Nov. 19, 2002
Lafayette head coach Frank Tavani
On victory over Holy Cross: "It certainly was great to get back to Fisher Field and come out with a vengeance again. I think our defense really took it as a personal challenge all week along, hearing about the possibility of needing calculators that it was going to be a potential shootout since the cast of characters was the same. Our defense wanted to make a point that it wasn't going to be that way early, and they did. Offensively, I thought it was as efficient a game as we have played all year. I think our special teams played well. Give a lot of credit to Matt Hachmann who handles our kickoff teams. We really made a point that we weren't going to let (Ari) Confesor hurt us after we started scoring. Every time you kick to that young man, you hold your breath. I thought our team played with a lot of heart and a lot of enthusiasm - just the way that we're describing Leopard football. Hard-nosed, physical football, going all-out for four quarters."
On the team's play against Holy Cross: "We played our best football game, but we haven't played as well as we can. There are still some things that we certainly can do better and will do better. For me as a coach, to watch us improve week to week and then to come in and finish out the season the right way, we're about where you'd really like to be. We're going to have to play very well to beat Lehigh. Few people have done it, and the few that have are good football teams."
On Chris Partridge: "It's been tremendous. They look to him as someone that came back off a severe knee injury, and gives up the opportunity to graduate with a Lafayette degree and get a job and go on with his life. They see that he came back for only one reason because it meant so much to him that there is this passion involved. That's what this great game is all about. He's certainly a real inspirational leader and it didn't surprise me that he was selected as a captain. He's been here longer than anyone. He's probably the most vocal. Like the head coach, a little bit crazy at times. Chris has just been the kind of leader I knew he would be."
On Lehigh: "It's an 8-3 football team that has set a benchmark in this conference for everybody else to try to attain. Until that actually changes - and it hasn't yet - I don't know how much it's actually changed. People are just spoiled to death. They are just the program that everybody wants to be like and achieve that kind of success. They've had some struggles that we've endured - a lot of injuries. That's probably what has cracked their nutshell a little bit. They've got an awful lot of kids over there who know how to find a way to win. They're sitting there at 8-3 and other than maybe Penn, defensively, they're as a good a defense as I've seen on film. We certainly aren't thinking in any way that we have a better shot than we've had any other year. This is a good football team and we know we're going to have to play extremely well to win on Saturday."
On Lehigh's winning streak in the series: "I don't pay attention to 'This hasn't happened since this time.' I'm kind of the here and now guy. This is now. Anything that has happened before this is for you guys to talk about. I'm concerned about now and where we are this year and where I'm trying to take this program. Regardless of the outcome, this has been a tremendous team to coach and be around. We want nothing more than to send our seniors out with a winning season. That is more important to me than breaking any streak or anything else. That will all take care of itself if you can win in the here and now."
On college football's most-played rivalry: "This game, regardless of what the records are of either team - this is the most played rivalry in the country and anybody who thinks for a minute to downplay that part of it, doesn't have much respect for tradition. You are talking about two schools where school pride is on the line, regardless of the kind of season they're having. It's just a tremendous opportunity to be involved in. To minimize that in any way, shape or form, to me, is a disrespect to the tradition of the game. No one has played more. Hopefully, no one will ever play more, and you can't ask for better than that. They can talk about 'The Game,' up in the Ivy League and you can talk about Army-Navy and you can talk about anybody you want. But, nobody has played 138 times. That has huge significance to me personally, and I consider it an honor and a privilege to be involved in this thing."
Lafayette linebacker Chris Partridge
On importance of a winning season: "Obviously you want to go over .500, but I think the bottom line for me and everyone on the team is that we want to prove to everyone who still doubts us that we turned this program around. That's the biggest difference. It doesn't matter who we play, but it happens to be Lehigh, so that makes it even better. That's what we want to accomplish here - to show everyone that this program is turned around and that we are for real."
On why he returned for fifth year: "I just wanted to play the game again. I saw the fire and the intensity in everyone's eyes last year. I knew that these guys wanted to win. I just wanted to give them my part and do what I could to help them turn this program around and be winners. Of course, it's why I came back. It's why Billy Stocker came back. You just want to smell victory and you want to taste it a little bit."
On the turning point of the program: "In the first game we showed how young we actually were by how many mistakes we made. But, then we showed again that we just had no quit. We had the fire to be winners and I think that kind of gave us the confidence. We just kept getting better and better every game since then. We're more mature and we learned how to play."
On the Leopard freshmen: "It amazes me how smart these kids are to pick up stuff and know what they're doing. We put in a new package for the Holy Cross game and they made hardly any mistakes in the game. It amazes me how much more talented they are than I was. It's scary because they know how to play with heart now - and with their talent level, there is no telling what these kids can do in the future."
On his emotional play: "It's my last one. I think that I rate my level of emotion just on how the game is going and how much passion it's going to take for us to either come back or finish off a team. It's the way I've always played. It's the way I was brought up to play. I'm just going to go out there and however I feel, I feel, and however, I play, I play. That's just how I've been playing my whole life."
Lafayette center Chris Royle
On the Lehigh game: "Every year we want to beat this team because it's such a rivalry. Now we actually have a very good chance to beat them. They're in a similar situation to us - at least in the league - and we want to go out on top of them."
On the turning point of the program: "Our first game we got down into a little bit of a deficit, like 16 points. We battled right back and it went down to the last play of the game. We came out on top. It just showed that we weren't going to quit. In past years, maybe we wouldn't have played as hard. We would have thought it was over already, but I think there was a different attitude this year and it really showed right off the bat."
On underclassmen comprehending the rivalry: "Maybe the sophomores do, but the freshmen definitely don't unless they are from the area. When I first got here, I heard about it. A big rivalry, it sounds really cool. But, then you get out there and there are tons of people around. You just can't prepare yourself for that experience. Once you go through it, you just want to go through it again and again. That's probably why (Partridge) is here - one more crack at it."
