Coaches Review The Battle…..
| Lou Holtz |
Notre Dame Head Coach Lou Holtz
(On Sanson) “He got into the first game and made two field goals, and he made this one. And, he hasn’t made one in practice all year.
“He kicks more foul balls than any placekicker in the history of the game.”
(On the game) “Notre Dame has been involved in a lot of great games. There have been a lot of great games in this stadium. But, I don’t know when I’ve been involved in one that went back and forth with the momentum and was this well played by both sides.
“For us to come back the way we did, I’m very proud of our football team. I knew it would be a real hard football game, we knew that Texas had a good football team, and they were.”
(On the Texas defense) “They fouled us up with their defense a little bit in the first half. They changed their defense a little bit over what we anticipated what they had been running. When we fell behind 14-3 in the first half, it didn’t look good, but our team answered with what may have been the most critical drive as we’ve had in two years that made it 14-10.”
(On the fake punt) “That was to be a fake punt. We were supposed to act like it was a punt and the sprinter runs downfield and the punter throws the ball like it was a high kick. But he’s not supposed to throw it out of the endzone — he’s supposed to throw it to the 10-yard line.
“If he could have kicked it out of the endzone, we would have punted it. Our guy was supposed to go down and catch it or get bumped for pass interference.”
(On the tying touchdown) “We got down to the two-inch line and jumped offsides, which is a tribute to the Texas crowd. It was loud, we couldn’t hear, we jumped offsides, we went back to the five-yard line and ran the option. Our fullback went the wrong way and consequently Autry Denson had to beat the guy into the endzone. Autry made a great effort.”
Texas Head Coach John Mackovic
(On the game) “That was a heckuva game. I’m disappointed in only that we lost it. We’ve won some games like that, for instance, Virginia last year. But sometimes they go the other way.”
(On the rankings) “We had a lot of things at stake, put us in the same category as Colorado. All Top 10 teams lost a game early on, and now we can see where we go from here.”
(On mistakes) “We probably made some mistakes, like holding costs us some runs. And we didn’t get as much protection for the passer in the second half.”
(On Notre Dame) “Give credit to Notre Dame. They took advantage of some bad breaks on our part. Like the interception and 22-yard punt.”
(On strategy at the end of the game) “We were trying to throw the ball a couple of times. We thought that if we could get down inside the 35, Phil (Dawson) would have a good shot at it.”