Oct. 28, 2017
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Vanderbilt – South Carolina Postgame Quotes
Oct. 28, 2017
Williams-Brice Stadium, Columbia, S.C.
Vanderbilt Head Coach Derek Mason
Opening Statement:
“Credit to South Carolina. They made a couple more plays than we did and when I say a couple I do mean a couple. For us in the first half just too many penalties. I mean we had nine penalties in the first half. I don’t necessarily mean the targeting penalties it just is what it is.…. At the end of the day whatever they say goes and I thought we hurt ourselves. When pushing the punter when we’re clearly off the field, it makes no sense; it cost us. Just judgment plays in my opinion. I thought there was no flow to the first half. It was like a tennis match just back and forth. They had a chance in scoring. I thought the defense got winded today. We didn’t make every play defensively but there was some swagger in that group and some excitement in their movement. They had some unfortunate and bad things happen to them but they never got down and kept fighting, I think that’s important. The passing game was pretty good and it gave us a chance. The receivers did a great job of making some plays.
“This group is a tough group and this team can do exactly what it needs to do down the stretch. It showed me today that it’s the football team that I thought it was and a team I’m looking forward to take down the stretch. We don’t get this one back, but we will move forward, we will get back to work and we will be ready to play. We get the chance to have a stretch of games at home and I look forward to playing those.”
On the team taking a step forward:
“This football team is taking a step in the right direction. We’re going where we need to go. We’ve got four games left and the thing we need to do is be better, clean up the mistakes. Playing sixty minutes of relentless, intelligent football. We didn’t do that tonight; we played maybe thirty minutes of football but not a whole game. If you play a whole game you get the chance to reap rewards and we didn’t get a chance to do that. We’ll get back to work, tell that group in there don’t hang your head let’s get ready to go. Let’s make sure we fix what needs to be fixed and let’s keep rolling.”
On the block of the extra point:
“I thought we were soft inside. Anytime you can fit into a hole and get guys pressing in that hole it becomes open real fast and that’s the fastest way to block the kick is up the middle. It was a great push by them and poor play by us but we will get better.”
Vanderbilt WR Kalija Lipscomb
On bouncing back after the loss:
“Sometimes things don’t go the way we want (them) to; chalk that up to adversity. As a team we will come together and fight back, and we will practice next week and try to get it done.”
On if the team is taking a step in the right direction:
“That’s hard to say. We’ll watch film and see how that goes and see where we made mistakes. Our coaches preach that things aren’t as good or as bad as things seem on the field, so we will watch film and see where we can get better, see what went wrong and hopefully it will be a step forward.”
Vanderbilt QB Kyle Shurmur
On fighting to the very end of the game:
“I think that’s the first step, but there is more. There were a lot of small plays that could have impacted the entire game, so we just need to get back to the details. We can’t let those plays go.”
On getting to play back home again:
“At the end of the day, we need to be able to win on the road. That’s not an excuse. We have to be able to win in all circumstances. We are going to get back to work tomorrow, and it will be good to be at home next week.”
Vanderbilt LB Oren Burks
On the team’s performance midseason:
“That is not the expectation we had for ourselves. We are better than that. We just have to get back to work and be the team that we know we can be.”
On the difficulty he encounters as a defender trying to avoid targeting penalties:
“It’s extremely hard. They’re trying to protect the players and the game, and I respect that. Sometimes as a defender you want to get that big hit, so it’s kind of tough. You just have to be able to play smart.”
South Carolina Head Coach Will Muschamp
Opening Statement:
“I’m really proud of our football team today. Vanderbilt did some special things, especially offensively. We didn’t play very well defensively, but I’m going to give Vanderbilt some credit on that. They kept us on the edges as far as quick screens and edge run game. That was disappointing. You have to give them some credit, too. [Vanderbilt quarterback] Kyle Shurmur competed extremely hard in the game; he had some really nice throws. That 50/50 ball in the touchdown — their guy was there to make the play. But I’ll take Rashad [Fenton] on that; he’s going to make that play. They took some other shots down the field, but we defended those.
“Offensively, I think we stayed balanced moving the football. I think we ran the ball extremely well, especially there at the end of the game with 1:18 on the clock to finish the ball game. That was really important. That’s over 200 yards rushing or right at it the last three SEC ball games. That’s a huge improvement from where we’ve been. We need to be more efficient in the throwing game and some things. We had a couple reads there that were missed, whether it was the receiver or [quarterback] Jake [Bentley]. I have to go back and look at it. I thought our protection was good.
“It was a good, hard-fought ball game. AJ Turner ran extremely hard, again I’m extremely proud of AJ. You see the power that he has when he’s able to run through tackles. We’re very proud of our team, and we’re ready for a very good Georgia team next week.”
On passing early:
“We felt like we had some good matchups outside. We had the stutter ball shot down the middle to start the game. We matched in split safety coverage on the backer. The wheel route we’ve hit several times this year was good for us. In the game, free release they played a lot of man coverage and picked themselves off the perimeter. I felt like going into the game that was something we were going to be able to do. And we were able to get going in the perimeter on the run game.”
On the play of his offensive line:
“I think our staff has done a much better job of identifying things going into a game that we can do to be able to run the football. I think we’ve narrowed our scope as far as what we’re trying to do running the ball. We’re able to run the same run and block all the looks. Everybody nowadays plays three down and four down. I’m not going into that. It’s not worth me going through everything. But that changes a lot of rules in the run game and protections. So, to be able to narrow things down, I think our guys are blocking it much better. Our backs have continued to run extremely hard. We’ve given them more opportunities. We’ve taken some of the RPOs off Jake, where it’s made so it’s a demand run. There’s not a decision made on that. I think it’s a credit, number one, to our staff and, number two, to our players that they’ve been able to go in the second half of the last three games against SEC teams and won in the line of scrimmage. That’s what we need to be able to do.”
South Carolina QB Jake Bentley
Mentality when you have a one touchdown lead with about four minutes left, attack or play conservative:
“End of game situations like that there is two ways you can go with that. You can be aggressive and take a shot down field and try and get the first down and win it, that’s what we tried to do and they played great defense. You also want to waste as much time as you can so you balance the what ifs and try to get as much time off of the clock and make them use their timeouts.”
Answering on the first drive of the game after Vanderbilt scored:
“It was huge for us to go and respond and see the red zone production go up after we have worked hard on it during the off week. We are just trying to do our job and our job is to score points and to respond when the defense may give up something or if they get a turnover then to get a touchdown. We are just trying to do our job.”
Difference in the teams mentality at this point this year compared to last year:
“The whole mind set of expecting to win, I think we go into every game this year expecting to win and the confidence level is a lot higher throughout our team. I don’t want to downplay the importance of making a bowl game, that’s important to us, but also we know that we have a lot play and bigger goals to achieve as well. We just need to continue to move forward and one game seasons, the one game season mentality is really a big difference.”
On a few of close targeting calls:
“Any time the quarterback runs it’s like a little minnow in a pool of sharks. They’re going to come after you, and that’s any quarterback. The refs call what they call and we just have to move on.”
South Carolina RB A.J. Turner
On his running game today compared to the rest of the season:
“We’ve had a good running year all season. We just ran a lot this week, or, today.”
On what has changed since last year during this time:
“Yeah, I’ll say the same thing. Our culture has definitely changed. Coach Muschamp has done a great job of helping us be able to do that. Just being able to play fast and physical.…. So, just listening to him I feel like it has definitely changed the way people think and we change the way we practice and we’ve changed a lot of big stuff like it’s all working out in (inaudible).”
South Carolina DL Dante Sawyer
On the difficulty of adjusting to Vanderbilt’s offense attacking the edges:
“Not really. I think ‘T. Rob.'(Travaris Robinson) did a great job of play calling and did a lot of roll-outs and, you know, giving up the ball on the edges a lot. So, just doing what’s best for them.”
On how the defense matched up to the Vanderbilt’s offense attacking the edges.
“We found a way. You know, there is always a way. So, we found a way to stop them and play our defense.”
