Sept. 29, 2007

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OXFORD, Ohio -

Miami head coach Shane Montgomery:

OVERALL THOUGHTS ON THE GAME... "Obviously, a huge win for us today, we came off two very disappointing performances against two very good football teams. Cincinnati has a chance to go 5-0 today and then Colorado beats Oklahoma so I think they were a lot better than people thought they were. We did not play very well the past two games."

"We knew it was going to be a tough ball game today against a team that had a huge win last week at Louisville and probably had a lot of momentum. I felt like we really needed to get some confidence back. We had been lacking confidence the past couple weeks. The biggest thing for us, I felt like we had to come out and play a really good first half. We did. Overall it was a huge win for us. Hopefully it will help us getting back into Mid-American Conference play next week."

ON THE MIAMI DEFENSE... "The defense did a very good job of eliminating the big plays in the first half. That was one area that they just killed Louisville with last week. They took a few shots on us but we were able to play very good pass defense."

ON THE MIAMI RUNNING GAME... "We got the running game going today. Coming off the past two games, it was not that we had not run the ball effectively; it was just that we did not get to run very much. We got out of our game plan the past two weeks and I thought it was imperative that we got the run going. We did a tremendous job today. The offensive line did a tremendous job."

ON THE MIAMI PASSING GAME.... "We did not make as many plays in the passing game as we would have liked, but we did what we needed to, but we left a lot of points out there. We had some very costly turnovers and penalties on offense that held us back from scoring more points."

ON THE MIAMI DEFENSE... "We finally got some better pressure on the quarterback which is something that we did not do in the first four weeks."

ON Mike Kokal PLAYING THE ENTIRE GAME AT QUARTERBACK ... "We felt, as an offensive staff, with the running game being what it was, that we might have needed the quarterback to run the ball a little bit more and Mike fits that style."

ON Cory Jones... "He is a guy that were are going to need, along with Austin Sykes, to keep improving, while also trying to get Thomas Merriweather as many snaps as we can."

Syracuse Head Coach Greg Robinson

On the loss to Miami today... "I am disappointed, I can tell you that much. I feel bad about this loss. For our team to flip-flop around after such a big win last week just wasn't good enough. I can sit here and try to blame players and all that, but we just didn't play the game on Saturday the way it was supposed to be played. This was just a very disappointing loss and we have to regroup next week for West Virginia at our place."

On his decision to punt on 4th and one late in the game... "I should have gone with my gut and went for it. But, I thought the defense could hold them off and then we would get good field position. It didn't work out that way."

On Syracuse's rush defense today... "It wasn't much and I wish it was a lot better than it was. We have to play a whole lot better than that to win games."

Jameel McClain #52

On the loss to Miami... "I don't know what happened today. Honestly, I just didn't think we brought our best game, or our best effort. It started at the beginning and it never really changed. That is our fault, it's our fault for not coming out and playing harder."

On why Syracuse didn't come up with a better performance... "I'll take responsibility for the way we played today. As a senior, and as a captain, it's our job to step it up to the best of our abilities. I guess I believe I just didn't step it up."