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PINSTRIPES BOWL: KANSAS STATE v SYRACUSE

December 30, 2010

Doug Marrone

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

KANSAS STATE Â– 34
SYRACUSE - 36

COACH MARRONE: First of all, I can't think everyone enough, the New Era Pinstripe Bowl, the Steinbrenner family, Randy Levine, Mark Goldsman, really everyone that's been involved. It has been an incredible experience for the players during the week. We have quite a few players on the team that are from this area, and myself included and the experience they have given us was outstanding, it really was.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate, having gone to a lot of Bowl games, the job that everyone that was involved with the Pinstripe Bowl has done.
Hats off, as far as the game, hats off to Kansas State. They are a very good football team and they are very well coached. Coach Snyder, I've said this before is a legend in the profession that I have chosen to go into, which is coaching. Hats off to their fans and the people from Kansas State that we met during the week. They were excellent, really good. People you could get along with, and really have the same type of core values that we have on our football team.
Again, hats off to the seniors that were on our football team last year really created a foundation for us; the seniors this year, and the players have done an outstanding job.
We talk about accountability, we talk about core values, we go to class, we won the Big East Academic Achievement Award. We won a lot of battles off the field, but now we are starting to win them on the field. And I've always believed in that as a coach and I think it's paying off for them.
Again I can't thank them enough. They thank me for instilling these values and harping on them all the time. But here I am, born and raised in the Bronx and grew up a Yankee fan. I always tell people I was born a Yankee fan, and there was a moment out there tonight where I truly almost did break down and go to my knees because it truly is a dream come true for me, and I wouldn't have been able to do that without the support of our Chancellor and Athletic Director and the Board of Trustees for choosing me to be the person to lead this football program. I thank them for that.
Again, I thank these players for making, again, just a simple kid from the Bronx, a dream come true.

Q. Wondered if you had any beef on the penalty at the end --
COACH MARRONE: I didn't even see it. I really didn't. My mind was going on to the second play, making sure the defense was getting ready for it.

Q. You guys have not exactly been an offensive juggernaut, especially down the stretch of the season.
COACH MARRONE: Thanks for reminding me. (Laughter).

Q. Nobody really expected a track meet. Can you talk about the offensive outburst the a little bit?
COACH MARRONE: I think when you look at this football game, there's a lot of time off for both teams and what happens is you have to say to yourself, you have to tackle well and you have to not turn the ball over. Both teams, we didn't turn the ball over and again, credit to both football teams. But we have had a lot of time in practice. We have not had that before. So we were able to go ahead and work on our skills and put a game plan in.
And we really challenged ourselves offensively, because we only had one play over 50 yards all year long. We had two today. We only had a couple plays over 25 yards and we really worked hard on it. So we challenged our players, and that's what life is about. It about creating challenges and goals for your players for yourself, whatever you may do, and they responded. Delone Carter came up with a big game but he's not going to have that type of game unless people are blocking up front and the receivers are blocking down the football field.
Marcus Sales is a great example of what we have been doing in our program. Anyone that knows Marcus Sales, he's been a little bit up-and-down but we talk about work ethic and accountability. He worked hard; last night, prior to before the game meeting I pointed out Marcus Sales and how well he's worked and the practices he's had and he came out and had a big game.

Q. Speaking of Marcus, talk about his path from the beginning of the year to his performance today.
COACH MARRONE: I think it's one probably in the beginning of the year, he was probably disappointed. You know, you have to stick with him. No greater organization in the world than the one we are sitting in right now and they stick with players and all of a sudden they come through at the end of the year. I think Marcus Sales is a great example of that. You have to believe in the players and believe that they are going to get the job done as long as they show that you work ethic. Marcus did. For him to have a game like that tonight is not really a surprise to me or anyone else on this football team.

Q. Did not having Rob Long maybe affect the third-down play calling and the short kickoff; had you planned on kicking short like that?
COACH MARRONE: We did, and it did, it was going to affect us more. Originally we went into the game, we were going into the game thinking if we got the ball past the 50, we were going to go ahead and go for it; in a range where it would have been difficult for us to kick a long field goal. So we had that plan going in there.
But I tell you, hats on to Ryan Lichtenstein, I think he did a great job tonight. Again, Rob was a great part what have we did in the kickoffs, and Ross is very consistent, excellent field goal kicker and he tried to do what we asked him to do. But we had a lot of sky kicks, and we don't want to kick the ball off to him, because we were kicking it off to about the 15-yard line prior to the game; if he would have kicked it off to about the five or the four, we would have went down the field. But we did game plan that situation.

Q. Dick MacPherson said when Syracuse went into the '85 Cherry Bowl, it was the foundation of those great teams in the late 80s and early 90s. You were a captain on that team, what do you think this means for your program going forward?
COACH MARRONE: Well, I think, for when you haven't gone to a Bowl game since 2004 and had a winning season since 2001, the first step is to create that as a goal.
You know we found ourselves during the year, we were at, I believe, 6-3 at one point and a chance to win the conference, and we didn't accomplish that. But we had to sit back, re-establish our goals and how important it was to win this game.
So I think it goes beyond the fact of looking at: We need to win this game, because our future is going to be better from a recruiting standpoint. I think that's all true and I think everyone can figure that out.
But it's just so important, because you know, the faculty at Syracuse, the Syracuse University community, the former letter winners, we did not perform as well as we would like to at the end of the year. We needed to come out with a good performance so we could carry ourselves over for the challenge we face in the future.
I think recruiting-wise, to be able to come into what truly is our home; this is our priority recruiting area, New York State. You know, we are very strong in this area because of the relationships we have in New York City, Long Island, Westchester, Rockland County, and I think these things will help us.
What really sells us on recruiting is one thing: Syracuse University is a fine academic institution with a faculty that I can't tell you, if it wasn't for the faculty at Syracuse University and Coach MacPherson, I wouldn't be sitting here today. So I think Syracuse University sells itself. I don't know how many football games you have to win to get people to consider Syracuse first.

Q. You mentioned Sales last night and talking about his preparation; did you see something that led you to believe that he could be a big factor in this game?
COACH MARRONE: You know I'm a big believer in hard work. I think you just keep working hard and create a level of consistency about yourself that eventually it's going to carry over on to the field and I've seen that in Marcus in the last couple of weeks, he played well.
And one of the key things and probably people at Syracuse, who write us at Syracuse know that better than here, we were a banged up mentally and physically football team at the end of the year; with the time off, preparing for finals and really giving our players time to get back into a better state from a physical and mental standpoint.
You know, Ryan really did a nice job tonight for us running the football and managing it. I would be remiss not to mention his name, because he has been banged up pretty much during the year, and here is a game that we have won, we had players stand out with Carter and Marcus Sales and a lot of other players on our football team, but he really did a nice job and I'm very proud of him.

Q. And on the fake field goal, did you have any inkling in that situation that that was a possibility?
COACH MARRONE: We worked on it during the week. I didn't know if they were going to be running or not in that situation, but that was the play that we worked on during the week. You know, you have to be prepared for that.
We wound up making the play on that, and we came up on the top end. I didn't know if they would run or not but we had worked on it.

Q. You mentioned what the run-up to the event was like; what did you make of the atmosphere and environment for the game today?
COACH MARRONE: First of all like, I said before, my grandfather worked here for 15 or 20 years. When I first took the field and I was on the sideline and I looked and I saw the arch, because I was kind of drawn back a little bit, from all of the stadiums I've been into to being on that field, I don't know whether it was more personal or just the fact of the way it was kind of set up.
But I'll tell you this. Hats off to the people, the grounds crew. I think they did a great job. I don't think the field was a factor for either team tonight, obviously with the offensive production for both teams. I think fans were great.
I think it just goes to show you, we have said it before when we played the Big East Tournament here in basketball, a sea of orange at Madison Square Garden; if we ever play football here at Yankee Stadium again and I hope we do, we'll see that sea of orange again.
When people talk about the branding of New York City, I never felt that way. Dr. Gross knows that. Our Chancellor Nancy Cantor knows that. I'm from here; I believe that Syracuse University, this is the largest alumni base so it felt like a home game for us.

Q. Ross missing the point after, for him to come back, hit that 40-yard field goal; talk about the perseverance of a freshman.
COACH MARRONE: It's very difficult for me to stand up here and talk about that because that's a value we instill in all of our players. It's about everything. It's about not performing well on a test and coming back and performing well in that class. It's about not performing well in practice; it's about life. You know, we all get knocked down and it's always a bigger picture rather than football. So for our players to have, you know, let's call it failure, some time of failure occur, I expect them to come back big and they expect themselves to come back, and that's one of the values we instill in our players.

Q. Can you talk a little about your defense, they bent but didn't break and still held on at the end.
COACH MARRONE: We played a very good Kansas State football team that was averaging 30 points a game. They have a lot of weapons on that football team.
So again, we talked about, you know, you look at the beginning of the game, we kicked the ball off, it goes out-of-bounds, they have the ball at the 40, two plays later, score a touchdown. The running back is one heck of a player.
You know, I was coming off the field and you know you really don't see these athletes seeing them on tape and obviously we don't know Kansas State that well because they play in a different conference. And remember when I was walking off the field I looked at him and I said, wheww, pretty good-looking player right there.
Again, hats off to them, they are a good offense. Our defense, they played well when they needed to play well, so I'm proud of them. They played extremely well for us all year. They were the fifth-ranked defense in the country. But we don't put a lot to the rankings. We just put into winning. It's really a team effort. Tonight was a team effort. When they needed to make a stop, they did.

Q. What made you and Nathaniel open up the playbook with so much more?
COACH MARRONE: You know we have had those plays called into years past. It's funny, I sit here as a coach this has happened to me my whole career; you don't score a lot of points, people think you haven't opened up the playbook, but it was opened up. And when you do score a lot of points, they say, what did you do now, you opened up the playbook.
But we have had these plays in and around. We have had a penalty on them -- we had the three-footer (ph) in for three to four weeks. We had the halfback pass for three or four weeks. Sometimes you just need the right situation to be able to run those plays and tonight we had some good situations on them and we were able to execute them, also.

End of FastScripts

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