Oct. 24, 2009

Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Photo Gallery

Louisiana Tech Head Coach Derek Dooley

"What a terrible performance by us. I'm disappointed in us as coaches and I'm disappointed in how we came out. We just killed ourselves. We had seven penalties and we're not a high penalized team. We were getting affected by some of their movement and jumping. We had some dumb penalties and then we had two turnovers in the first half, and that dug us into a bad hole."

"The good news is that we did keep fighting. It's a great lesson that no matter how bad it seems during the game, you can play your way out of it. For the first time on the road, we did. We had a chance to win at the end of the game. We had a couple opportunities to make some plays there, we had Dennis (Morris) open on the crossing route on that last drive and we just didn't get it done. It's very disappointing to lose."

"We've got to take the good and say we made some strides in playing our way out of some tough situations, but at the end of the day we didn't do what we needed to do to win the game."

Utah State Head Coach Gary Andersen

"Obviously it was a team victory. All phases played a key factor, in a good way and a bad way, all the way through the game. It was fantastic to get the win, especially in a close game. We were fighting to get them out of the last drive."

"It was a tremendous team win. I am unbelievably proud of our kids. I also think Pete Caldwell did a nice job punting. We asked him to kick it away from an unbelievably powerful weapon. It was a great victory for all of us at Utah State."

On losing defensive players...
"The one thing about this football team to me is how they are growing up. If you look at the defensive side of the football, you take out Paul Igboeli, James Brindley and Kejon Murphy, those are three great players. Those are three of our best defensive players. The young men stepped up and found a way to make plays. In the fourth quarter, they were able to get some things going, but we got out of the drive that we had to get them out of to win."

Defensive Coordinator Bill Busch

On overcoming injuries...
"We battled back. The best safety in the WAC is James Brindley. He was lost in our first series. We had guys come in and play that have never played in a college football game in a defensive setting before. We had to move a linebacker to strong safety; Joey Schrader did that. At the end of the game, we had four or five guys filling in that did a heck of a job. We had a chance to make some big plays and we did."