Fresno State Athletics
Pat Hill Quotes From Monday's Press Luncheon
10/27/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 27, 2003
On the Rice game
"We've had a lot of time to sit down and digest that game, and I feel the same way about that game as I did when it was over. I was really proud of the way we played in the last five minutes of that football game. I thought we played very well in the first half. Except for the first drive, we had four straight scoring drives, something that we haven't done much of all year. Second half, we came out and the third quarter was just a disaster for us. We had a lot of problems stopping the option on the perimeter and we had a very hard time offensively."
"Like our season, we were up and down. I don't think we've had a game yet where we've put four quarters together. The last five minutes of the game we really played well and hopefully we can build off that because we played well in all phases on a lot of must-win downs. I was very proud of the way they responded."
"Then, in the fourth quarter, Rice had many opportunities to win the football game and we had to make a lot of plays. All three phases contributed to the win. Defensively, we had the stop on fourth down and forced a fumble. On special teams we had to block a kick, kick a field goal and on offense we had to have two drives over 75 yards for a touchdown, a two-point conversion and set up a field goal."
"That type of win is hopefully the confidence builder we need let our guys know that if we are close in the fourth quarter we have a chance to win. This team is going to have to be close in the fourth quarter to win football games. We can not get into those games where we are trying to play catch-up."
"They played a heck of a football game. That was a big win for us. That could've been an end to our season if we had lost."
"I'm very, very pleased with the win. We had a lot of new bodies in the lineup, and I don't really know who's going to be ready for SMU because we're a little banged up right now. But we'll have it all sorted out by Saturday."
On Brett Visintainer's game-winning field goal
"We wanted to make sure we had one chance from the middle of the field to win the game or go into overtime and that's exactly what we did and it worked."
On the team's clock management down the stretch
"One thing I was really happy about was executing a two-minute type of offense. I thought the kids did a really good job with it. There was no panic."
"Over our seven years here, time management has never been a complaint. That game was about as well as you could time manage a game and get the win the way we did."
On the the SMU running game
"The one thing SMU can do with [RB Keylon] Kinkade is they can run the football, and the one thing we haven't done a great job of is stopping it. So the match-up is going to be tough for us."
More thoughts on SMU
"SMU is going to be a tough game for us, I promise you that. It'll be very physical. They play hard on defense. We're going to have to buckle it up tight for this one. Winning is all that matters in this game. We just have to find a way to win the game. If we just keep winning, we're in it."
On the emergence of Matt Rivera in the offense
"Matt Rivera has been great for us. The reason he plays so many plays is when we are forced into a two-minute situation he's our best pass blocker. He unsorts things and he does a lot of things in protection that the common fan doesn't see."
On potentially throwing the ball downfield more this week
"Hopefully this week we can do a little bit more down the field with Paul. The long ball has not been really accurate yet but I think that will come with time. I think that Paul's arm is getting stronger and stronger. I was really happy what he did in the short passing game early in the game. I think he's gotten better each week. He's made great strides for four weeks."
"I think he's right where he should be at the start of a season. Four weeks is the length of training camp and hopefully we'll see big changes in his ball coming off his hand on the intermediate and deep routes. I'm really proud of the way he handled the two-minute drives at the end of each half. The accuracy on the short passing game is very good. The touch is there, now we have to start zipping it and I really believe we'll get that this week. I think we're ready for it."
