Sept. 13 2014
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Kirk Ferentz: Obviously it was a tough loss for our football team. Credit to our opponent; they did a great job, particularly in the second half, and that’s really where the game was decided. We got outplayed in that second half and it doesn’t feel very good obviously. We’ll go back tomorrow and see if we can’t improve here in the next six days.
Q. Just take us through the decision to call timeout.
Kirk Ferentz: At the end? I mean, there’s not a lot of it’s a 50/50 shot, you either call a timeout or you don’t. We called a timeout. We had one left and that’s the reason I called it.
Q. How difficult was it for the offense to get into a rhythm? It seemed like once they’d get something going, something would happen.
Kirk Ferentz: To me that seemed to be the story of the game. We did a decent job in the first half. Second half we just never got in the traction. Part of that is self inflicted and part of that is just good play on their part, so credit goes to them.
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Q. Did you see any improvement in the running game?
Kirk Ferentz: Yes and no, but we didn’t have the kind of consistency in the second half to really feel like we saw improvement in anything right now. We’ll look at the tape tomorrow and see where we’re at.
Q. Talk about the field goal to tie the game up, and obviously the field goal kicking situation is well documented around here, and give credit to your kicker for coming in in a stressful situation.
Kirk Ferentz: Marshall has done a great job on the kickoffs first and foremost. He’s just doing a wonderful job there. And then there’s nothing easy about field goals, period, and both Marshall and Mick are first year placekickers, if you will. I know Marshall has been here, but he hasn’t place-kicked in a game. You’re going to have to ride the roller coaster a little bit with that, and hopefully that will be one that really boosts his confidence a little bit. That was a great kick in a real tight spot.
Q. Did their struggles play any part of going for it on fourth-and-8 early in the game?
Kirk Ferentz: That was something we just decided during the week. We talked about it and how we wanted to handle different situations, and that is one we discussed. We had already made that decision we were going to go ahead and play it that way.
Q. You’ve been in this situation before in your group; is that what you tell the players, it’s just one game?
Kirk Ferentz: Yeah, that’s all you can do, and there’s nothing fun about losing. Never fun to lose an intrastate game, obviously, but we’ve been here before. I’d rather not be here right now, needless to say, but you only have one choice. You go back to work and you’ve got to work to improve, and we’ve got a lot of football ahead right now. We’ve got two games left here in this first segment, and the only one that counts is next week, but it all starts tomorrow looking at the tape, seeing what we can do to learn, and hopefully come out of it a better team tomorrow and then move forward this week.
Q. Do you think the four sacks kind of equalized the three turnovers that you guys got?
Kirk Ferentz: The sacks against us?
Q. Uh huh.
Kirk Ferentz: I think a lot of those it seemed like we were out of rhythm. It didn’t seem like anyone just broke through there necessarily. One time I think one was pretty quick, but to me it was more of a team function, if you will. It seemed like we were just kind of muddled there and Jake held the ball a little bit longer, and credit goes to Iowa State. They played really good team defense today.
Q. Iowa is 7 9 over the last 16 years. How has Iowa State maybe emerged in those last 16 years? What have they done well?
Kirk Ferentz: Well, it’s really 17 years if you study history. For a long time not a long time, but it was a good series initially, a very competitive series, and I was part of three straight that we lost back in ’81, ’82 was No. 2, and No. 3. I won’t walk you through the whole thing, but that was a 15 year span, I think I read that. I haven’t counted them, but I think 15 years. And then ’98 it changed. They came in here and beat us on our field in ’98, and at least my first four years we were 0-for-4, so that wasn’t much fun. Since then it’s been pretty much back and forth.
Q. Is it players or is it do you feel confident that there has to be a change with players playing?
Kirk Ferentz: We have to get better as a team. We’ll look at everybody. Everybody is competing every day. We just have to play better as a team and we have to coach better, and that starts right here.
