Oct. 13, 2015
Mason | Herring, Pulley & Sherfield | Gameday Central | Game Notes
Head coach Derek Mason, linebacker Darreon Herring, offensive lineman Spencer Pulley and wide receiver Trent Sherfield met the media Tuesday to discuss Vanderbilt’s next game at South Carolina. The Southeastern Conference matchup is scheduled for 3 p.m. CT on SEC Network.
Head Coach Derek Mason
Opening Statement:
“South Carolina week. We’re excited for the game, but first and foremost, I want to send heartfelt thoughts out to the coaches and the people of South Carolina and those who have been hit hard in terms of the flooding and what’s happened. I just want to make sure our thoughts and prayers are with you here in Nashville. We’ve thought about you and the team has prayed for you and is thinking about you. We will continue to make sure anything we can do (to help) we will do.
“I want to talk on the Ol’ Ball Coach. I mean that guy, Coach Spurrier, is a legend on and off the field. When I look at what he has done. He has been a part of the fabric and culture of the SEC for a long time. He has done a lot of great things for this conference, both as a player and as a coach. As a player, he won a Heisman, and as a coach he won national championships. I think the bigger picture with Coach Spurrier — he has always been who he is. He is a great man of integrity. He has done a great job of educating young men. He has been a champion of what they need. He has done a great job of mentoring coaches and making sure he was always above board. His personality is infectious. He is a true man of integrity. As I look at what he has been over the years, nobody else can be the Head Ball Coach. He is as special to college football as they come. We will miss him.”
Are you a little sad you don’t get to coach against him on Saturday?
“You know what? Yes. I’ve had a chance to get to know him over the last 18 months. He has jabbed me a couple times, just in terms of being here at Vanderbilt and being the smart guy. He is fun to be around. He is infectious. He is always courteous. By the same token, he is always competitive. I’ve always admired that about him, who he is, what he is, how he coaches and how he has been able to coach and transcend the years of college football because that is not easy.”
What effect do you think that is going to have on a team to lose its head coach in the middle of the week?
“I don’t know. Personally, for me, I’m trying to stick to where we are. I’ve got a football team that is 2-3 that is trying to get to 3-3. My focus has been on our football team and what we’re trying to do here at Vanderbilt. We come off a bye week, and we’ve had a chance to heal up a little bit. Continuing to move forward is our task. With that, I know they’ve had some things on their plate. We’ve got things on ours too. We have things we want to accomplish here at Vanderbilt University and that’s where my focus has been.”
What are South Carolina’s different quarterback options, and how are the challenges different with those guys?
“Well, (Perry) Orth has been playing. He has a good arm. He is getting better every time he plays. He is getting better command of the offense. Right now, you’ve got to say there is a strong possibility that he can play. (Lorenzo) Nunez, right now, we don’t know if he is healthy. We don’t know what the full status is. We won’t know. He is probably back in practice right now. If he is, then we’ll have Nunez playing. I don’t know if their starter at the beginning of the season (Connor Mitch) will be back. They say he is practicing so we’ll see. For us, we still know Pharoh Cooper is there. We still know (Brandon) Wilds is there. We still know their tight end is there. They still have a full arsenal of guys. I watched the LSU game last week and I thought at times their defense looked real good. We’re just going to have to line up. Whoever shows up and lines up across from us is who we are going to play.”
For quarterback Johnny McCrary to make mistakes and then overcome them in a win against Middle Tennessee State, do you view that as a step forward?
“It is a step forward for Johnny, for this football team. You’ve got to the point, though, where you’re not making the same mistakes and that’s what the expectation is. This football team needs Johnny McCrary to be its quarterback. He is our leader. He has done a great job. I’ve never veered from that this year. And I believe Johnny is continuing to get better. Every time I’ve watched him in practice, he’s commanded it. He’s doing the things he is supposed to do. We’ve just got to alleviate the small mistakes and mental errors that can cost you ball games. Games in this conference generally are decided by a possession or two. So when you give away possessions and you give away opportunities, you put yourself behind the eight-ball. We have to be better than that. We have to be opportunistic and seize every possession like that possession is going to change the game. If we do that, we’ll be fine.”
Linebacker Darreon Herring
On Steve Spurrier retiring:
“He’s a great coach and to see him retire with the accolades that he had, it is a great thing for him. But they are playing with a lot of emotion with their head coach retiring and everything that has happened in South Carolina the last week or so. They are going to be playing with a lot of emotion coming into this game.”
On being successful against the run:
“I think it is just going out there with a mentality that no team is going to run on us. Just having a relentless and tough attitude each and every week and trying to get better in practice. There is really no secret sauce. Everyone is out there trying to make plays and be as tough as we can.”
On figuring out who South Carolina’s quarterback is going to be:
“That’s not really a big deal to us right now. We’ve got different play calls and different schemes for the quarterback that goes in, just depending. Whatever they throw at us, we’ll just adjust to it.”
On challenge of trying to figure out who the QB will be:
“It’s not really a challenge for our team. We are really smart out there as we are playing. The coaches prepare us well throughout the week for whatever they throw at us. If you practice well throughout the week, it really isn’t a challenge on Saturdays.”
On success of stopping mobile quarterbacks:
“I’m not really sure if it is quite the scheme or more so the mentality of the players that we have out there and the coaches that are helping us out with playbook and the different schemes that we are going to go up against.”
On South Carolina’s offensive line:
“They are a really good offensive line. They’ve got four years of experience and they are really big guys, and their tight ends always play well no matter what. It is going to be challenge of getting off the blocks and getting some knock back up front against them.”
On preparing for another road game:
“We just have to prepare every week, just go in no matter the opponent in front of us. The coaches prepare us well, the players are out there every week preparing well each and every week. We just have to go in there with the same mentality that we go in there every week, relentless and tough, and go out there and stop them.”
On confidence boost from beating MTSU:
“It is definitely a confidence booster every time you win. You want to progressively get better each and every week and I think that is something we are striving to do each and every week, offensively and defensively.”
Center Spencer Pulley
Overall thoughts on Steve Spurrier’s resignation:
“I just think that as a fan you have to have respect for Steve Spurrier, and as a student of the game, I’ve studied his teams the last four years. As a player, unfortunately I never beat one of his teams. He’s a guy that loves the game and thinks he’s doing the right thing by stepping down. He thinks that’s the best thing for his team so we respect that. But we’re not worried about all the emotions that they have. We’re ready for whatever they can bring. We’re going into the game, just like any other game… ready to play South Carolina.”
On coming off a bye week:
“It definitely gets you itching to play another game. It’s not like during the bye week you’re doing absolutely nothing. But it’s a good time to have some guys heal up but also more times to study the game, ourselves, and look past at what we’ve done, what we can fix and then look toward South Carolina and what we can do against them, and really getting ready for this game because we’re all ready to get back out there.”
On weekly improvements on the offensive line:
“Guys are just understanding the offense, and buying into what we’re doing, guys practicing harder. I think you win the game throughout the week and on Saturday you just have to go out and do it. I think every week the guys are working harder and harder and coming out to practice with the right mentality. They’re not just showing up on game day, they’re showing up every day ready to give everything they have. I think that’s why they’ve improved every week.”
Importance of putting points on the board early on the road:
“It’s definitely huge. You want to come out and start fast. We’ve had a lot of opportunity to just drive all the way down the field, but then we get in the red zone and we haven’t been able to score, especially early on in games; and that’s something that has to change, especially when you’re playing on the road against an SEC team that’s going to have a lot of emotion. There’s going to be a big crowd with a lot of emotion there. We’ve been really focused on practice, just starting fast and finishing strong and that’s what we’re going to do on Saturday.”
Opportunity to make the record 3-3 this week:
“We want to win the game, obviously so we would like to get to 3-3. But the point is to go 1-0 this week, and the overall record is not the main concern. The concern is going 1-0 this week, giving everything we have one week at a time, and at the end of the year having the best record that you can look at. We’re not looking at it as a whole, `what’s the best record?’ you can’t look at the whole season like that, it’s too long there’s too much going on to do that. So we’re looking at this week and want to go 1-0.”
Wide Receiver Trent Sherfield
Improving in the red zone:
“I definitely see a little bit of a struggle in the red zone, but I think the improvement comes from practice like Spencer (Pulley) said – just guys coming out with the right mentality going into practice. We have to have that mentality that every play we’re going to run, we’re going to score.”
If defenses are paying him more attention this season than last:
“Here and there. We have a lot of guys in the wide receiver corps that can make a lot of plays. They have to focus on all of us, because there isn’t just one guy in the room making plays.”
Coach Mason’s comments to team about striking early:
“I think the main thing with that is just starting out fast and punching first… making big plays starting out; nothing really that different. Just every chance we get we just need to make big plays and start out fast and finish strong.”
On using the bye week to inspect the offense:
“One thing about the bye week is that you get to look at yourself and the offense as a whole to see what you’re messing up on. I think as a unit we sat in the film room and looked at things that we didn’t get to correct. Going into a bye week and practice week we worked on those things. There’s always room for improvement, like these guys were saying, we’re just taking it one week at a time and working on those things.”