Houtson Nutt comments transcript

OPENING COMMENTS
That's a sweet, sweet victory. Winning is really precious. That was a very, very hard-fought ballgame and I was just so proud of the way our guys never gave up, just competed. A lot of people had probably written our guys off. Playing a team like that, nobody gave them one chance to win and it just shows a lot of heart. You just keep asking for it and you keep working at it and you never give up. There are so many heroes today. So many heroes. From our punt coverage, kickoff coverage, our extra-point team. Our defense was just phenomenal. We felt like we put them in so many bad situations but they just kept fighting and fighting. Robby [Hampton] has not practiced all week and his arm was very, very sore, very difficult for him to throw the ball. Maybe 10 to 15 yards was really the farthest he could throw it accurately. That's difficult. I still love Zak Clark and John Rutledge. Zak's going to grow from this game, made some mistakes but he also did some good things. He's going to be fine. That was a great win for our program.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT DEFENSE, SPECIFICALLY WHO STOOD OUT?
Quinton Caver. Randy Garner really showed up today, I thought. Jermaine Brooks, Raymond House, Kenny Hamlin and Tony Bua, those guys just continue to make plays. And Orlando Green, to me, showed up.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE PHILOSOPHY AND WHAT YOU WANTED TO DO DEFENSIVELY?
John Thompson has had a lot of experience against Mississippi State and has really been successful with lesser talent. We let him have his plan and with a lot of input from Bobby Allen. Both those guys worked great today together. You have that mixture that he has, I think it created some problems for them, kept them off balance. Then [assistant coach] Bill Johnson, you've got to give him credit for making that push on those extra points and field goal blocks. They work on that every day, and he's been saying for four months, 'This will be a difference in one of the games.' Today was that day.

WERE YOU MORE AGGRESSIVE ON DEFENSE?
We always try to be aggressive. We hadn't played good at times but today we just really challenged our guys to play their best, play their heart out. I can live with whatever happens as long as I know they're giving it to us. Last week, I was disappointed with the way we played and the way we tackled and just was very honest with them. I want a hard-hitting group ... and they practiced like that this week and took it to the field. I was really proud of them to hold them to 68 [rushing] yards. Their offense is good this year. They're very, very talented.

IS THIS AS SATISFYING A VICTORY AS YOU'VE HAD UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES?
Oh, yeah. Losing's tough. Losing's very, very difficult and very hard. I hated for our guys, especially our seniors, to hear some of the things they had to hear. You lose confidence. It creates doubt when you lose. You try to tell them to hang in there, hang in there. The only thing we knew as a coaching staff was to keep going, keep believing, keep fighting. Today was just satisfying to get the monkey off our back where y'all won't have to say, 'Another road loss, a string of such and such.' Y'all can't say that again. Y'all have to go stop that today. I'm excited about that.

This article was published on Sunday, November 19, 2000

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