Oct. 23, 2010
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- 2010 Hawkeye Football Fall Camp Central
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Complete Transcript in PDF Format
COACH FERENTZ OPENING STATEMENT: We’re going to have to go back to work tomorrow. It’s going to hurt for a while and we’ll turn our sights to what’s ahead of us.
Q. Adrian is putting a lot of blame on the defense.
COACH FERENTZ: They’re a very good offensive football team. They’ve moved the ball looks like on everybody. Been great to come up with a stop in that last drive we didn’t that last possession they had. They had a couple good drives.
But they’ve got good players. They’ve got a good scheme. When you lose a game like this, there are a lot of things you can look at, a lot of different plays, but it’s a team loss.
Q. Last drive, quarterback sneak, was the plan to get up and spike the ball?
COACH FERENTZ: No, we wanted to burn the timeout and just go from there. I guess we could have gone the other way. Might have saved us two seconds, something like that. I don’t think that was exactly the turning point in the game.
Q. Talk about the fake punt.
COACH FERENTZ: That was a big play. That was a big part of the game. Credit goes to them. They executed it. The punter did a great job of being patient, let us drop out, he took it and ran with it.
Obviously a big, big play in the game. Changed things around pretty dramatically.
Q. Did you consider taking any timeouts on defense?
COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, we did. Then looked at one point like maybe the ball was ours on the touchdown, the called touchdown. So, I mean, I guess probably the reality is if it wasn’t, then the next best thing was for them to get the touchdown so we could get the ball back.
But, yeah, we were going to do something there.
Q. The first drive, they came out and moved the ball pretty easily. Did they come out and do anything at the beginning of the game other than you thought they would?
COACH FERENTZ: No. I think they did the same pretty much last year as well. They’ve done it to other teams, too. Pretty good team last week in Ohio State.
Again, they’ve got a very veteran group up there, quarterback that’s a fifth year senior, excellent offensive line, good backs. They’re going to move the football on everybody.
We would have loved to shut them out. We weren’t expecting that. But it was a hard fought game by both teams.
Q. On that last sequence, sneak, first down, looks like Ricky is motioning to spike the ball.
COACH FERENTZ: We took the timeout. We talked about it ahead of time. Could have clocked it. Cost you a couple, three seconds there. You could flip a coin on that one. Again, I don’t think it’s exactly the turning point.
Q. How long of a field goal would have been comfortable attempting?
COACH FERENTZ: If we had thrown another incomplete or something of that nature, we would have given it a shot, let Mike take a shot at it.
Q. Talk about the fake punt. Don’t see that every day.
COACH FERENTZ: Not from them in that situation. But it was, yeah, a great call on their part. Great call. Obviously a big play. That was a little bigger than, yeah, using the timeout I think.
Q. On that review play, they gave them the go ahead touchdown, do you think that was a fumble?
COACH FERENTZ: I couldn’t tell. We were hopeful the ball was out. The ball was clearly out. But the ruling was it had broken the plane prior to.
Crew did a good job. We certainly trust their interpretation of what happened. Obviously, we were hoping it was out and our ball.
Q. Was it that he didn’t have a good hold on the ball or the timing?
COACH FERENTZ: The snap was high. I mean, to me, if you are really want to look at the game, special teams really hurt us today. That’s not a good thing. Between that and penalties, that’s not a good thing.
Q. Do you think the size of their offensive line was a big factor for them today?
COACH FERENTZ: I think more than that, they’re good. I mean, there are a lot of big teams out there in the country. But those guys are big and they’re good. That’s important.
So being good’s more important than anything else. They obviously have size. They have size up and down the board, just about every position.
But their offensive line is a veteran line. They’re good. They do a nice job. They’ve got a pretty big back that does a good job. The quarterback really leads them well.
Q. What do you say to the guys with Michigan State coming in to keep their heads from hanging?
COACH FERENTZ: There’s a lot of football left. We’ve already told them that. They competed hard today. I think both teams played hard. At the end of the day, we didn’t play well enough to win. We got to look at ourselves for that.
But, both teams I thought competed hard. And the season’s not over. We have five games left. We have a good football team. Both those teams out there today were good football teams.
A lot of things are going to happen and can happen. It’s like after a win, you just turn the page after you study what happened, turn the page and move on.