Opening Statement:
“Well, first of all, I can’t say enough about the young men we have in this program right now. The win didn’t surprise me at all. They were dealt a tough situation for 18-22 year-olds on Sunday. I think they got together and asked if I would be interested in being the interim head coach here and of course I said yes. The first thing I told them was that we were interviewing for jobs right now. We started interviewing on Monday. We have two phases. We have Georgia Southern, which we took care of today, and we have Idaho in two weeks. I asked them not to feel sorry for themselves, coaches or anyone else, but to go out there and play like a pro. We’re all getting paid. Even student-athletes are getting paid a little bit (cost of attendance), so I said this is what pros do. They go out there and take care of business. This didn’t surprise me at all because of the week we had starting Monday. We had great energy out there. Our execution was good. We did a lot of situational things to try and help us. We got better today. We weren’t perfect, but it carried on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. When you have those kind of days back to back, you’re going to play well on Saturday. For the most part, we played pretty well today.”
Question on quick success during the start of the game:
“I think we had a lot of energy. I think they believed they were going to win the football game. The kicking game looked like it was going to rear its ugly head again, and it did a little bit, but we got it corrected in the second half. I can’t say enough about Brandon Wright. He did a great job. I asked him to go in there and kick in the second half. He gets a little more height on the ball. We made some nice adjustments, and executed well in the kicking game during the second half. Defense and the offense played well. Since I’ve been here, we throw the ball down the field. Our best players on offense are some guys outside that are playmakers. They have been for three years. We have a couple of guys that are hurt that are instrumental to this program that couldn’t play. Some young kids have stepped up and made some huge strides. We’re going to stay aggressive and throw the ball down the field. They have some big guys inside. We ran the ball well enough to get down hill. Defensively, we swarmed the football for the most part and made some great plays in the second half. We’ve played well on defense all year.”
Thoughts on Rucker’s performance:
“Unbelievable. He’s a leader, and this was it for him. It was important for the coaches and me to send our seniors out with bragging rights in this series. The young guys are going to get to have three or four more years, but the seniors aren’t. Georgia Southern hammered us in the Georgia Dome two years ago. It was one of the worst defeats I’ve ever been involved in. Then we went down to Statesboro and embarrassed them. This was the rubber match, and I wanted to make sure we sent our seniors out the right way. Keith took it upon himself to make sure he did everything he could. This was his last shot. This was the seniors last time playing in the Georgia Dome. They wanted to make it right, and they did. I’m really happy for the seniors. The first thing I told them before we took the field was, ‘We have your back seniors,’ and these young guys are going to make sure you leave tonight with bragging rights against Georgia Southern.”
Question on what this win meant for the program:
“It meant everything. It shows the next head coach what kind of guys he has here. There are good kids in this program, and we have had a lot of injuries. The sky is the limit here. With the addition of purchasing Turner Field, it will level the playing field of recruiting. What that does for young people and their parents is show our commitment to excellence. That’s just the way it is. With Turner Field and the caliber of athletes, we have this program can take off.”
Thoughts on Glenn Smith:
“I can’t say enough about Glenn Smith. He is the most unselfish football player I have ever been around. He asked to play running back last year because he thought he could help us. I went to Coach Miles, and I told him I thought Glenn could help us and that he wants to do that. Then he came in and helped us. Next, we had a lot of injuries at receiver. What did we do? We asked him to come back and play receiver when he was playing running back. Just totally unselfish and a good athlete. It takes a talented athlete to run the football, run routes, catch the ball and break tackles like Glenn does. He’s an outstanding football player, but more importantly, he’s a better person.”
TE Keith Rucker
"I think that at the end of day, getting a victory like that and knowing what that victory means, and the final score, and what it means to the guys in the locker room, what it means to all the younger guys watching the older guys, they go through everything, the pain does not even bother me right now. I am so excited for the guys within that locker room and they all help each other together and stayed together and kept fighting for it. We gave up 17 unanswered points but we held together, and at the end of the game when it really mattered, we stepped up together and made the plays."
On this being the top game of Keith's career and what wisdom he would leave…
"Tell coach to do what he did today. We must keep working, one thing that we want to do is finish out this season on the right note, which means winning these last two games. We have to take a nice trip out to Idaho. We are just going to get back in the weight room, study film, and working out, and we will be ready."
"Two-and-One. We went down there and beat them badly last year and then this year they came up here and we started seeing the photos again of Paulson Stadium North (from 2014), and I think that lit a fire under some guys' butts. We also had the Coach Miles situation going on, and a lot of guys were sad about that and a lot of guys turned that into motivation and so not only was this our bowl game, and a rivalry game, but we were also playing this game for Coach Miles."
QB Conner Manning
“That victory was for Coach Miles. I felt like a lot of players felt the same way. That was for Coach Miles. We love him, we wish he was here, but you know things did not work out, but today’s game was for him.”
On the big lead, and the halftime momentum…
“We started off fast, which was what we were hoping for. We were real aggressive. We sort of slowed down in the second quarter. We knew we had opportunities, we sort of shot ourselves in the foot with some penalties, and not having a conversion on our third downs. We came back in the second half, played our football. We went down the drive and put up points. It was big for our defense, because our defense played great all year, and we knew that if we got them the lead they would shut down.”
On feeling good for today’s game…
“Coming off missing a couple of games, my shoulder has felt the best it has since the beginning of the season. I know a lot of the times we aren’t connecting on the big shots going down the field, in the beginning of the year. However, the only way that can happen is if we continue to build chemistry with the guys. I also feel like offensively throughout the season we kept building off that, and we started landing those shots.”
“I told seniors that this game was for them, and everything that I have done for them for the last two weeks have been for them, especially this game. I am definitely going to miss those guys , and it’s been a heart sharing the field with them and them being able to share the ball in their hands and watch them do what they do, it’s pretty special.”
On this being his first time in the rivalry…
“I really did not know what to truly expect because I was preaching to the team. We had to approach the game being more disciplined and smart. We could not shoot ourselves in the foot and at the end of the day, it’s just another football game. However, you could feel the energy in the building coming out against that team. It meant the whole world to me, and it was for the seniors, and Coach Miles.”
Georgia Southern head coach coach Tyson Summers
Opening Statement
“Tough loss. Tough pill to swallow. Again, I want to say that there are a lot of things that I am proud of. They were down 20-0 only eight minutes into the game, and for the guys to sit there and fight the way they did, play through the way they did, again, I am very proud of that. There were way too many penalties in the game. However, our special teams were stellar…”
Question about how Georgia State could score so many points so early in the game
“Couple things. They came out with a little different game plan than they usually play. We didn’t make appropriate checks and re-adjustments where we needed to, along with some fumbles put us in a tough position, and that’s when you look up, and you are down by 20 points.”
Question about the Georgia Southern defense
“We have to be in position where we can have guys; the tight end had way too many opportunities to catch the ball. We need to have a defender to get on three, and some of them were on first down and some of them were on second down. We just need to make adjustments as we go.”
“We had our linebacker on him (the tight end) majority of the game. We made sure we closed the gap, but we couldn’t make all the necessary adjustments every single time.”
