Sept. 10, 2008

Head Coach Frank Tavani:
On Marist game: "Really excited about getting off to a good start. It's always really important. I thought we had to overcome some pretty tough conditions. Fortunately it wasn't a cold rain; it was on the warm side until late in the game when we were totally drenched. Still disappointed about turning the ball over. We make no excuses about the weather. We have to protect the football better than we did. We had a couple of minor situations where guys needed to stay on the field for special teams that ran off and used a timeout. Those things are always bothersome to the head coach. But for the most part the operation was good and I really felt great about the effort the kids put forth and hung together as a team. We put the defense in a couple of difficult situations but they didn't even blink. They just responded the way we asked them to respond--go out and turn it away and get us the ball back. Certainly our style of football is to be able to run the ball and stop the run and it pretty much happened that way, and to see Maurice [White] get off to such a good start, bouncing back from a tough year. All the kids were having some fun out there playing football against some strange faces."

On the play of Donald Ellis and Neil Goldsmith: "Neil was coming off his second knee surgery. He's really a redshirt freshman medically. He went out and he's a big, tall kid and has a lot of range on him. He was able to get that pick off the bounce and get a great start. Donald Ellis we thought was a very talented corner but just couldn't break that lineup but we held back Marvin [Clecidor] and gave these guys an opportunity to see some action and they're good athletes."

On Leroy Butler: "Leroy is having a lot of fun. Reminded me of that high school film we saw of him. He arrived here and I don't know if he was 165 (pounds) when he got here. He's put weight on now and he is fast and he is vicious. It's fun to watch him play. He gets all kinds of excited out there. He was having a good time, I can tell you that."

On depth and Carlos Lowe injury: "We have to see what happens and how Carlos is. That was a scary moment out there. The initial check on him was not positive but that was very fortunate that it came out not nearly what it could have been. The television replay showed it pretty close and it was one of those scary moments. He's got a pretty stiff neck right now but it's ok and it'll be day-to-day."

On Goldsmith: "He had a knee problem his senior year of high school and really was overlooked. He was at a private prep school in Florida and certainly recruited but easily driven by, especially with a knee injury. I'd gone in with Coach Dougherty to see him one day and I thought this guy can really develop and that he wouldn't be the first or last guy to overcome a knee surgery. He's had a full year to recover and he's come along nicely. He's still a young player out there trying to figure it out. He's a candidate for a redshirt year."

On the game plan for rain and running the ball: "We certainly did talk about it an awful lot as an offense in terms of how we were going to approach it. We fully expected to line up and play smash-mouth football, there's no doubt about that. Some of the plays certainly are scripted ahead and that's what we normally went with. You try to throw early while the balls are still somewhat throwable and catchable. I thought we did a terrific job both throwing it and catching it as much as we did. It got to the point where the more we pounded it the worse it was getting. When I see that pile and force moving, why change it up."

On role of tight ends: "Show me a team that's running the ball with any real success without a tight end; even your options teams do to some point. We want to run the football. I've been here when we threw the ball 40-50 times a game and I can tell you what the record was and it's not good. It's an important piece to the puzzle. To me, I don't know how to and probably don't want to play football without it. A guy that can do both things [block and receive] is invaluable. Our guys have to be able to join up with a tackle at the hip and bang off on a defensive tackle which is not an easy job and then we expect them to be athletic enough to navigate the passing game and catch the ball. It's a backbone kind of position because they do so many things."

On the 40-second clock: "Bob Heffner and the staff approached it from day one. The head coach was in a panic following the spring game and I timed it--we had three plays total that we just got off. I was paranoid all summer. We had officials in for six or seven practices. It's a credit to our staff because our tempo was really good."

On Georgetown: "Georgetown is coming with in great momentum, coming off a win. [Head coach] Kevin Kelly has been doing a great job. He's a real good football coach. They're coming in here for a league game and they're going to be sky-high. Certainly we'll be expected to, based on whatever thoughts, to win and that makes it more difficult for us. They play two quarterbacks that are both very athletic. I was very impressed with their two defensive ends and their linebacker and athleticism in the secondary. They are definitely a better football team than we just faced and it's a league game. To me it's a league championship game. In this league, you're lucky if you tie with somebody [with a loss]. You lose two and you're out, generally speaking, and you'd like to run the table in your league. This is a huge game for us and it's our first home game."

DE Luke Schade:
On major, classes: "I'm a Government and Law major and one class I'm taking this semester is State and Local Government which really ties into my internship which I did over the spring with Mr. (Phil) Noto. It had to do with state and local government. I got to travel to Harrisburg and sat in on meetings."

On his summer internship: "There's a bill that Mr. Noto helped push forward and I helped look over it. It's going to be talked about in the state legislature."

On Marist and the start to the game: "I think going out in the rain, we were a little apprehensive at first because the footing wasn't all that great and we didn't want to force ourselves into anything so we kind of waited back a little bit. After we realized the pace of the game had picked up, we turned up the tempo a little bit and started getting after it a little more. As the game went on, we felt more comfortable out there in the weather and it didn't make a difference after a while."

On the defense: :Any time you can stop on the first two downs and make it third and long that's great for the defense because there are a lot more different things you can do as far as defense you can call. Plus if they're third and long that means they're not running the ball on us too well which is always a good thing."

LT Ryan Hart-Predmore:
On major, classes: "I'm an Economics and Business major and I'm also minoring in Math. Right now I'm in Financial Theory and Analysis which is a tough level course but it's really getting into what I want to do in finance and possibly accounting. I'm also in a 300 level math class, getting my minor going, doing probability."

On the offensive line and preseason doubts: "We do have some experience with the starters but a lot of the backups are inexperienced. But I think that with the starters and the second string following in our footsteps and (coach) Heffner working with everyone, everyone is stepping up. Everyone was talking about how the o-line would potentially be a weak point with us but that kind of fueled me in particular. I did work harder in the offseason because people were talking about that."

On adjusting to new position on offensive line: "When I moved from guard to tackle, the actual assignments changed but when I was at guard the past two years I picked up on what the tackle was going to be doing so it was more of a transition with the technique and footwork. I have to make more calls now but I pretty much knew what the calls were going to be and I was able to anticipate them. Heffner did a great job of helping me transition over to that left tackle spot but it was basically getting down the technique and the footwork."

On the 40-second play clock: "We did have a lot of work on it in preseason camp. We had refs come in and time it. We were already adjusted to it. It did seem a little faster paced during the game but I think we were well-adjusted. We just got back to the huddle right away and got ready to play."