Miami vs. Akron postgame quotes
11/15/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 15, 2007
Miami University Head Coach Shane Montgomery: "I told our guys in the locker room that, last year, that is a game that we do not win. It was not pretty. It was pretty by the defense. It was not pretty by the offense. With the discrepancy in turnovers, to think that our defense held them to zero points, our defense did a tremendous job. I am really proud of our football team, because the way things were going, we could have hung our heads. Our team believes in each other, believes in our staff, and just keeps fighting."
,b>On the play of the Miami defense: "The defense just kept coming out and playing and eventually made the play of the game."
On the play of the Miami offense: "We struggled to move the ball in the first half. When we did move the ball, we shot ourselves in the foot. You have got to give credit to their defense. We felt like their defense was good, going into the game. They play a different type of defense, a 3-3-5, that you do not see a lot of. They blitzed us a lot. They challenged us by playing a lot of man coverage and they were successful. We did not make enough plays in the passing game when we had the opportunity."
Miami Senior Defensive Lineman Craig Mester: On scoring the game-winning touchdown and the first touchdown of his football career: "I could not have written a better script myself. I cannot even think about it right now. I am in shock. I dropped a possible interception at Ball State, last year I dropped one against Western (Michigan), and they year before that, I dropped a possible interception at Ohio State. All the guys were saying that I have stone hands. Generally, I would think about landing on it, but I just saw the end zone. It was a fire zone, so I was up, trying to keep contain. Clayton came back and knocked the ball loose. We had not gotten a lot of pressure on him up until then, but it was just the right play."
Miami junior linebacker Clayton Mullins: On causing the fumble that resulted in the game-winning touchdown: "It feels pretty good right now. We keep ourselves in first, control our own destiny, we just did whatever we had to do to win the game."
Miami sophomore quarterback Daniel Raudabaugh: "On offense, we did not execute as well as we could have today. I tried to force some balls in there inside the red zone. When we see the defense out there playing with as much intensity as they are, we trust those guys."
University of Akron head coach J.D. Brookhart "Our team fought very hard they just could not convert when we had our opportunities. The defense rallied and played a great, great game against the type of offense we have struggled with. Despite it all we still had our chances to the very end."
On the decision to bring in Carlton Jackson as quarterback who ended up fumbling the ball: "I thought we needed to change things up because we were not having success moving the ball. That decision bit us."
