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LA Tech head coach Skip Holtz

Opening comments:

"It is nice to win, I told them in the locker room to never take a win for granted. It does not matter how pretty it is or how ugly it is. At the end of the day it is a win. That is what we were trying to get. There were a lot of great individual performances out there tonight. I was really proud of the way some of those guys went out and played."

"Defensively, outside of the first drive of the game, our defense played a great football game. The only points they gave up outside of the opening drive, when we lost leverage on a screen pass, was when we fumbled and they only had 15 yards to go to score a touchdown. That was the only points they scored in the second half. I thought it was a dominant performance by our defense. I thought they did a great job."

"I thought there were some guys who did some great things on defense."

"Offensively, it was a work mans' type victory, having the lead in the second half. We ran the ball a little more than I would have liked to in the game. They put a lot of bodies on the line of scrimmage and you do not want to throw the ball and give the ball right back to them. It made it a little boring from an offensive standpoint. I thought they competed hard."

"Jeff Driskel is a stud. I have only been around him six months, but I have not found his weakness yet. He is as poised a player that I have had the opportunity to be around on game day. He would come off the field after a long drive just as poised. It is like we are talking in a film room. He sees the entire field. He can run and he is athletic. On his touchdown run, he checked to it. He saw the safety on the other side and a wide open field. He is really taking control and I am really proud of the way he played."

"The special teams got a little bit special tonight. For the first time this season we blocked a punt. We did some good things on the kickoff coverage. I did not think we did a good job of kicking the ball off. Obviously, we kicked it out of bounds and they started at midfield. In punting, we have to be able to directional punt. We have to clean that up a little bit. There are a lot of things I can nitpick at."

"The disappointment I have, is the personal fouls. The personal fouls are not characteristic of us as a football team. We are averaging about four or five penalties a game. We came into the game tonight and ended up with eight penalties for 70 yards. We were averaging 40 yards a game in penalties. Some of the plays afterwards, I could deal with. The personal fouls have to stop. This university is too classy for us to go out and not maintain our composure, especially in a game you are winning. Let's not stoop to that level and take the high road. Let's just go play the football game and watch the clock hit double zero."

"I am really proud of this team and what they were able to do. They went out there and took care of business. We won 43-14 this year and 48-20 last year. It is nice to win against an in-state foe. With them not being on the docket for a while, it is good to show the dominance in two football games on the field. We can talk about it all we want off the field, but you have to put on the cleats and go on the field. I was proud of the way our team competed on the field."

On playing as the favorite:

"We talked about weathering the storm. We knew they were going to come in with a chip on their shoulder after getting embarrassed last year. I told the team that we just need to weather it. We knew they were going to come out and come out swinging. In round one they were going to come out in a flurry just swinging. We just need to take a step back and take a deep breath. It is a 60-minute game. We will be the better football team if we go play our game for 60 minutes. I told them not to panic or flinch. Do not scream, yell or cuss anyone on the sidelines. [Adairius Barnes] knew what he had to do. A few others knew what they had to do. It was never a panic. We just went and took care of business. That is one of the things I love about this team, the blue collar work ethic they have."

On Dixon ejection:

"On the offsetting penalty, the guy was grabbing Kenneth's helmet and pulling him down. Kenneth pushed on him to get up, so they called it on both sides. Kenneth was wrong, let them call it on him and we get the 15 yard penalty. The second one on the touchdown, he got excited and threw the ball on the ground. They called it a spike and gave him a 15-yard penalty. You are talking about one of the all-time leading scorers in NCAA history. He has been there before. Toss the ball to the official and go to the next one. The official on the field told me no, but I do not know the answer to that. (On eligibility for Dixon next week) I know if it is targeting, you miss that one and the first half of next one."

On other players stepping up:

"We played without [Dixon] in the fourth quarter. I thought Jarred [Craft] did a nice job. Jarred is a talented player. With Jarred and Blake Martin starting to get healthy again, we have [Jaqwis] Dancy and Boston Scott. Carlos Henderson did not play today. He is our fastest receiver. They play man and he is not playing. Someone has to step up and [Marcus Gaines] steps up and goes for 165 yards tonight. Marcus is on scholarship too and has worked hard. He has worked for this opportunity. When given the opportunity, someone is going to step up. I thought Marcus was a bright spot there. I know Carlos was disappointed he could not go with his hamstring. He got treatment on it and ran around during pregame. I think he is close. He said he could not open up and was afraid if he opened up, it could pop. I told him to put his hat down and come cheer for his teammates. Someone is going to step up. Marcus Gaines did a great job."

On Marcus Gaines:

"What Marcus Gaines did tonight on the field, was what he does every day at practice. He makes play after play after play. We throw deep balls and he finds a way. He has a nose for the football, he is a lot like Trent Taylor. When you throw the ball up to Trent Taylor, he is going to find a way to get under it. I think Marcus does the same thing. He had the one-handed catch here last year. He makes them in practice all the time. He made one this past week at practice against our secondary on a deep ball. He has just been waiting his turn. He is patient. He is humble and an incredible team player. He has never moaned, groaned or griped. He has just waited his opportunity and played on special teams. When he got his chance, he made the most of it. I was really proud, he has earned it."

On ULL taking run away:

"They came in and said they were going to stop Kenneth Dixon, which was pretty obvious. Jeff probably would have been close to 100 if we had not had that holding call when he went for 50 yards and a touchdown. The flag dropped 20 yards behind him. I did not see it, but it is hard to say. They came in and the ends were going to chase Kenneth. The linebackers were going to come up the middle of the field. They were going to plug the line of scrimmage and they were going to play man. If I could play the game again, I would have gone empty and thrown the ball about 70 times. We would be looking at about 700 yards right now. It was not a stat game though. It was a game where we got the lead and we had to run it. I believe Jeff only threw the ball about ten times in the second half. We did not throw it all that much and he still threw for almost 300 yards. He just has control of it right now. We have some receivers making some good plays for him. He is not putting that ball in danger. At that point they started loading the box and kept coming, but they were behind and had to make something happen. I was content to run out the clock and take the win."

On last play of first half:

"It was an awesome ending to the first half. With 10 seconds on the clock, I told Blake Baker they were going to take a knee. I did not think they would do anything like that. He called base defense and told the guys to back up. It was incomplete. It is now second and ten with five seconds left. I thought, he would take a knee there. He dropped back and I was looking for the sack fumble. I saw Vernon Butler take his offensive lineman and put him on roller skates. He brought him right into the quarterback. As he went into the quarterback, I saw that thing floating up in the air like a duck. I saw Bryson and he did an unbelievable job of playing the ball in the air. He broke on the ball and intercepted it. I looked up and the clock said zero while he was on the 20 yard line. I was yelling, 'Just get in, get in the end zone.' He did a great job. I thought it was an awesome ending to the first half."

On Vernon Butler:

"This is what Vernon does. He is a load. What we have learned and what Blake has done a good job with evolving, when Vernon goes forward, he is pretty hard to stop. When Vernon wants to get three yards deep into your backfield, you are not stopping him. I do not care if you are double teaming him. He is a big powerful man. Early in the season, we were doing a lot of things like we did last year moving sideways. I think Blake has done a good job of saying we are going to play fundamental defense. We are not going to blitz. We are not going to stunt, twist or move. This game was not going to be won with the call. This game was going to be won with the execution of the call. When you tell Vernon to go forward and get three yards deep into the backfield, it is normally a good call."

On eight straight against ULL:

"There has been a lot said about their success down their over the past few years, but in these past two years, I am proud of what this team has been able to do going on the field and taking care of business. I know this means a lot of our alumni and fan base. This was the 87^th meeting and to win it in convincing fashion the past two years when you are playing the second longest running rivalry in the state, is pretty special. The final numbers are 48-33-6. To go from 46 to 48 in the last two years has been nice. I know it makes our alumni feel good. I am really proud of this football team."

QB Jeff Driskel

On the offense:

"UL-Lafayette came in and their game plan was to take away Kenneth [Dixon]. There were a bunch of guys down in the box which made it tough for our guys to run inside and some of those zone read plays they were crashing really hard which gave me some open lanes. Sometimes your game plan doesn't work out and you have to switch. I think we did a great job of pass protection. We made some big time plays on the outside. Marcus Gaines on the big play where he went the distance and that was a big time play that sparked us there in the second half. I thought we did a really good job as an offense tonight."

On Marcus Gaines' performance:

"He is a guy we knew going into the season that he was going to have to play well for us this year. He is talented and a guy we trust. He had a great camp. I think Lafayette's plan was to eliminate the single receiver coverage in three-by-one sets which singled up the field in three-by-ones so I am going go to wherever the coverage dictates. He did a great job with the ball in his hand getting some yards after the catch. As a whole, I think the receiving core did a great job tonight."

On if he was surprised he was able to run as much as he did:

"You just have to pick. You are either going to take away Kenneth or you are going to take away the read part. They chose to take away Kenneth tonight and they got caught with their backs to me some so I had some big lanes to run. It is kind of a pick your poison. They did a good job all night of stopping him, but like you said, that opened up lanes for me tonight to have big plays."

On if he was pleased with the way they played:

"I thought we did a good job. We had one turnover on offense. Obviously, our goal is for none, but we did a good job of protecting the ball for the most part there. I don't know the stats on third downs, but I thought we did a better job on third downs tonight. As a whole, I thought we played well. In the second half with the lead we had to run the ball but we only put up 14 points, so we would have liked to have had a little bit more of that killer instinct and put the game away, but as a whole I was pleased."

On scoring 36 unanswered points:

"They are going to score. That is just going to happen. We had total confidence in our defense tonight. That first drive never shook the offense's confidence and then they did a great job of buckling down the rest of the night. They created a lot of turnovers tonight; I think it was three with Bryson [Abraham] with the pick-six. I think we got after the quarterback a little bit more. We came right back and scored a touchdown of our own and kept the momentum from there."

On what he was thinking during Bryson Abraham's interception return for a touchdown:

"Get in. It doesn't matter with no time on the clock whether he gets in. He had that nice hurdle that was awesome. Hopefully somebody got a cool picture of that. I am sure it will be his Facebook profile picture."

On throwing the ball to Trent Taylor:

"Trent is always huge. They decided to play man against him and that is tough to do. It is tough for anyone to cover him one-on-one. He is so shifty and he runs great routes. He understands leverage and he has had a great year. He is one of the go-to guys and I am proud of the way he played tonight. You know the first touchdown was an awesome catch where he laid out full extension and got his feet down. That is just the type of player he is. He makes the great play and he makes the easy play. He is just a really good receiver."

On his evaluation of the team through five games:

"I think we are progressing every game offensively. I think the type of offense that we choose is dictated by the defense. Tonight it was really tough to get the run game going with so many people in the box, but we showed that we could make plays outside which is huge. I thought we did a really good job in pass protection tonight. I thought I had a clean pocket all night. I am proud of what we did offensively. We just have to keep moving forward and score more touchdowns in the red zone. We have to get a little bit better on third down, but I am pleased with where we are."

WR Marcus Gaines

On his role in the game:

"Before pregame meals, Coach tells us to go in and envision us making plays and I was able to do that."

On the screen play:

"The offensive line did a great job protecting and I saw green grass and just hit it."

On when he knew he would start:

"I found out right before the game. I thought Carlos [Henderson] was going to try and play but he did not. I had to step up and that is what I did."

On what went through his mind:

"It is college football and everyone wants to play. I was just blessed with the opportunity."

On how he gets open:

"[It is] just great releases I guess; just reading the coverage and understanding where to go. I guess it is just great releases."

CB Bryson Abraham

On his interception return for a touchdown:

"I knew from the jump that they were going for it. There were a few seconds left and the quarterback threw it deep so I just played the ball as it came. I looked up and saw zeroes on the clock. I just tried to get in. If I didn't get in, oh well. But I was going to try. I just took off. I had a good block by Vernon Butler up front so I dove in and it was a great way to end the half."

On if it surprised him that ULL went for it:

"No, they were on the 40-yard line and there was 60 yards to go. I was singled out on one of the primary receivers. I figured they were going to try something because they were not in the victory formation. I was kind of surprised that they were going to try it, but they did. We took advantage of it."

On at what point he thought he would get in:

"When I caught it. I saw a whole bunch of green grass. I saw Xavier [Woods] take care of the man behind me so I was going to try and get in and it worked out."

On the win:

"Coach Holtz is always talking about bringing the juice and the energy and we did. When Paul Turner blocked that punt it was big. That momentum carries and we just capitalized on that. It was great."

On Coach Holtz's reaction after the game:

"He was excited that it was a win. He was also disappointed in the way we carried ourselves with the foolish penalties. That is not the way that we carry Louisiana Tech and that is not the way we do things around here. The thing he always preaches is to learn from it and if we don't learn from it, it is on us. We will learn from it."

On the performance of Marcus Gaines:

"He played a great game. He had me out of my seat. I was supposed to be sitting down with the defense and I was jumping every time he caught a pass. On that screen that he took 72 yards, that was big. He practices like that; all the receivers do. Unfortunately, Carlos [Henderson] could not be out there, but Coach Holtz always talks about the next man up. He did that."

On beating UL-Lafayette for the second straight year:

"It was awesome. That is definitely one school that we take pride in playing and circle on our schedule. We went out there and took care of business so that was great. We took advantage of it."

UL-Lafayette head coach Mark Hudspeth

Opening comments:

"Not sure what to say other than you have to give Louisiana Tech a lot of credit. They have got a good football team. They have got a veteran quarterback that made a lot of plays. Our goal coming in was to try to contain [Kenneth] Dixon a little bit and I felt like we did do that. I felt we had a solid night doing that but you have got to give him credit. The quarterback [Jeff] Driskel found a lot of ways to beat us throwing the ball and he ran the ball very effectively so they have got a good team. We didn't help ourselves and I didn't help ourselves. Coaching and coaches, we have to do a better job on both sides of the ball putting our guys in position. We have got to find some answers on offense. It comes down to that. Seven points at half every week is not going to be enough, and so we have got to go back to the drawing board there and look at where we are at."

"We have been in this spot before. That's what I told the team after the game. We were in this exact same spot this time last year and reeled off nine wins and so this team can still do even better than last year. We have found answers before and we will find answers again. You don't win every game by a score of 50-0. Sometimes adversity strikes us, like in life, and I told our players that. This won't be the first time in their life that they have been in a streak of some adversity and so we will find out a lot about the character of this team as we try to pull ourselves out of this and do a better job executing, do a better job coaching and I have no doubt that we can. We have got kids that care. I thought our kids played hard. I will say that. I thought they played hard for four quarters. We coaches just didn't put them in a good position to be successful starting with the head coach and so we will get some things corrected and we are going to clean some things up. We need to execute a little better too, so we are anxious to get back and get started now as we start a new season 0-0 going into conference play."

On Jalen Nixon getting the start at quarterback:

"I thought he did okay. I thought he ran the ball effectively with the option, had some nice pulls and had a couple of nice throws. He probably wishes he had a couple of them back. The one before half time wasn't his. I told him that one wasn't his mistake; it was mine. We will see where we are at in making a quarterback decision. Now, he had to leave the game. I don't know the severity of the shoulder yet, so we will see how all that goes and see if he is able to practice tomorrow."

On if the pick-six to end the first half was ULL getting greedy:

"Yeah, [we were] probably getting a little bit [greedy]. We were frustrated we only had seven points and the play before we had ran and had somebody up wide open I had seen and thought, 'let's come back and try to get something cheap.' [It was a] bad decision. That is when you let your frustrations get the most of you. You cannot do that. The main thing wasn't the points, it is just you lose a little bit of momentum. That was the main thing that hurt you is the momentum going in at halftime. We have got to find a way in the first half of games to score points. That is three out of four games I think we have scored seven in the first half."

On LA Tech containing Elijah McGuire:

"I don't know. I know we ran the read plays and just had some pulls and they took him. But he seems like he was effective and we need to go back and look at the film and see. Maybe Jay [Johnson] saw something and that is what made him get away from that a little bit."

On throwing the ball downfield:

"They did a good job keeping behind us and not giving up the big play and that is something we have been doing a little bit ââ'¬" giving up on a couple of big plays ââ'¬" and we have to do a little better job."

On the defensive game plan:

"They have a lot of quick receivers and we tried to go to a little dime package and had a lot of DB's on the field and we stopped the run with it. I thought a few quarterback runs hurt us a little bit, but we accomplished one thing we wanted to do was slow down Dixon. I thought we did do that but some other things hurt us also. But I still thought we played a decent first half of football again defensively. If we could just get into the rhythm offensively where we can just put some points together and just not get ourselves in such a hole. That is the critical part of it."

On finding rhythm as an offense:

"With success. When you are having success with your plays you can get in a rhythm, but when you are three-and-out or you are four- and five-and-out, it is just hard. Rhythm is success. Rhythm is success in your offensive plays. We just have to get some continuity. We got to be able to move the chains. In that first drive, we did a nice job, but it really was not a long drive. We did a good job receiving but we had a big play down the sideline. We have to put together some more drives and to be honest with you. We have to find some ways to create some bigger plays. We are not creating enough big plays offensively. Driving in and out is good, that is all good, but it is a little harder to drive it out this year when you don't have that big back. It is just a little more difficult, so we have to create some bigger plays."

On taking responsibility for the loss as a coaching staff:

"That is what I told the team. I said, 'this one is on the head coach and the coaching staff.' I thought our kids played awfully hard. I was really proud of that effort. Did we make a lot of mistakes? Sure. We missed some tackles and I am sure we did not execute as well as we would have liked, but the kids played hard and we as coaches have got to find some answers and that is football. That is every team each week. You have to play every week, got to find answers and luckily, it is early in the year and luckily, we have not gotten to conference play. Luckily, we are going back home to Cajun Field next week and hopefully, we will have a great week of practice. These kids really were not down after the game. They were more upset that they did not perform better and we had to show them that they have a better team than what we have shown and so I think they are determined and that shows a lot about their character. I had a lot of guys step up and talk about, "hey, this is a new season, let's get this thing going,' because they want to play well, so we are going to get it going."

On Jalen starting moving forward:

"I don't know. I am sort of getting tired of the fence in the back yard. I am about ready to make a decision. We will look at the game film and make a decision this week and then going into conference play we are going to make a decision and we are going to roll with it."

On if QB Brooks Haack would have gone in if Nixon had not have gotten hurt:

"That maybe would have not happened, yeah."