Music City Bowl Postgame Quotes

Dec. 28, 2000

WEST VIRGINIA HEAD COACH DON NEHLEN

OPENING QUOTE:
"This game was something. First of all I think that Ole Miss and their coaching staff are just dynamite people. The players are dynamite guys and their coaches are really good. We kind of let it all hang out, so to speak, and they played an awful lot of man coverage. It's hard to look on film and really know, but you know our two guys, Khori and that "little guy" can scoot pretty good and Brad Lewis has two hands now. He was able to throw the football for us this game. That helped a lot. We're pleased to have won, we've had a long dry spell. Like I say, we've never played poorly in a Bowl. We've just never won any of the doggone things and for a change we finally won one."

Q: Was it satisfying to go out on top?

A: "Well, I was going to sleep win, lose, or draw, but I'll probably sleep better since we won. That's for sure. Of course it's always a lot more fun to win than lose. That's obvious."

Q: Were you worried when Ole Miss cut into your lead?

A: "Oh, I was worried the whole time. We were soshort with defensive personnel. You know, Grant Wiley broke his leg and that was catastrophic, so it meant both my Mike linebackers were in there playing, and I told Steve to put Collins in and he couldn't put him in because he got knocked out. So that meant both my personal protectors on the punt were gone so that's all I need. We can't punt anyhow. Now I don't have a personal protector, and we just were really hurting. And as you know we don't have more than four or five defensive backs."

Q: What about your emotions now? How does this win feel?

A: "Well, I'm hungry. I know that. It's been a long time since breakfast. You know, it'll probably - you know, I won't miss coaching too much until next fall probably or maybe this spring, and In-coming Coach Rich Rodriquez is one of my guys. I'll go over there and I'll probably -- who knows? I'll probably sneak around and see what they're doing."

Q: What did you tell your team in your final pre-game meeting?

A: "Well, we have a little ritual we go through when we win and we have one when we lose. I just told them basically as a coaching staff we love them all. If we didn't love them, we wouldn't have recruited them. They're our guys -- win, lose, or draw. They're all very, very special to us. You know, one thing as a coach I can't even remember the scores of last year's games. And from two years ago I can't even remember who we played. We get so carried away with playing the game, and what really matters is what this guy next to me (QB Brad Lewis) is going to be doing in five or ten years. That's what he's there for. Football is a game that disappears and we all get bent out of shape on who wins or who loses. But the reason that coaches should be handled a little differently than they are, is when you get a guy who's a good person, I think that helps in handling the kids. So I want these guys to go to school and get a degree and they're just good kids. I love them. I love all of them."

Q: Did you get a lot of hugs from these guys?

A: "A lot of hugs and they were all sweating. It's fun to get one from Wes Ours. Wes Ours is a fun guy. He's a fun guy. If you've never been hugged by a 290-pound bearded sweaty guy, he'd be the guy to hug you, 'cause he is a Teddy Bear."

Q: On Ours' touchdown reception.

A: "You know, we knew that play was going to score. We really did. And you know what, the amazing thing is we stole it from Mississippi State Coach Jackie Sherrill. I saw them running it, and you know when you swipe a play from somebody else it's got to fit in your offense, and I said to myself I can just see that big doggone Ours running down the side line. They'll never guess that we're throwing the ball to him. And lo' and behold it was wide open."

Q: Compare winning this game to your career.

A: "You know, we haven't been very successful in Bowls and this was my last game so this was a big, big win for us, a big win. Anytime you play a team from the Southeastern Conference, it makes you feel good when you can win. Most people think the Southeastern Conference is the best conference in the country. The Big 10 may argue with them some. I think it also says the Big East isn't as bad as most people tell us we are."

WEST VIRGINIA PLAYER QUOTES
RICK SHERROD, DB
(On the early aggressiveness by the West Virginia's defense)
"We wanted to show them that we were here to play. You know, we heard so much about their running back and their quarterback and receivers. We just wanted to come out and make a statement, and that's what we did in the first half. In the second half, I think we kind of let up, thinking the game was over. They came back on us, but we were able to hold them off in the end."

Q: Is it hard to keep the intensity when you see the score and you know that they're so many points behind?

A: "Yeah, I guess so. We were thinking that it was an easy victory. We told ourselves that they were going to give up, but they didn't give up. The score just kept getting closer and closer. We started to worry a little bit. We said somebody had to make a big play, and Lance Frazier made a great play to seal the victory for us."

(On shutting down Deuce McAllister.)
"The plan coming into the game was to not let him get hot. We just wanted to take him out early, and that's what we did. We put them in a passing situation, so that's what they had to do, they had to throw the ball. And that's not what they wanted. They wanted to run the ball. So once we took away the run, all we had to do was defend the pass. And there was no way we could lose."

Q: How important is this win for Coach Nehlen?

A: "Think it's real important for Coach becausehe's been waiting so long for a Bowl victory. I'm just glad that I was able to play on the team to give it to him. I think he was zero for his last eight and it feels good to send him out of here a winner."

WES OURS, FB
(On West Virginia taking advantage of man-to-man coverage.)
"We had to take advantage of that. We've got two great receivers in Brown and Ivy."

Q: You go in confident thinking that you're going to win, but did you think that you would score this many points?

A: "You know, I don't know if we scored this many points all year. Just going in through all the adversity this team has taken in the last couple of months, and to come out with this win, is excellent."

(On his early touchdown)
"I think that set the tone for us, and from there we knew that we were going to come out and play football."

(On his thoughts about Coach Nehlen.)
"Before the game we were in our team meeting and he got a little choked up. I think that shows a lot of character for this man. He brought me here, and he's just a tremendous coach, and I would die for this man. If he needs it, I'm there."

KHORI IVY, WR

Q: Did you have any idea that Wes Ours was that fast?

A: "I always knew Wes Ours could move. When he first came in, he wasn't that big. He was, like, my size. You know, Wes is an athlete. I wish him the best of luck in the future and all of my fellow teammates."

(On what he'll take away from this game.)
"I take away from this game to set the tone, to make big plays. Once we got out on top, we tried to stay on top, and we didn't give up."

Q: Do you think Brad (Lewis) made a statement today about keeping the quarterback job next year?

A: "Oh, definitely. He ran the offense good last year, and he ran it good this year. There were highs and lows, and he kind of struggled this year, not because of his ability, but because of his injury to his hand and things of that sort. So I expect him to be our starting quarterback next year."

Q: Was this a "Win One for the Gipper" kind of a game?

A: "We're glad we got him a win. I'm glad I gotto win, and the rest of my fellow seniors. We all wanted to go out on top."

Q: You had said earlier in the week that you didn't think their passing defense could stick with you. Was it just your speed or did your quarterback have a super game? What accounted for it?

A: "We're just confident. We knew all year long that we could do what we wanted to do at any given situation. It was just all if we had protection and we came together in all three phases of the game."

Q: It just came together tonight?

A: "Yes, it all came together tonight."

ANTONIO BROWN, WR

Q: Was that the best first half of offense you've ever seen?

A: "Not really. We knew they were going to come out 90 percent man-to-man (coverage). And with the ability that we have, man-to-man coverage will work in our favor, and it worked in our favor tonight."

Q: It seems like you were getting wide open on their defense all day. What was the key out there?

A: "It was bump and run all night, us versus them. We knew we had a job to do, so we went out and did what we had to do tonight."

Q: What did it mean for you to get a win in Coach Nehlen's final game?

A: "Coach told us all week don't win for him, win for ourselves. But deep down in our hearts we knew we were going to win this for the Coach."

Q: What about this game personally for you? Would you consider this your best effort?

A: "It was the best team effort."

BRAD LEWIS, QB

Q: Seems like you had guys wide open all day. Did you see something in watching film of Ole Miss that told you that that might be the case?

A: "We knew that coming into this game Ole Miss played man to man and we knew that with Khori Ivy, Antonio Brown, and our tight ends, that they couldn't match up with our speed."

Q: What was it like to go out and win for Coach Nehlen in his final game?

A: "I felt good for him, and I felt good for our seniors. I'm real good friends with the whole senior class. They were really pumped up and they played their hearts out. I'm happy for them. All the hype in Morgantown about this being Coach Nehlen's last game really got us pumped up to play."

Q: What was the atmosphere like on the sidelines when Ole Miss started to come back on you?

A: "Well, we knew that on offense all we had to do was get the ball and run a little bit here and pass a little bit there and get first downs and control the ball on offense and we had the game wrapped up. That's what we did at the end."

Q: Did you feel like this was an audition for you for in-coming Head Coach Rick Rodriguez? You're not the proto-typical Rodriquez quarterback.

A: "You know, all that talk about next year and playing a different kind of offense, that's just not in my head right now. The last month I was just preparing for this game. I was giving all I had to this team, to these seniors, and especially Coach Nehlen because this is the team I'm on now. With the new coach coming in, I'll worry about that when the time comes in the spring."

Q: How much did it mean to win this for the Coach?

A: "Well, first of all I'd like to thank him for recruiting me and giving me a chance to play here. He's the fifth winningest coach in the country. That's really hard to accomplish but he had done that. So with all the emotion, especially this past season and all the adversity we had to go through, I knew I was going to go out and play my heart out. I wanted to walk off this field and know that I played a hundred percent for Coach Nehlen and myself. And with all the hype and all that I'm glad he got out with a victory and that we sent him out with a good Bowl win."

Q: Brad, how did your hand feel?

A: "Well, in warm-ups, it was pretty numb. When I came out there was no color in my hand, it was all white. But, you know, as time went on with the heating pads they had on the side line and in my pouch the blood eventually started coming through and I felt pretty good."

TANNER RUSSELL, RT

Q: Could the game have been any better?

A: "This was great. We came out quick. We did what we wanted to do. Unfortunately we made it interesting, but we still played as a team. Everyone hung together. We needed this, we wanted it more and I think that's why we got them."

Q: Why was it so open offense Ily. Obviously your receivers took advantage of some of the things they were doing defensively.

A: "We have some of the best receiveers there are out there, Antonio Brown, Khori Ivy. Those guys, they go after balls. You've can't guard them. We knew that Ole Miss could not guard them. They knew that they could not be guarded, and we just took advantage of that."

Q: How important was it to get off to a good start emotional wise?

A: "That's always key, no matter what game you play, especially this one. We had a lot of emotion coming into this game. We tried to down play it all week but emotion was high and it helped us."

OLE MISS HEAD COACH DAVID CUTCLIFFE
"The first thing I want to do is congratulate Don Nehlen, his staff and the West Virginia team. They were extremely well-prepared. I knew going in and said all along, he's an outstanding football coach with a good staff and an outstanding team. They played extremely well. I don't know when I've seen a team execute any better in a bowl game, as quickly as they did. We put ourselves in some tough situations. I was proud of our team for fighting back and continuing to fight, even when it really got bleak, further into the second half. I'm real proud of our seniors that we have. We have two outstanding seniors in Deuce McAllister and Romaro Miller. These young men have contributed great numbers to the Ole Miss program, 30 wins in four years, four straight bowl games, more records than I can count as a class. They're very classy young men, the kind of people you want to associate with, the kind of people you're in the business for. And I certainly appreciate that. And, again, my thanks to these seniors and my congratulations go out to Don Nehlen and the West Virginia program, and the coaching profession will certainly miss the class gentleman that he is."

Q: When did you decide to change quarterbacks?

A: "Well, I felt like the game had pretty much gotten out of hand. I talked to Romaro on the sidelines and told him my thoughts and told him I was going to pull him out somewhere in the drive and let Eli play the fourth quarter, an opportunity for him to get some playing time in a tough circumstance, and our team kind of caught fire. When they caught fire, obviously at that time the right thing to do was stay with Eli. It was so cold out there you could hardly get -- after being warmed up, it's not going to be easy to go back out there and play after that kind of a sweat, and it really was -- temperature-wise it was pretty cold."

Q: Coach, it didn't seem like like they were doing anything unusual, anything different in the passing game. Why were they able to execute?

A: Well, they did a good job of taking advantage of some man coverage situations. I thought they a nice job with their motion package and sending people back across the grain, but the most important thing they did, and you just said it, it wasn't that unusual -- execution. Great execution by the offensive front, good protection, great execution by the quarterback, great routes run by the wide receivers. But the quarterback, Lewis, just kept hitting them in stride and just, like I said, they executed as well as any team I've played against on offense in any bowl game that I've been involved with."

Q: Coach, were you surprised at the speed of No. 40, Ours?

A: "Well, I mean, I knew he was a good athlete. He's a big guy that runs well. You could tell on tape that he runs well. But, you know, he had a pretty good headstart. He was pretty open on that."

Q: Coach, were you impressed with the way Eli handled himself?

A: "I think this game is a passing of the torch, no question. It's just part of the naturalness of the last game for these seniors. He handled himself well. As Romaro said, he's made great progress since he's been here. As a back-up quarterback what you have to do is make every day, every practice your game, because you don't know how many snaps you're going to get in a game or a season. And the thing I think we've all seen, Romaro and I personally, is that Eli has managed to do that. He's an outstanding practice player. He's focused, and he continues to get better and gains more confidence as the season goes on. And I think we saw that out there tonight. He was very confident in what he was doing. So that's a positive thing for him to build on, and a positive thing for our program."

Q: Coach, the SEC is 0-3 in the Music City Bowl. Any comment?

A: "Well, they're scoring more points than we are. That's a good conference. They play a good schedule as well, and we just haven't won. I don't think you can take any three of the games and say they had anything to do with each other. It's just a matter of West Virginia played better than Ole Miss tonight."

Q: Coach, when you first started scoring touchdowns towards the end, is there a reason why you didn't go for two?

A: "Yeah, I got a formula, and I wanted to get 19 points before I could go for two and get within 11. And if I went for two early and didn't make it, I couldn't put myself in that position. I knew exactly when I was going to go for two, and I always had that in my mind. So that's why we did it."

Q: At what point were you playing for a comeback as opposed to just a respectable score?

A: "Well, it got pretty intense all of the fourth quarter. It was tough, I'll be honest with you, to make a change at quarterback. I wanted to see if we could go out, and I told Eli, "Let's go out and see what you can do in the fourth quarter. See if you can put 14 up in tough circumstances." We did it so quickly, I knew we were back in the ballgame, and I felt like we had a chance then. We had gotten back to 26 points. It sounds a little ridiculous, but I knew we could just chip away. If we could get to 19, we could score again. And we knew if we scored, we were really back in."

OLE MISS PLAYER QUOTES

ELI MANNING, QB
"We were down a lot. I figured they might try to put me in. I have mixed feelings right now. We lost the game, but I was pleased with the way I did. I went out there and tried to make some plays. I made a couple, but I tried to have fun out there and just tried to -- I wasn't really expecting a comeback. I was just trying to get there and score a couple of points."

Q: The first touchdown, was it a relief you finally got it under your belt?

A: "It's a relief to finally get one. You can't imagine the feeling it was, the very first touchdown. I was just glad to get out there, get some playing experience and just try to get some plays experience toward next year."

Q: The way you guys rallied, does it make it better for the off-season, looking ahead to next year, at least for respectability?

A: "I think so. I think it will just give - it will show our players what we have to do next year to get better, how to get prepared for a bowl game, all the hard work we have to do in the spring so next year we can get to a bowl game and if we get there, we can win one."

Q: What play was that on the first touchdown? What kind of play was that

A: "Just a little curl and post."

L.J. TAYLOR, WR
"At the end we can say we did what we could do. We can play a better game. And when Eli got in the thing, things started to happen. I liked how the receivers, we all made plays. That just showed -- if we had just started that at the first of the game, we could have made it more of a game than this."

Q: Just what happened in that first half? I know they made a lot of big plays. Were you guys stunned when you went into halftime?

A: "Yeah, I think that's what it was. A lot of people were just stunned. We didn't know what really happened. We had to get some kind of motivation. I kept walking up and down the sidelines trying to get these guys motivated. It finally came together, but it was a little too late."

ROMARO MILLER, QB

Q: What did they do defensively to frustrate your offense?

A: "Well, I think, coming to the game, they gave us the looks that we figured we were going to get. We got a couple of drives going in the first half, putting three points on the board. Those were the drives we needed to put seven points on the board. That was pretty much offensively what went on in the first half of the game."

Q: Romaro, could you reply on Eli Manning's play?

A: "Eli's made tremendous progress. From the time he came in as a freshman and to where he is now, you could tell the difference in that he's ready to take over this program and hopefully take it to the next level, and hopefully Coach will continue to bring good players with him and they'll get Ole Miss back to where it needs to be."

Q: What can you say about your experience at Ole Miss, this being your last game?

A: "When me and Deuce were walking down here, I told him, "This is the first time we don't know where we're going to be next year." But Ole Miss has been a great experience for me, talking about the friendship I've had with Deuce and Metcalf and all those guys. It's been a tremendous experience and one I'm most definitely not going to forget."

DEUCE McALLISTER, RB
"I would like to take the opportunity to say to Ole Miss thank you for giving me an opportunity, because where I came from, I was not looked at as one of the top backs coming out of high school. And I was just grateful for the opportunity, the way the family accepted me. And that's what the university is, a big family. The guys on the team, we're a close-knit family. It's hard to walk away, but obviously you have to. My eligibility is up, and it's time to start to feed my family now. You take great pride in wearing those colors and playing every day. And once you have to walk away, you have to let it go."

Q: Deuce, what do you think Eli did differently in the fourth quarter to get you all back in the game?

A: "He ran the offense. Guys just started making plays, in the first half we came away with field goals in the red zone. I thought we should have scored touchdowns. We made plays in the second half when Eli was in there. Like Coach said, regardless of who's in there as quarterback, we've got to make plays, and we just didn't do it in the first half."

Q: Do you know the reason for the slow start by the offense?

A: "You can't really describe how guys are going to play, especially with the long layoff. You hope you're going to come out and play well, but I think at times we played fairly well and at times, guys kind of pointed their fingers and questioned the system instead of going out there and trying to execute as best as possible."

Q: What do you mean by pointing fingers? Did guys start getting frustrated?

A: "We're a team that prides ourselves in going out there and playing well, and obviously when you get down in a hole, guys want to make plays. So that's where pointing fingers goes. No one on our is going to quit for anybody. Some guys are going to ask each other to step up, and that's when pointing fingers happens. And that's what happened. Once it did happen, you can see what type of team that we really have."

Q: Did you get vocal?

A: "I said a couple of things because that's my job as a senior. I'm here to lead this team. I said a couple of things. Some guys responded. Some guys didn't. That's part of life. Just like in your profession, everybody's not going to do what you think is right, but that's life."

Q: Why did you have difficulty getting on track in the open field?

A: "They did a good job scheme-wise. At times we had a chance to go one on one, but at times we'd miss a block. I can't really talk until I look at the film and say why we weren't able to get a lot of one-on-one match-ups. They did a good job with their defense."

Q: Deuce, do you think this performance has shown NFL stock?

A: "There's enough tape out there to show what type of player I am, the character and everything. You can ask me and talk to me and see what type of guy I am, but if there's not enough tape out there to say what type of player I am, then I invite all of you all to my personal workout and you can see then."

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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