Nov. 23, 2002

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Lafayette Head Coach Frank Tavani:

"We didn't put that fake in 'til Wednesday. If they gave us the right look, we were going to call it. Mike made the call. We have a lot of confidence in him."

"You saw me out there - this is Lafayette/Lehigh, baby. You saw me roll the dice."

"I know the way our defense has been playing, I knew if we hung in there, we'd be okay."

"I'm kind of surprised they gave us the wind in the fourth quarter [on the coin toss]. I was pretty happy we got the ball to start with the ball in the second half AND have the wind in the fourth."

"I couldn't be happier for our kids who worked so hard. We've been saying all along we wanted to send our Seniors off as winners, and we we're able to do that."

"We still have a lot of work to do. We're far from finished. We're nowhere near where we want to be. But our players have catapulted us quicker than even I would have thought."

Lafayette Quarterback Marko Glavic:

"Michael [O'Connor] made a great play. If he doesn't make that play, the drive is over."

"I didn't play all that well - my passing numbers were only 75 yards. But all that matters is the 'W' and we got it."

"I don't get much respect running the ball - but I had a couple of good runs today."

"We ran them down. On the last drive, maybe that had an effect on them."

"You know when you have the wind at your back, it just makes you more confident. In the third quarter we had a bunch of three-and-outs, and that's expected against a great defense. But we had the big plays [in the fourth with the wind at our backs] when we had to."

Lafayette Backup Quarterback and Holder Michael O'Connor:

"We set up that [fake] early this week. My part was easy - just run right through a huge hole."

Lehigh Coach Pete Lembo:

"It was hard to make throws like [Chad] Schwenk did, but it's not hard to catch them. With the exception of one throw, Chad threw the ball in these conditions as effectively as we could have asked. To see that many balls dropped in a game of this magnitude ... it's extremely disappointing."

"The wind was not as great of a factor in the second half. If you look at the third quarter, when we had chances to gain the momentum and great field position, and we're unable to go down there and punch it in."

"Our defense played very well early in the third quarter to get us field position. So it just seemed like as the second-half wore on, our failure to take advantage of field position continued to give them hope, and they were able to mount one really great drive for the winning score."

"For us to come away in the whole second half without any points is extremely disappointing."

"To move it like we did in the first half and come away with only seven points is just not good enough."

"On the field goal fake, we saw the timeout - we saw the kicker, and we made our guys aware of the possibility of the fake. To their credit, they still got it done. That's one of those plays ... when we were in position, but we just didn't get it done. There were a lot of those."

"You can point to so many miscues and/or missed opportunities ... you make those kind of mistakes, you're going to lose."

"I do feel that some of their guys wanted it more than some of ours. It's frustrating."

"If I could tell you we had a phenomenal week of practice and came out and played our tails of for 60 minutes and lost to a team that was clearly better than us, then I'd tell you that. But I don't feel that way now."

Lehigh Running Back Jermaine Pugh:

"Our [offensive] line opened up huge holes today, but I didn't hit them like I wanted to."

"Our defense played amazing today. They gave us the ball on the 30 yard line, and we couldn't punch it in. We didn't click as an offense."

"We had dropped balls, I missed blocks. There's a lot of things we didn't do right."

"We scored seven points, and we had good field position all day."

"All we talk about at Lehigh is beating Lafayette, and we had the chance to do that today, and we lost it ourselves. They played a good game, but we just didn't get it done today on offense. We had opportunity after opportunity."

"If it were up to me, we'd start working tomorrow [for next season]. It's over now, we have to take this frustration from today's game and put it into the weight room and get ready for next year."

Lehigh Linebacker Mike Gregorek:

"Our defense played well early in both halves, but then we kind of let up a little bit."

"[Defensive] Coach [Tom] Gilmore came up with a great scheme, we just made some stupid mistakes - mistakes that killed us all year and killed us today."

"Coach Tavani and the Lafayette staff kept fighting, and their players made plays. We didn't make the plays."

"The offense went out there and played just as hard as we did. You don't blame it on anybody."

"The defense did play well, but at the times we really need to play well, we didn't play so hot."

"This game is a step back for us. But that's football. It just makes us want it more next year."

"We'll be back next year. We're going to get in the weightroom and get running."