TEXAS TECH ONE-ON-ONE QUOTES

HEAD COACH MIKE LEACH

On Texas Tech’s overall team performance: “A lot of times in the first half and even a little bit in the second half, we pressed a little too much. I thought it was unfortunate. We wanted to win real bad, but at some point you have to relax and not worry about mistakes and just let it fly a little bit. I felt we could have done a better job.”

On the winning Alabama field goal: “I had high hopes for that thing missing when it came off his foot, but it kept carrying.”

On Texas Tech’s offensive performance: “It was just a matter of inconsistency. É About the time we would throw and catch well, we didn’t protect as well as we would like. É We played a lot of great teams this year. The Big 12 was loaded with great defenses. The fact that Alabama played real well on defense, and the fact that we would certainly like to have a few plays over, I don’t think that takes away from either side. I think both teams are good teams. Do I wish our timing had been sharper? Yeah, I certainly do. But that’s the way it goes.”

On the Alabama secondary performance: “The thing that Alabama did a good job of is that they didn’t leave you really any slack. É It was a battle of execution. Alabama’s defense executed better than we did offensively. É We had some key deals to keep drives going, and they had some key deals to stop them. It was frustrating because I never felt like we were really clicking. Some of that is what is tricky about bowl games. You sit for a month and a half, and you never know how it’s going to come out.”

QB CODY HODGES

On the Alabama defense’s reaction to a reverse play late: “Anytime a team plays a lot of man coverage, they’re going to pursue. They’re going to flow well. It’s something we had worked on. É I don’t think you can run three or four reverses a game and get away with it. Obviously, we saved it for a big play like that, and it worked to our advantage.”

On Alabama’s final field goal kick: “No offense to him, but that’s the ugliest kick I’ve ever seen. But he had enough leg É and it went through, and here we are now.”

On his Texas Tech career: “It has been a blessing. It has been more than I could have ever asked for. It’s not how you would want to end your career. But in a couple of weeks, I’ll probably look back and really soak it all up. If someone before the season had said, ‘You’re going to go 9-2 and have a chance to play Alabama in the Cotton Bowl,’ I would have taken that.”

On not starting his first several years at Tech: “It’s tough hanging around for four years, but I had the opportunity to watch three great quarterbacks in front of me. É When I came to Tech, I felt like that was the right place for me. My faith is real important to me, and I trusted God that I was going to get a chance. I put my faith in that. I got here for one year, and I feel like I made the best of it.”

On whether the Cotton Bowl loss was his most frustrating game: “No. Probably the Oklahoma State game was more frustrating. I mean, we knew Alabama was going to be tough and they were going to do things. We moved the ball up and down the field all day. It was things like a false start penalty there, a bad pass here. We never made the right play when we needed to. We didn’t have any of the third-down conversions and stuff like that. We knew it was going to be tough.”

On the injury to his knee: “I just got helmet-to-knee contact. The reason I came out was that I just was not able to play on it. My knee was just giving out. They braced it and taped it, and I felt like I had a little more. So I’ll get an MRI in a couple of days and just see what happens. É I had three and a half minutes left of college football, and I wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines. I mean Graham (Harrell) is a great quarterback, and he’s going to have a great future for three years. But I wasn’t about to let my teammates down and watch them play with me on the sideline.”

SS VINCENT MEEKS

On whether he might have an NFL future: “I’m going to keep working and see where it takes me. My Granny always told me that Jesus has a plan. I don’t know what that plan is, either, so I’m just going to follow the direction that he gives me and see where it takes me.”

On the Alabama’s offensive strategy: “Everything was pretty much what we had planned for. É They ran a screen that we hadn’t seen on film, but the way they blocked it was awesome. They tried to run it again in the second half, and we played it perfectly. That was the one play they ran we didn’t know about.”

If he thought holding Alabama to 13 points would be enough to win the game: “If I could predict the future, I would say if we could hold them to 13, I’m pretty solid we’re going to (win). Everybody did their part on offense and defense and special teams. But there were opportunities we didn’t capitalize on. They muffed two punts, and we should have had them. Those were some of the opportunities we should have capitalized on. They capitalized on their opportunities, and we didn’t.”