Oct. 15, 2016
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Vanderbilt – Georgia Postgame Notes
Oct. 15, 2016
Sanford Stadium
Head Coach Derek Mason
Opening statement…
“First of all, give a lot of credit to a good Georgia team that fought their tails off. They put up yardage. They had over 400 yards of offense. I thought they played stout defense. Offensively, (Jacob Eason) had a good day. As I looked at it, I told our young men this morning that if we wanted to do something epic, we needed to make sure we took the fight to them. That’s exactly what I thought our kids did. I thought our kids played 60 minutes, four quarters, every play. It wasn’t always pretty, but that’s part of who we are. We work to be relentless, we work to be tough, we work to be intelligent. At times during this game we didn’t show that, but I’ll tell you what you saw. You saw a football team committed to doing one thing, and that’s going on the road and getting a win. We also talked about a new season, the second half of the season. We can’t do anything about what was behind us but we could do something about what is in front of us. These guys took that challenge and they met ittoday…”
On the locker room atmosphere after the game…
“These guys are excited about getting a road win, a conference road win versus a really good football team who’s played tough competition. I challenged the guys this week. I took them to deep water with practices. We practiced hard. It was physical because we didn’t finish. We had to finish. We made too many mistakes. I thought these guys took the challenge, and they wanted to be epic today. Epic is what it was.”
On limiting Georgia’s running game…
“I thought these guys were capable of doing whatever they set their minds to. That’s why you go to Vanderbilt. You figure out who you are, you understand exactly what we try to do. Really, it’s a game. Georgia puts on their pants just like we put on our pants. I don’t think they’re superior men, but they’re a really good football team. Those running backs are two of the best running backs in terms of a one-two tandem that we’ve faced, but again, our guys accepted the challenge. I put the challenge before them and they accepted it. Really, that’s what you should do. Don’t think about it, don’t fret. Just play football.”
On the impact of the victory…
“It’s the biggest win that I’ve had probably in my career because I’m the head coach. I’m not an assistant coach. This is a win that I think could help move this program forward. Again, I want our fans to get excited about Vanderbilt football. I want our fans to understand that our football team is every bit them, just in terms of how they fight and what they represent. I’m proud of these guys, and I know next week we’ve got (Tennessee State) coming in and I want our fans to show up and support these guys. They deserve it. I was glad to see our fan base step out today. It was exciting after the game to be able to go to the corner and sing the alma mater with those guys. That was unbelievable. It was a great atmosphere. I talked to our guys about the venue being exciting, but this football team has gone to venues and played well. They like the challenge, and I’m just proud of them. I’m proud of the program and I’m proud of this team.”
RB Khari Blasingame
On the tough rushing yards…
“It was tough sledding. They came out prepared and they did a good job, but at the end of the day we got the win. They did a good job on their run defense. It was tough but I am glad we came out with the win.”
QB Kyle Shurmur
On the Georgia defense…
“They are great. Hats off to them. They held us most of the game. We got a few plays off towards the end but they are extremely talented especially in their front seven. They have great athletes on the defensive perimeter. Hats off to them, they did a great job today and just a great defense.”
On the win…
“It wasn’t pretty but that just isn’t our style I guess. It was just a great to get a win for all the guys in the locker room, the coaches and for thewhole organization.”
Georgia Head Coach Kirby SmartOn Saturday’s game…
“We didn’t play a very good team game. That responsibility falls on me. It’s embarrassing and I’m sick to my stomach. We came out sloppy and I take full responsibility for it. Those guys played harder than us and that’s the disappointing thing.”
On Georgia’s offense…“You’ve got to dominate in three phases and we didn’t do that today. We struggled running and they did a good job of making us onedimensional.”
On bouncing back…
“You have to do something about it. When you get knocked down, do you get back up? How do you handle adversity? We’ll see how we respond to this. As a leader, this is on me. We’ve got to be prepared to play the game and the better we do in practice, the better we’ll do in the game. A lot of the kids played their hearts out, but we did not execute well enough to win.”
On the upcoming bye week…
“We need to get better. We need to go and improve our team. The off week will help in a lot of ways. We’re dinged up, but all teams have that. We’ve got to get better by going to work. We’ll keep fighting and keep improving. We know we’ve got a lot of areas to improve.”
On kicker Rodrigo Blankenship…
“The kid was great all week. We had complete confidence in him and felt good about the way he was kicking.”
On the Georgia-Florida game…
“It’s a big rivalry and you always get up for it. We’ll be excited to play that game. We’ll want to get this taste out of our mouths. We’ll go and face a well-coached, good football team.”
K Rodrigo Blankenship
On his performance…
“There’s always room to improve. I think that I started kind of slow and didn’t get that first kickoff how I wanted to. That kind of set the tone for the game since they got that big return right off the bat. It was an uphill battle the rest of the way. I had a decent day kicking field goals but there’s always room to improve.”WR Isaiah McKenzie
On the loss…
“We just have to get better. There’s nothing you can do about it. They came out and competed. They won the game and they did their best job. Now we have to go back to practice and do our job and play the best Georgia football we can play.”
On Georgia’s final offensive play…
“We felt good about the play. Even though they called the timeout and made some adjustments, we still felt good about. A guy came from the blind side and tackled me. He made a good play.”
LB Lorenzo Carter
On the defense…
“It’s phenomenal that we held them under 200 yards, but we have to finish. It came down to them making big plays when they had to and us not stopping them. We need to make sure we work on finishing, getting off the field and executing the calls.”
On the team’s energy…
“We had to make plays. There weren’t a lot of big plays being made. Defensively, we try to get the ball off of them. I think we got the ball off of them one time. We need turnovers. We feed off of turnovers and turnovers give the crowd energy. We have to make it happen.”
On the opening kickoff…
“I don’t really know what happened on the opening kick but that’s unacceptable and we are going to work to get it fixed.”
