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WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 29, 2018

Dana Holgorsen

Lubbock, Texas

West Virginia - 42, Texas Tech - 34

DANA HOLGORSEN: I'm proud of our guys for just hanging in there for four quarters and finding a way to win there at the end. Hats off to Texas Tech. A lot of teams would have shut things down at halftime, being down 25 points, 35-10. We played a really good first half. I focused all week on starting fast. I guess I forgot to tell them there was a second half. But didn't finish very good. That's on me. We've got to evaluate it and see what went wrong.

But really, I give Kliff and his team a lot of credit for coming out in the second half with the new quarterback and playing their tail off, especially defensively. They shut us down, and they kept playing and gave themselves a chance there at the end.

Good teams find a way to win, especially on the road in the Big 12, so we're happy about that. We're thrilled to be 2-0 in the Big 12. Defense stepped up and hung in there, made a play at the end to get us some points on the board, which obviously we needed a few to win.

Excited about it and ready to get out of here.

Q. Offensively the first half you guys played so well. What was clicking then, and sort of the second half, drops, a couple penalties; just wasn't quite there, the same focus. What was it?
DANA HOLGORSEN: I don't know. We didn't -- maybe they made some halftime adjustments. I doubt it based on them running the same defense in the second half that they did in the first half. I give Gibs and Spav for Texas Tech credit for keeping their guys up. They're a good defense. The thing that group has been doing, they wore Oklahoma State out in the second half because they played hard, and they played harder than we did in the second half today. Being down 25 at halftime, that's a -- I commend their coaching staff for keeping them playing hard. Schematically we knew what they were going to do, we just didn't execute very well in the second half. We had too many drops. We didn't block them very good up front. I think it's probably just an old-fashioned relaxation situation. We relaxed because we were up 25, and they didn't quit, and they kept plugging away and gave themselves a chance at the end.

Q. Aside from some of those issues, is there anything that concerns you about what you saw offensively in the second half moving forward?
DANA HOLGORSEN: No. I think we're a pretty decent offense. We scored 35 points in the first half. It's probably going to be good for us. We didn't play very good in the second half. We'll watch it and probably learn from it. The Big 12 is -- we know as well as anybody, the Big 12 is like that. I'm surprised we didn't need 49 points to win this game. But just been in it a long time and understand that teams can score quick.

You know, nothing that happened is surprising. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't play as hard as I thought we could have in the second half. It's human nature, and it falls on me. We've got to do a better job of getting them going regardless of the score is. I didn't particularly like how we finished the game against Kansas State. We were pretty inept on offense in the fourth quarter. We've got to handle success better. We've got to be able to play better and play smarter when we're winning.

I think we've got a good football team, and if we're winning, then that can't dictate how we play. We've got to keep playing because we're going to have to keep scoring at times.

Q. Another 100-plus yard day for Marcus Simms. Why is he playing at such a high level on a consistent basis this season?
DANA HOLGORSEN: Well, he's just practiced well. He's shown flashes of it in the past, and he's been inconsistent practice-wise. In spring he was inconsistent. Camp he was really consistent. He's just practiced well all camp, and this is three weeks in a row that he's played better. The better he plays, the more he's going to get targeted. He's arguably our top wide out right now. I think we've got a couple of pretty good ones.

Happy for him, and he's doing a good job. It's just all about consistency. We've got to get some other guys to play consistently like that.

Q. How difficult is it to adjust on the fly when a quarterback like Duffey comes in mid-stream with a different skill set?
DANA HOLGORSEN: It's hard because we didn't have any information on him. I mean, we knew he could run around. Kid made some good plays now. We just didn't have a whole lot of information on him. I was talking with Gibby towards the end of the second quarter, when they put him in, I said, we've got to time-out, and he's like, I don't know what to expect, so if we need a time-out, we need to change personnel, we will. We didn't have any idea what they were going to do. But yeah, it's difficult. I was impressed with him. He went in in a difficult situation and made some plays, which is not surprising just based on Kliff doing a good job of coaching whoever the dang quarterback is, you know.

Q. How happy are you with how your corners played together?
DANA HOLGORSEN: Pretty good, yeah. Just all of them. We've got four of them. They're going to keep getting better. We've got competition. Hated to see Norwood get ejected like that. We can learn from that. But they're all four playing pretty good. A game like this and that kind of a deal, you're going to need all of them to step up and play good, and I was happy with how they all did.

Q. Can you talk on the fast start? It's about as good as you could have expected, I'm sure.
DANA HOLGORSEN: Yeah, we talked about it a lot. These guys have always started fast. They got up on us last year. They were up 17 in the third quarter and we overcame that. But this stadium and these guys have traditionally started fast. I was a part of it for a long time. So we talked about it a lot and learned from last year because we got down so much.

Was happy with that, but like I said, you've got to finish, as well, and we didn't do as good a job of finishing as I wanted to.

Q. With a veteran team like this, do you like having the second half to kind of look at with them the next few days and drill stuff and not let them get too high?
DANA HOLGORSEN: As soon as my headache goes away, I'm going to be okay with it. Right now my head hurts because it was very stressful. But I made reference at one point this week that we do have good senior leadership, and I'm thankful for that. I'm curious to see how these guys respond in an adverse situation. It was our first one of the year, and it was stressful. Those guys came back, and they had all the momentum. I think we're going to be able to learn a lot moving forward from what happened in the second half. If we're as good a team as I think we can be, then we will make some improvements based on what happened.

Q. The pick six, you said it was stressful. Would you sum it up like that?
DANA HOLGORSEN: Yeah, I would say. And then our kickoff team didn't do their job. That's on me. We had a substitution situation. They got one out for the first time all year, and we were offsides. I mean, we can learn from that. But yeah, it relieved some stress, and it made the clock really important, obviously, for us. He made a great play. What did we have, three picks? So that was huge. That's why we won the game.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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