Week 2 Press Conference, September 7, 2010
Georgia State head coach Bill Curry met with the media to preview this week's game, and he was joined at the podium by redshirt freshman running back Parris Lee, who scored two touchdowns in the Panthers' inaugural game victory.
Head Coach Bill Curry
Opening Comments...
"Our first order of business was to get our team's feet back on the ground because as wonderful as last Thursday night's win was, and it was in every way, it was also an illusion. The illusion being that we are suddenly a good, polished football team. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we've had to do is go on the practice field and point that out and make that vigorously clear. We still have people that are unsure about assignments and little things that absolutely have to be buttoned up, especially by this time in the season.
With Lambuth, another small NAIA university and one that has been through a lot of turmoil in recent months, you think you know what you're going to see when you put the tape on and when you do, they are surprisingly good physically. I know I said that I thought Shorter would be four quarters and a gut-check for us and I really thought they would. Had the game started out a little differently, it may have been one of those things. I expect Lambuth can give us more trouble because they are more physical up front on offense and defense. Their o-line and d-line are both surprisingly big and agile. The two inside people on defense are outstanding and I think could play at most levels. Not all, but most levels. We knew Lambuth was good on offense. They were great last year, but they lost some of their fire power. They finished the year ranked sixth in the NAIA with a 12-1 record and they come back ranked sixth again. They got beat by Arkansas Tech, a strong Division II team, last Saturday night, but they are physically our equal and maybe superior to us in some areas this time. What we have got to do is keep executing.
The biggest surprise to me in the game Thursday night was the fact that we had zero turnovers. When I saw all the hoopla and I saw the 30,000 people I said, 'Well, this is a mixed bag. Our guys are going to be so jacked up that we are going to have a hard time containing ourselves.' We didn't. We handled the ball well. We didn't take away as many turnovers as we would have liked. We handled the ball well in the kicking game with mostly true freshmen returning punts and kick-offs. I was very proud of them. We had some long returns because of good execution and we made ourselves look very smart by moving #7, Parris Lee, from wide receiver to running back. He made a lot of his yards on his own. I told our running backs coach Todd Perry this morning, 'I want you to tell Rosevelt Watson where to run on this play and I want you to tell Sam Burkhalter where to run on that play. I don't want you to say anything to Parris Lee. Just hand him the ball.' Parris has such marvelous instincts, peripheral vision and the capacity to change directions so quickly and run with power and acceleration that what you see out there is the genuine item, a true, instinctive running back. It's a blessing and we are just very excited to have him here. We expect Lambuth to look at the tape and be delighted to see that we have a lot of weaknesses. We think we know what they are and we think we know what they will try to exploit. We have been working very, very hard on the practice field this week to get ourselves to the next step forward, which is to improve in the areas of tackling, taking the ball away and completing assignments on offense.
We will start with the same quarterback. This time, it appears that Star Jackson will be ready to play. That is not to say that he will. He may. He has shown a leap forward this week on the practice field. Picking up a brand new system is not an easy thing, and being around a new bunch of guys and having to drive from one place to another in Atlanta traffic is not an excuse for what happened with him last week, but that's just a fact of life when you move to a city this size and you haven't lived in one like it before. We should have him available the whole game, but we will start with Drew Little. Kelton Hill will play for sure. The way the game goes will dictate where we go from there. The other starting line-ups should be very similar to what they were last Thursday night. We have a couple of potential injury situations. We hope that the guys will be OK, but we aren't sure. We are not going to talk about that just yet."
On how scheduling Lambuth came about...
"Shorter was scheduled before we got here, but most scheduling that is done in this kind of situation, meaning, a situation in which you really don't have a league or even a format or context for scheduling happens because some coach knows another coach. We knew some people that were coaching at Lambuth and Lambuth was a good football team at the NAIA level. We had an opening. This actually was an open week if you look at some of those early schedules. Cheryl [Levick] said, 'Do you want to play that week?' I said, 'Yeah, we probably should.' There was just so much going on, but we signed with Lambuth and wondered for a while whether they would be able to field a team back in the spring, but we learned in June that they would. We are happy for them and look forward to playing them."
On why Shorter did so well rushing Thursday night...
"They just blocked us. They blocked us, we missed tackles and we really didn't have a good game. If you look at the score, you would think that we played an outstanding defensive game, but we did not at all. We are not pleased, at all, with what we did on defense, we are not pleased with our running game on offense and we're not pleased with the diversity of our passing game. Part of it is because the game went like it did and we had a lead. We were anxious to risk that. We were doing well in the kicking game and playing field position. We managed to score periodically and it was almost spaced out as if we had planned it. You can't plan things like that. It was not an outstanding performance in any way except that the crowd was great and the score was nice."
On whether he will experiment more with the passing game this week...
"We had a plan and we had hoped to limit what we did to a very few things. We were successful in that because of the score. We did not go down the field a great deal and when we did, it was a sure thing. It was Jordan Giles running alone with four verticals and Drew Little doing a great job of looking off the free-safety. He had one near interception where he knew as soon as he let go of the ball that he shouldn't have. It was on the same route, but to another person. Other than that, we didn't really take that many chances. We handed it off, basically. The primary thing was that we wanted our guys to experience a win in front of that crowd. Depending on how the game goes this week, there is a lot more in our offensive package and defensive too. There is a whole lot more in the defensive package than we showed against Shorter. Part of that was dictated by the fact that Shorter runs the triple-option. We probably should have used more than we did because they did gain a lot of yards on us."
On having to bring the team back to reality after their first win...
"I made a lot of threats and then followed through. We have the practice broken down into segments and when we have a segment that is not acceptable, I may decide that we are going to do it again. We practiced certain periods repeatedly because what we were doing was not acceptable. Football, of all the sports, is the one that is most predicated on the quality of each repetition in practice. A coach is a person that can take a problem on the field and make it disappear. A coach can take a team to a place that they can't get by themselves. If you are not doing that, then you are not coaching. We weren't doing that.
The guys' heads were all filled with balloons and happy thoughts and how wonderful we all are. My job is to teach them reality and the reality is that we are still an infant football team and very vulnerable to anybody. Anybody we play can beat us unless we play at our very best, don't turn it over, create turnovers, play field position, be great in the kicking game, stop the run, some combination of all those things. We did some of them. We did enough to have a convincing win the other night, but we certainly didn't come close to doing all of them. With young minds, it is very easy to come on the field complacent and thinking, 'OK, now we've got it, now it's not going to be so hard.' Once the coaches started cranking up the volume and the repetitions, then we went quickly from complacency to self-pity. That is what human beings do. That is why most human beings shouldn't play football. It's dangerous if you are complacent or you feel sorry for yourself. We were doing both those things. We did better today. A head coach can generate the kind of passion, fear and motivation to make those things happen. A team matures when the leadership of the team generates the motivation of practice from within. We are not close to that yet, but we will get there. We will get to where we practice the way that you are supposed to play because you are always supposed to play like you practice."
Running back Parris Lee
On moving from receiver to running back in the preseason ...
"In high school, I played a lot of running back and slot receiver. When I came to Georgia State, the coaches wanted me in space. Slot receiver was the best fit at the time. There was one day in practice where coach asked me, 'would you like to play a little running back?' and I said, 'sure.' I basically learned the system in a couple of weeks. I stayed after practice with the coaches and worked harder than I ever had before. It showed last Thursday."
On his thoughts when walking on the field for the first time...
"It was totally emotional. I've been here for a whole year and the build-up before the game was just remarkable. It was something that I will remember for the rest of my life. Being with guys that I've watched grow since we were freshmen, it was just so emotional. I'm just so excited to be a part of the Georgia State family.
On what practice was like following the win...
"It was exciting because we knew we were coming into another week of practice and getting prepared for a game. We just needed to stay humble and understand that this was only one game and that we have plenty more games ahead of us. It was hard. We had to work on a couple of things and we will be OK."
On what he thought he did well and what he could improve from the first game...
"I felt like I was really focused and I was well-prepared for what I was in store for. Me personally, I feel that I could do a little better on my blocking and picking up the blocking schemes a little bit better. I have been working on it hard this week because I know these guys are going to be really good, they are going to be hard and they are going to be physical. I have to get my mind right for Lambuth."
