worrying about what the other team is doing. Those teams that lost, they will be doing the same thing. It goes back to how well they regroup and where they go from where they are right now. We have no control over that. It would be foolish of us to be affected at all by what someone else does in an early game of the game. I tried to put all that into perspective for the team. We don't need to concern ourselves with anything that happened with those teams. We need to remain focused on ourselves. We haven't done anything to be walking around sticking our chests out about. If someone asks about us picking up the banner of the Big 12 ... oh, c'mon ... we shouldn't be carrying any banners except maybe a 12th Man banner."
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