Bowling Green State University Athletics
Urban Meyer Press Conference
October 17, 2001 | Football
Oct. 17, 2001
Urban Meyer Weekly Press Conference
"We have now had two losses in the last three games and you have to regroup and come back and play a MAC East opponent after a tough loss. The loss was extremely disappointing, but the effort was there once again in the way we performed. Turnovers and penalties were the difference."
"When you have a setback, you have a tendency to evaluate everything you are doing in the program. The thing that I have to keep forcing myself to do is to keep thinking about building this program up. Right now we are eight scholarships below where we should be, and this is a program where you have to fight for everything you have. We have 14 seniors playing excellent football for us and have some young guys that are getting better and a bunch of freshman that are playing college football for the first time."
"We always give credit when credit is deserved, and I think that Coach Darnell has built a program, and it is not by accident. That team has been built over years and hopefully we can build a program similar to that. You see depth and you see guys who know how to win and I'm sure that they have their full allotment of 85 scholarships just like every other team in the conference."
On the challenge the players have had to face:
"We challenge them and expect them to play much better. We have got to compete and play better this week to win. We are taking each game at a time and we just want to go out there and win this game at Akron."
On having a playmaker:
"I think that the drives that Josh Harris put together were spectacular when we were down 30-14. I'm not the most positive guy in the world, but something kept telling me that if we could get one drive together, then we would be back in the game. I think there are some positives, but I am still waiting for that one guy to come down in the end zone with two minutes left to win the game. I think we have some very good players. I think we have some guys in our locker room that could be those players that make a great play to win the game."
On how you would grade the team right now:
"I think that we are in the B range right now. The reason is that I think the goal was not the win/loss record, but to develop an offense. It takes a while for the new coaches to develop that, and I think that we have done a good job so far. I think we need to eliminate interceptions because right now 10 is too many. I think that you implement an offense and we are doing that. The second thing is that we have to play as hard as we can and there have been very few times if any that I look at a kid and he isn't selling his soul. Recruiting is very important in the next few years."
On John Gibson:
"He is becoming a very good running back. He is running hard and our offensive line is making some holes for him. The last two weeks in a row, we have rushed for over 200 yards against two good run defenses. John Gibson had a rough summer, did not have good two-a-days, but he stuck around and worked hard. John and I have a great relationship right now and he is a quality person that has turned into a quality back. He averaged 7.3 yards per carry against WMU."
On Akron:
"In my mind Akron is one of the top teams from top to bottom in this conference. They are better than we are. They have more depth and they have won 13 of 16 games in the MAC East in the last few years. It's not by accident. They are doing a good job with their program. This game is as big and important to us as when we played Marshall."
