Sept. 21, 2004

EASTON, Pa. (www.lafayette.edu) -

Head coach Frank Tavani

on last week's game at Princeton:
I don't know how much there is to recap with the game on Saturday, it was disappointing. The reality of the situation is that when your team goes out and performs like that, the buck stops here. Obviously we didn't have our football team prepared well enough to go out and take on that football team that we didn't have any film on. Particularly defensively they played a completely different look, to their credit they closed practices and obviously it was to keep people from knowing that they were changing from a 4-3 defense to a 50 defense which brings on a whole new series of calls especially for our offensive line which certainly created some problems. But we were outplayed in all three phases of the game and I shoulder the responsibility for this football team. With that being said, obviously we have taken a hard look at things, it was a tough weekend for everybody here in the Lehigh Valley especially right near Easton. All I know at this point is we're a 2-1 football team and it's on to goal number four, we're 1-0 in the Patriot League and we're going to regroup and certainly perform a lot better than what we did this past weekend.

on this week's game at Richmond:
Moving on to Richmond, we're excited to play an Atlantic 10 scholarship school, a quality university academically as well as what would appear to be a step up for us. As a football team we'll come out and play all four quarters and we'll be much better prepared this week, we have three game films to prepare for so we'll be in a much better preparation situation. We're excited to go down there, they're quality football team, and we'll face not a good athlete, a great athlete at quarterback in Stacy Tutt, he's as good an athlete as I've seen and Coach Clawson has done a good job of converting him and it looks like he's been playing quarterback a long time, he looks terrific on film. They're a very young team, not that many seniors so he's rebuilding their situation down there, they're pretty athletic defensively and offensively we'll have our work cut out for us to contain their quarterback. We're very much looking forward to the trip and I'll tell you that's the last time we'll travel on the day of the game anywhere. We've done that twice now and it doesn't work out, we prefer getting there early to the hotel and spending some time bonding together, but we look forward to getting out there against the Spiders.

on Joe Ort and the injury report:
Joe would be one of several people that will be out. Basically he ended up with what was basically a first-degree concussion, thank goodness. When emergency personnel got out there, and I walked out there shortly after that, Joe was kinda groggy and his comment was that "I can't feel my legs" so the feel of everybody standing around there when you hear that, at the time everything wasn't quite with him, but later he was smiling and laughing, and wanted to know if he caught the ball, and things that were going on. He was squeezing the docs hand and could feel movement in his legs. I'm not a medical person but I knew those were some pretty good initial signs. It's always scary when you see that happen though. It's just one of those football hits that happens and fortunately for us, for Joe and everyone, all is well and it kind of looks like it ends well. Because of the headache and symptoms of a level one concussion we'll be holding him out and that's more than the smart thing to do.

So Joe will be out and Archie Fisher is still out, Brendon Green is still out as far as starters out, Chris Williams continues to be out with his hamstring, we just don't want to push that thing, and Dion Witherspoon is kind of day-to-day right now with his knee.

on the positives against Princeton:
Things are never as good as you want them to be and never as bad as you think they are, and when we looked at the film we actually played better offensively against a much better defense than we did the week before (in Lafayette's 17-6 win at Georgetown). There are some things that we have to change, I'm not going to discuss them here, but that's what we're looking at.

on Richmond quarterback Stacy Tutt:
He's got good size, extremely quick, has a strong arm and they're doing some things with him to help him. They get him out of the pocket, he's not a straight drop-back guy and they're getting him out of there, doing some of the same things we do, they have some running plays for him and then some option so there's a lot to prepare for. The bottom line is the intangible of his flat-out athleticism. They look like what a scholarship football team should look like and that's the challenge for us.

on missed chances against Princeton:
We had plenty of opportunities on both sides of the ball to make plays and we didn't do it. It's one thing when you can't do anything and come out of the game and look at film, it's another thing when you're in a game and have three legitimate drives and you have to finish them off. We just figured out over the weekend, I said to Coach Heffner as I was looking at the chart that since preseason started, you know we haven't had the same offensive line for three consecutive practices and again, those are things you have to overcome.

on Jonathan Hurt's performance last Saturday:
We've been bringing Jonathan along and he's shown us some things. I thought he had a good night running the ball and made some things happen when they weren't there and that's what great ones do, and we've had some great ones here. We like the way he's coming along and we'll continue to utilize him some more.

Hurt on learning from Joe McCourt:
Joe's a great back and I've learned a lot of things from him, from just being here as a freshman watching him play. Usually when he comes to the sideline I'll ask him what's the defense doing, do you have holes open or not, is the line slanting, things like that. Having Joe go out first especially in my first year getting time to play, it takes some pressure off of me, he goes in there first and warms them up, and then I get in there a little later and hopefully make some things happen.