Nov. 17, 2001

Recap |  Final Stats |  Notes

Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder
On K-State,s defensive effort...
"It was awfully good. The Smith youngster is a fine runner, and you have to be able to defend well against the run, and that shouldn't be overlooked. It was a great effort against the rushing game."

On the win...
"It feels better than a loss, but we,ve still got some work ahead of us. It all boils down to next week, and we,re still a football team that's lost five ball games. So, it,s not a great feeling, but winning is still better than losing. I can assure you of that."

On K-State's turnovers...
"Louisiana Tech's a good football team, but you,re not going to beat teams in our conference turning the ball over like that. We haven't learned not to yet, and they,re silly turnovers. I promised we,d get better at that, but we didn't, so I broke a promise."

On the quarterback situation...
"We're going through puberty right now. We,re trying to grow up, and that's a hard process. They're not playing as well right now as they did earlier in the year. There were games that they played better collectively than they have in the past few weeks. That's discerning and disheartening to me, because that,s the backbone of what we try to do, make progress. We're not making the strides we need to make."

On how Louisiana Tech defended the run...
"Louisiana Tech did an awfully nice job of defending our running game from the outset of the ball game. They haven't defended great against the run this year, but they do a lot of different things, and they were committed to stopping the run. When it was evident that we were going to struggle throwing the pass, they put us in a situation where it was very difficult to run the ball. And consequently, we ended up running with the quarterback a little more."

Kansas State Player Quotes
Senior Cornerback DeMarcus Faggins
On the game...
"All week Coach Bennett stressed that they were a passing team. We looked forward to playing them at the beginning of the year, but that situation happened so we had to come back and play them again. We kind of had a feel on what they were going to do today before the game today."

On the Louisiana Tech offense...
"Looking at them coming in they were averaging over 200 yards passing. You have to know that they are going to pass the ball. Their a passing team, their going to be throwing and passing the ball. Our defense came out on fire."

Senior Free Safety Jon McGraw
On the Louisiana Tech quarterback Luke McCowen...
"He has done a tremendous job all year at running their offense. He has a very high completion rate. We just tried to mix it up some on the defense throwing in some man and zone looks and get as much pressure on him as we could."

Junior quarterback Marc Dunn
On rotating with Ell Roberson...
"We're trying to execute and do the things they ask us to. If they want to rotate us like that, so be it. It can be tough at times to be thrown in and out, but you've got to try to push on."

On K-State's offense...
"We felt good offensively. We passed the ball a little better and tried to keep from throwing it away to the other team. It happened today, and, fortunately, the interceptions weren't consequential."

Senior running back Joe Hall
On his 61-yard run...
"I had a good block by the line, and I saw the hole. I didn't notice the guy on the inside of me. I was more worried about the guy on the outside. I tried to get to the end zone but got tripped up in the end."

On his performance this season...
"It's definitely been a learning experience. I've learned a lot from the past years. I don't regret anything I've done or my decision to come here. It's fun to watch (Josh) Scobey and Rock (Cartwright) play, because we're all going through the same things in practice."

On the limited number of opportunities to carry the ball...
"I guess I'm determined. If you get three carries a game, there's no reason you shouldn't run hard on all of them."

Sophomore quarterback Ell Roberson
On entering and exiting the game...
"They rotate us to see who can get the offense going, and we both struggled a little bit. It's all right. We wanted the victory and got it."

Senior wide receiver Aaron Lockett
On the game...
"We have experience and athletic ability, but to go out there and do it is something we take a lot of pride in."

On his diving catch...
"(Marc) Dunn definitely put a lot of air under it, and that's something I've been asking him to do. It gave me an opportunity to get my feet under the ball. I dove for it, kept my eyes on the ball and it was something I came up with."

Louisiana Tech head coach Jack Bicknell
On K-State's passing game strategy...
"I think any time you're committing so many people to stopping a run, the pass is then going to be difficult to defend. I think that's kind of what happened. There wasn't a great history that they were probably going to run the ball first and then pass second. We just needed to commit guys to stop the run, and that makes it difficult to pass. All in all, I thought our defense hung in there pretty well."

On quarterback Luke McCown...
"We just didn't seem to be able to get anything going. I think it was more a credit to their defense than anything Luke was doing. I didn't see too many receivers open, and we just couldn't seem to get it going."

On K-State's defense...
"We just couldn't get open. They were basically just manning us up. We got some injuries. Our starting x-receiver was out, and our backup gets a broken finger. Our z- receiver gets a separated shoulder. It seemed like a mass unit there for a while. You just have to give their defense a lot of credit. They do a great job."

On being worn down...
"They are a good football team. There's no question. There was probably a point there where we started to not play as well defensively. I didn't think it was a matter of them just running it down our throats the whole day. We just gave them too many opportunities. We didn't move the ball on offense and turned the ball over. There were a couple of key turnovers there. If you do that against a team like Kansas State, you are going to be in trouble."

On defending Aaron Lockett...
"We were just trying to tackle him. The one time where he kind of got thrown around, that was just trying to tackle him. He's a talented guy. The guy barely had him and just sort of swung him down. Our only thought was just trying to tackle him. He's just a great player."

Louisiana Tech Player Quotes
Junior free safety Michael John Lenard
On K-State's passing game...
"I think they came in with the same game plan as they always do, and that is to run the ball and hit the big play on you. I think they did that today because they caught a couple of big passes in the two minutes before halftime. They also have some great players. Aaron Lockett, he's a heck of a receiver. They just have a good team. I just think they did a good job today."

On a point where the game seemed out of reach...
"I never thought it got out of reach, but obviously it did. We kept getting turnovers, and we seemed to turn it over, or have to punt again. I think their defense played great today. We've scored 40 plus points the last five or six games, and those guys came in and shut us down today. My hat's off to those guys. They played great."

Sophomore quarterback Luke McCown
On K-State's offense...
"The teamed us up pretty well, you have to give them all the of credit in the world. They knew our runs and schemes, and they played a great game. We've just got to pick up from it, and move on."

On being out-passed by K-State's offense...
"I did know they had a great defense, and you can't come in over-confident against a defense like this, being one of the top defensive teams, and being nationalized for their blitz package. You can't take in too much exhilaration or pride because you need to go in and move the ball."

On what coach said after the game...
"He told us to get over it, it's a tough loss, to learn from it and get ready for Tulsa next week."