Nov. 4, 2003
Head coach Frank Tavani:
Reflecting on Colgate and looking ahead to Bucknell:
"Well, we rounded out our tour of the Top 25 and unfortunately didn't fare too well. After falling behind 34-3 in the first half on Saturday I thought our team showed terrific resilience in the second half to battle back and get it to 41-31 and secure a turnover and have the opportunity to go forward from there. Unfortunately the consolation prize in losing isn't very tasteful. This football team is determined to send our seniors off Fisher Field with a win and send our seniors off with a winning season. That's the focus. I have full confidence that our football team will keep doing what they're doing, which is work immensely hard in practice every day and finish out the way they know they can play."
On Bucknell's offense:
"Certainly it's a much improved Bucknell team, especially their offense is really giving everyone difficulties. It's an offense that no one in the Ivy League or Patriot League has seen in quite a while. If you watch Air Force, it's much the same. It's certainly option oriented but there are other things that they certainly do off of it, and then this past weekend showed the ability to throw if you're going to commit that many people to the front. It's certainly an offense that's tough to duplicate in practice. On Sunday we took some time for our scouts to watch some film on what they were going to perform and they had a walk-through for it. We tried to get a little jump on it since Monday is a day off. The most difficult situation to prepare for is duplicating that offense and trying to simulate it in practice over a three-day period."
On Bucknell's overall improved play:
"You obviously have to give credit to the new staff and what they're putting in. Defensively they're different. They stem all the time. You're going to see their defensive line move around, which creates problems. It almost prevents you from combo-calling on the line of scrimmage. You make a call, they move, it's a chess game going on all the time. So you try to do some things with the snap count and things like that. But certainly I think they're an improved team and now they're a football team where the kids have some confidence, especially coming off a week where they scored 53 points. Much like us a year ago, they were picked near the bottom and now they're sitting there third in the league right now."
On Bucknell's defense:
"They're an eight-man front which makes it difficult to run the ball consistently. In the secondary they're going to play quarters coverage so they're not going to give up the deep ball and try to make some plays underneath. The strength of that defense is that they lead the league in take aways. One of their defensive backs has an incredible amount of interceptions and other guys have some, so they have taken the ball away from some pretty good teams, particularly Fordham. Eakin threw five interceptions and they had two fumbles, seven turnovers. That is an incredible amount of turnovers, especially for as good of a football team as Fordham is. That's the real strength of their defense, that they've been able to take the ball away from the opponent's offense."
