Murray State University Athletics
Weekly Press Conference
10/27/2004 11:00:00 PM | Football
Quotes from head coach Joe Pannunzio during the weekly football press conference on Oct. 27 in preparation for the Racers' Ohio Valley Conference home matchup with Eastern Kentucky on Saturday, Nov. 1 at 1:30 p.m.
On the Racers' 27-24 road win over Southeast Missouri:
"I was proud of our kids last week. We had our backs to the wall and they stepped up and showed a lot of effort. It wasn't the prettiest game ever played, and we continue to make mistakes that drive me crazy, but you hope that with the positive outcome that we'd grow from that."
On this week's game with rival Eastern Kentucky:
"Eastern Kentucky has the ability to score a lot of points. They've got a quarterback (Matt Guice) that I think is the best quarterback in our league. He's got a great ability to escape from defenders. He's got a great creativeness about him where, when he escapes, he can make big plays. They've got a pair of running backs that have given us problems before. Defensively, they haven't made any changes with the new head coach. I just went through and watched our last few games against them and we certainly haven't done anything to light the world on fire that way, so we have a lot of work to do this week."
"It's our biggest game of the year, every year. If you can't get excited to play Eastern Kentucky, then you don't belong in this kind of rivalry. It should be a fun game for us."
On the play of the MSU offensive line:
"They're starting to come together. I'm going to take part of the blame for their problems early on. When you replace a whole offensive line like we did, I don't think I looked ahead far enough to prepare for that. That should've never happened in our program. It just takes time for those kids to jell. By no stretch of the imagination are where we want to be, but I think we're starting to make some strides to be the kind of offensive line we want to be down the road."
"When you see any kind of daylight to run through, it makes it easier. Before, we weren't seeing any kind of daylight. You have to give credit to Jeff Menage (offensive coordinator/offensive line coach) who's done a nice job with those guys up front. But most of the credit has to go to those kids. They've stayed in there and they've gone through all of this adversity. They continue to make progress."
On the key to MSU's success at SEMO and the key for the rest of the year:
"One of the things from Saturday's game that's gone unseen is where we started our last three drives in the fourth quarter. We had great field position in all of those drives and that's a result of a defense that's playing pretty good and some special teams plays. That's what our team is like. We have to win it with defense. We're not a prolific offensive team like we've been the last three or four years."
"One of SEMO's coaches made an interesting statement to one of our coaches before the game on Saturday. He asked if we knew how many starters we had back on offense from last year for the game on Saturday. I figured we had four or five. He said we had one and that's right. That might tell you why we're having some problems on offense."
On MSU blocking a SEMO punt and giving up a fake punt:
"We didn't think they were real good in their punt protection and we had a nice scheme to block it. Obviously, we had a nice scheme to have it faked on us, too. It worked one time and it worked against us another time."
On any possible changes that have been made in the running game that's led to the increased production of late:
"We've just done the same things and we've been working hard at it. We've stayed with the fundamentals and stayed with the things we believe in. It's gotten better each week. Again, we're still not the best we're going to be and we're not completely happy with it, but it has gotten better."
On the emphasis on the MSU receivers this week against EKU:
"It really concerns me this week because EKU plays so much man-to-man coverage. They have great cover guys and last year, we tried to throw the ball to Deandre (Green) and they were able to cover him one-on-one. So that really concerns me this week because we need our receivers to make some plays for us."
On the change in the EKU offense with a new head coach:
"It so much different than what you saw with Coach Kidd. He wanted to line up and not only beat you up, but bloody you up. Coach Hope has brought in a new style of offense. They're a little bit more wide open and that will present some problems for us on Saturday."
