Nov. 14, 2015
Vanderbilt – Kentucky Postgame Notes
Nov. 14, 2015
Vanderbilt Stadium
Vanderbilt Head Coach Derek Mason
Opening Comments:
“I want to give credit to Coach Stoops and his ball club. They fought hard, but we played a bit better. Our kids fought hard… Our kids were resilient. Our clock management at the end of the game was important. It got us into a situation where we could rush the passer. The game ended on a sack. That’s fitting.”
On Vanderbilt’s passing game:
“Our offensive line protected [Kyle] Shurmur well… He was strong-armed and didn’t get rattled.”
On QB Kyle Shurmur:
“I like where Kyle is… He has a chance to become a good quarterback in the SEC… We’ll continue to try to build him up.”
“He’s still a young quarterback who is starting his second game… We’ll fill in the gaps and get him ready to go.”
On Caleb Scott’s trick-play touchdown:
“They did it to [our defense] in practice… We brought our team out and took them past the numbers, came back and lined up. They never saw him get lined up. I thought our defensive backs learned something: always look outside the numbers.”On Vanderbilt’s defense:
“They did a good job at standing up and anchoring down. These guys are very prideful about their red zone defense. We need to continue to forge ahead. These guys will get stingier and stingier.”
On Vanderbilt safety Oren Burks’ pick-six:
“He has gotten [pick-sixes] in practice. The quarterback looked at him the whole way… [Oren] stole it and [the play] ended in the end zone. I’m happy he got the monkey off his back because he does that in practice.”
On finishing the game:
“We talk about it in practice. When you have a young team, they don’t know how to finish… Finish the work you do. Let’s get ready to clock out so we can go home and eat spaghetti and root beer… I’m proud of how they finished.”
On Vanderbilt DE Caleb Azubike:
“He’s a work in progress. He started off slow, but he’s come on… He’s come back full bore and wants to make amends. They miss him. Caleb Azubike is a huge part of what we do up front.”
On Vanderbilt’s struggles in the return game:
“We have to get [Darrius] Sims to be more confident. He wants to make plays. We need him to make plays… I want to see him with the ball in his hands. He’s a dynamic player that we’re going to continue to feature.”
S Oren Burks
On his 30-yard interception return for a touchdown in the second quarter:
“It’s just about trusting the process. It’s been a long ride, just trusting the coaches, executing and doing my job. I knew at the end of the day it was going to happen, so just keep pushing. I was determined to get into the end zone, that was the bottom line. There was one guy between me and the end zone, and I’m not going to let that stop me. We were in robber coverage, just reading the quarterback’s eyes and executing. It’s a routine play, you’ve just got to make it.”
On his first quarter interception off a break-up by teammate Torren McGaster:
“My teammate did a great job, just tipping it back to me. I knew he was going to tip it back because he was in perfect position to play the ball, so I knew it was going to come out somewhere, I just needed to be available.”
On the offense capitalizing on good field position after turnovers:
“It’s definitely a momentum swing, knowing that they’re going to do great things with the ball and move the ball. Just seeing them doing great things with the ball is awesome.”
On getting a win as a reward for great defense:
“One of the things we’ve been stressing is finishing. You can’t explain this feeling. We’ve been putting a lot of work into the process, but just finishing is the biggest thing we’ve been committed to.”
DE Caleb Azubike
On finishing off the win:
“That just comes down to what we’ve been taught and coached to do all week and all season. The coaches have always stressed to us the importance of finishing games and having no regrets after the game. The most important thing was, in the third quarter when they had a little comeback going, we dropped to the level of our training and understood that we’d been playing great defense all game. We just had to rely each other like we had been and everything was going to be alright. As long as I know that I trust the guys to my right and to my left, I have no worries about what’s going to happen.”
On missing time with an injury and coming back to have success:
“It was very tough, it’s unexplainable. Dealing with that injury, having this be my senior year and wanting to be out there fighting with those guys. I know for a fact that I wanted to be back a lot sooner than I was but, being smart and being wise about the situation, you want to make sure that, when you’re back, you’re full and ready to go for the team. It was just a learning experience for me, being patient. Unfortunate things do happen, so that’s what I had to understand, that that was just an unfortunate time in my life that I had to overcome. But now good things are happening because of that, so I can’t fault anyone.”
On goal line stands:
“I have full trust in our defense. Whenever we line up I have no doubt in my mind that we’re going to stop whoever we’re lined up against. Whenever they got down there, that didn’t stop me. Our younger guys have to be composed and understand that our defense is made for these situations right here. Then we went out there and stopped them. There’s not much I can do other than give credit to those guys on defense who just continue to go out there and play, I can’t really say much else other than give those guys credit for that.”