Nov. 1, 2008
Recap | Final Stats | Notes
UNLV Head Coach Mike Sanford Coach Mike Sanford
"First thing I'll say is that was not the UNLV Rebel team that I know that was playing out there tonight. That is not the standard of play that I expect out of our team. That was below standard. I want to give credit to TCU. There a very good football team, they have an excellent defense."
"We played without several guys tonight. There are absolutely no excuses. I am not going to ever make up excuses. We had a game-time decision about Phillip Payne, and he could not play. Thor Pili could not play and Beau Orth could not play. We expect all those guys to be back next week."
On Omar Clayton's knee injury. "Omar Clayton injured his knee. We won't know the severity of that until Monday. He has to get an MRI and get a look of what is damaged in it. What time on Monday and when the results will come back, I do not know that."
"You try and fight against that but I think it did affect the team. I also think it was a difficult team for a backup quarterback to go in against. TCU is a very good football team and very fast. I think they are the best football team we have played."
Discussing the wind "That was a huge part of the game. It's not like they had a ton of huge plays. You look at it, and their leading rusher gained 60 yards, their longest run was 24 and the longest pass was 23. It was a huge field possession game."
"We were very poor punting into the wind today. Against a team like that you can't give then short fields like that and expect to win a game."
TCU Head Coach Gary Patterson
On the game: For us we just wanted to come in and win by one point. We know that the Utah-New Mexico game right now is just 6-3. It's hard to go on the road and win.
We got a couple breaks. The wind kicked up and as bad as it was today in the second quarter, I thought it was a deciding factor. Because it was in our favor and they couldn't get it punted out of there. It's hard to move the football when the wind is blowing like that. I thought we would have had the problem in the third quarter, but we were able to move it a couple of times.
On focusing for next week's game vs. Utah:
This has been a very mature football team all year. They could have quit after the first quarter of the Oklahoma game, but they fought back and made Oklahoma punt nine times. We thought that the Oklahoma game was going to help us to go in and we didn't get beat up that we could win at that level. I think it has helped us the rest of the season.
On game preparation for Utah:
We had a good plan going for BYU going into that ball game. We went without pads. That is what BYU and Utah does. We had started it last year in our last game against BYU on the road. We did it this week and our kids were fresh. When you go to somebody else's house, it's tough to go to their house and win. (Utah) has it sold out and knows that we are coming.
We are excited about being 9-1 right now. I think that is the biggest thing. You know it's hard to get to nine or 10 ball games. One of our team goal's this year was to try and get to the point where our seniors could get to 40 wins. Mathematically, we needed to win 10 ball games and we are one short of being able to get that gun for them. That meant that they would average 10 wins per season. You know that's a very special group. They've all been starting since they were redshirt freshmen.
