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FAMOUS IDAHO POTATO BOWL: OHIO VS NEVADAJanuary 3, 2020Jay NorvellCarson StrongLucas WeberBoise, Idaho Ohio 30, Nevada 21 JAY NORVELL: Just really proud of our kids. We didn't do enough obviously today to win the game. We certainly didn't coach well enough. But there's never any quit in our players. The way we responded, the way we came back, we could have made it interesting there at the end if we could have converted in a couple of those situations. But overall I'm really proud of our football team. This is a group of guys that have been through a tremendous amount of adversity. They represent our university the right way. They play with great effort. We just came up a little bit short today. If we could have scored a little bit more in the first half, we could have finished with touchdowns instead of field goals, if we could have converted there at the end maybe one or two times, it might have been a little bit interesting going down the stretch those last couple minutes. It wasn't the case. It wasn't meant to be. So I talked to our kids, so many learning experiences this year that our kids can learn from. The guys that are coming back really have to take these experiences and take them to heart and use them to move forward. To our seniors, we love them. Lucas is up here. I mean, these guys have done so much, given so much of themselves for our program. As a coaching staff, we really appreciate that. Wish we could have sent them off with a adviser today. Q. (No microphone.) JAY NORVELL: I mean, it's a hard-fought game. You have a good opponent. They did some things. We had a hard time controlling their running game. Then we just couldn't get a whole lot going running the ball. We did a good job throwing the ball. I thought Carson and Cookie and these guys did a great job of making plays down the field. Putt, all of our receivers played hard and well. We couldn't generate enough big plays. That was the issue. Scoring enough points. If we could have scored at certain times, we really could have made a game of it. I thought our defense fought hard, got a couple turnovers in the second half. We had some timely penalties that certainly didn't help our cause at all. So we just didn't do enough. We didn't do enough to put ourselves in a position to win. Q. Coach, you were down 30-9 at one point. Your guys showed heart. What do you think that says about your team? JAY NORVELL: I've seen these guys do that all year. We have a lot of resiliency. We have great kids. I love the fight in our players. I love the character that our players have. I've seen them do it. We did it at Purdue the very first game. We were down by 17. We came back and tied it and won. This team is very capable of doing that. I think we had a ton of freshmen playing today. I was looking out there, guys were going down like flies. We had Kieran Clark out there, Justin Lockhart, Henry Ikahihifo. We had a bunch of freshmen running around. We had some babies out there. They're good players. They'll learn from this experience. They'll get better. We got to learn from it. That's the key. I told our guys we've got to take this and we've got to learn from it, we've got to build from these experiences. I told them I want a loyal team, a team that's loyal to each other and our university. We want to build on every experience we have. I'm very proud of the fight of our players. Q. You recover your second fumble, probably get within two points there, trick play happens. Take us through the decision making of that trick play, what resulted in the fumble? JAY NORVELL: We have a lot of plays that we like to use in certain situations. We just didn't execute it. That's the bottom line. That wasn't the only play we didn't execute. We had several that we didn't. We didn't execute it. It's unfortunate that we turned it over there. We had a chance to score. It didn't happen. Really give our defense credit for coming back and getting a turnover. We just got to do a better job of converting on that. Q. Lucas, your journey is kind of unique, being a local, a sixth-year guy. Take us through what you're feeling right now. LUCAS WEBER: Yeah, there's a lot of emotions going on. I'm proud of the team, how we came back and fought at the end. There's a lot of emotions going on personally. In all reality, I'm proud of the way we fought and the way we fought all year in some of those close games. Came up short, like coach said. Q. Carson, how did your confidence grow throughout the season and in this game? What are you feeling about your freshman year, where you can feel you can go? CARSON STRONG: I feel like there's a lot I can learn from this year. I'm going to take all I can in, do the best I can, be the best player for the team next year. Q. Lucas, being somebody that's from Reno, taking that moment what it's been like to play for this team, what has that meant to you? LUCAS WEBER: It's meant the world to me. The community has been great. My friends, obviously, they love that I stayed here and stuff. But the football team developed me a lot as a person, too. That's something I'll take away. Just the Nevada mentality of sticking through it, blue-collar mentality. When I came in, I don't know if I 100% had that. They fostered that. There's a lot of life lessons I'll take away from what Nevada did for me. Q. Coach, when you look at Carson, maybe a player like Brandon Talton, what are your first thoughts? Do you see this being bright? JAY NORVELL: There's no question. I mean, Carson, this is his first year to really play consistently. He just continued to get better as the year went along. Really took care of the ball again today. To throw the ball 49 times and not have a turnover is pretty good. Throw for over 400 yards, I think it's scratching the surface of what he can do as a player. The thing about Carson is his leadership skills. That's what I have been so impressed with. I'm so excited about. You got guys like Talton and Justin Lockhart, Kieran Clark, Melquan Stovall. Those kids are all freshmen, true freshmen. They all played today. The future that way is very, very bright. I'm excited that our line is back. We got all of our linemen back. We'll add depth to that. We've got to improve that area. It's got to be better. We have to be more physical. That's going to be big for us. But basically our entire offense is back. We'll bring back several of our defensive young kids, too. We'll obviously miss some seniors that are leaving. But I'm really excited about what we can do as a team next year. We got to continue to grow and add to this team. It's exciting. It's exciting especially having a kid that's a veteran quarterback now with three years left of eligibility. That's exciting. Q. What can you say about Sam Hammond? JAY NORVELL: Sam has really developed into a really good defensive end. Former walk-on. Big, tall kid when we first got him. Really put a lot of weight on him. He's really taken to Coach Simmons and our strength program. Just proud of his development. He's really come on this last month of the season. We've got a lot of players really, really come on, really improve and play some of their best football this last month. Sam is certainly one of those. He'll be another one coming back next year. Chris Green will be back next year. Dom Peterson played his heart out today. He'll be back next year. That's a solid nucleus for our defensive front coming back. Q. Where do you go from here? Some staff roles to fill. JAY NORVELL: I wanted to wait until after the bowl game to really interview staff. I'll start doing that this week. Then we have our national coaches convention where I'll talk to coaches there, as well. We'll fill the staff with the very best coaches that we can. My goal is to really improve and get better. I think we can. We head out on the road after that. We have five scholarships left to fill. We're trying to fill them with difference makers. We want to fill them with difference makers. We want to find a great runningback, a great corner, a great safety, a great linebacker. We want difference makers in these last five scholarships. We'll take our time with that. Third week in January we'll start our off-season program, eight weeks of grit. We'll be out there working. Just challenged our players to come back with the mentality to be their very best. That's what we want to be as a program. We have to have individuals that want to be that, as well. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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