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Coach Johnson’s Monday Press Conference
9/12/2005
Vanderbilt head football coach Bobby Johnson addressed the media Monday in advance of this weekend’s home opener against Ole Miss. An excerpt of Coach Johnson’s press conference can be found below, or seen by clicking the link above.
Head Coach Bobby Johnson
Monday, September 12, 2004
Opening statement:
“Good afternoon. We’re very pleased to get a hard earned victory at Arkansas. It’s a testament to our guys’ toughness. Hopefully we can continue to have that kind of toughness throughout the year.It’s going to be good to get back home and we’re looking forward to the game with Mississippi. I know they’re going to be a tough opponent. They have been that way for us since I’ve been here. We’re looking forward to getting back home and hopefully we can have a good crowd and get a lot of people out here to support us. I think that will make Dudley Field a pretty special place on Saturday.”
On improved play in the fourth quarter:
“Well (strength) coach John Sisk does a great job with our off-season conditioning program. I thought he did a great job the other years too, but we made a few subtle changes. Even in spring practice we would divide every practice up into two parts: we would start, we would take a little break and we would tell them to start up again and getting into the second half and we would tell them we’re getting late in the game as we were getting late in practice, and tell them we were getting in the fourth quarter. All those things hopefully will continue to serve us and we can continue to play well in the fourth quarter.”
“I did think we were in pretty good shape Saturday night. We were playing probably better in the fourth quarter than we played in the first quarter. I was very pleased with our conditioning and I thought our guys played very well.”
On the team’s toughness:
“Through spring practice and the off-season conditioning program, you are always trying to put your players in stressful situations whether its just agility drills in January, or whether it’s spring practice or whether it’s preseason practice you always try to put your players in those kind of situations. We’ve done a lot of two-minute drills this fall and some this spring. We felt like that was one place we had to improve and so far it’s been pretty good. Usually you get better at the things you practice and work on. It’s just a good way to say that our guys have worked hard and got better.”
On the celebration after the game:
“In the locker room it was a lot of fun. Our guys were proud. They were happy. We were playing against 70,000 unfriendly — I say unfriendly, they just wanted their team to win; they were not unfriendly, they were great fans. But they wanted the other team to win. So I thought it was a pretty tough situation and we hung in there.
“And then we were getting calls all through the bus ride and the Chancellor called before we got on the plane. And then the students being here I think is a great tribute to our team. Hopefully we’ll get those same students out in our stands and we’ll get them there early and we’ll get them there loud.”
On the possibility of being 3-0:
“We’re talking about 1-0 this week. We’re just trying to concentrate on Mississippi and we’re not trying to talk about the consequences of the other two added on to that. But they’re not dumb. They know what it means, they’re not dumb and we’re not going to hide it from them. But if you start thinking about all the things that happen after that, and you don’t get the three done, it’s not good. I think our guys had a great practice yesterday and they were concentrating on what they had to do. They’re still happy but not saying a lot about Arkansas which I thought was a good sign.”
On plans to honor Kwane Doster before the Ole Miss game:
“It’s going to be a little bit different. But I think our guys have handled that about as good as we can handle it the whole time through. I’m going to trust them to keep doing that, but we do want to honor Kwane. That’s why we’re doing that. I’m sure our players will have him in their minds but, again, it’s not going to be a ‘let’s win one for Kwane’ kind of thing. This is to honor his life and his contribution to Vanderbilt, to honor his family and all those things will be taken care of and we’ll just play football after that.”
On coaching with a winning record:
“I think that’s a good problem to have. I think when you’ve been starved for success and then you have some, what we’re doing is appealing to our guys and saying ‘look, I hope you’ve enjoyed this success, now realize what got you this success right here and keep doing it.’ You’ve got to keep focus, you’ve got to keep working in practice and you’ve got to keep trying to get better. We still think we can play better than we’re playing and we’re trying to work on that every day in practice and I think our players believe that.”
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