Football

Penn/Villanova Quotes

Sept. 24, 2015

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Head Coach Andy Talley Opening Statement

Well Penn played really well, they did a terrific job. I think they came in with a purpose; they had a very good game plan, scored right off the bat on us.

I think if you take a look at our team probably we were what you would call flat, for sure. I knew the three games we had coming in and a short time frame to get ready might wear on us a little bit. I really can't explain it, I would like to be able too. It was probably one of the worst performances in my career here. And we are going to stay real positive with our team because I think I have a good group.

The turning point of the game I thought was the fumble, by Javon White. I think if we had gone in there and scored it would have been 17-14 with an opportunity. There was like 6 minutes left in the game to get down and see what would have happened at that point. That was a gut buster for sure.

I thought Zach came on very nicely in the second half. Showed a little more poise, but we did enough negative things in the game to get beat. Penn came in and played, in what I think was the perfect game, and we made a lot of mistakes. The penalties, the turnovers, and when you go back and take a look at that those are the kind of things where you end up really beating yourself. But I think they did a great job.

I am very disappointed in the way we played; I am not so much concerned about them. I think we are such a much better team than we showed tonight. We have to go back to the drawing board. We had three offensive linemen out and John Robertson gone so we need to make the next transition to our new quarterback. We tried to cover a little bit of our tracks in the offensive line. We moved a tight end to tackle but we really played so poorly in the first half; I think we only had the ball five minutes.

So it's all fixable, I think that is the key. Everything I saw tonight we can fix, as I pointed out the players. We are going back into the CAA with one win, and we will play a terrific team in William and Mary. This is one game out of the league that we unfortunately let slide away.

We are all positive; we will gather up on Monday and put the pieces back together again. Zach is coming on as a QB; defense was good, but we strained them too much. You can only strain a good group for so long. I think we pushed the accelerator a little too much tonight.

Question: A lot of new players in the game tonight, what did the short week mean for negative effects for preparing those guys for stepping in for the injured startersââ'¬Â¦

Talley: Well I think one of the problems that we had coming into this short week was we had a lot of starters out. So we really couldn't have physical practices and we went very light, gingerly, just took them through the week; we kind of babied it into the game. And we short of looked that way. We almost played the way we prepared.

We have never had a short week like that and we came off of three rough though games. Connecticut physical game, Fordham is a 10-1 team, will be, and Delaware is as physical as you want to get. Then we had the short week.

We are a better program then that, so if you go back and critique it as a coach that is what we are going to look at. That is why I ripped up the stats and threw them away after the game because that was a throw away game for us. We need to move on.



Penn Coach - Ray Priore

Going into it we knew the great rivalry we've had through the years and all the tough and hard road we've had in the last couple of years when the score has gotten a little bit out of place.

We talked about belief and trust in each other, our system and our coaches and these guys inspired everybody this week. It was unbelievable.

Complete win. Offense defense and special teams. They're a talented talented team year in and year out. So proud of these guys. It tough to comprehend right now. It's been a long time since this has happened.

Penn Coach - Ray Priore

You never know when the first one is going to come. It's got to happen at some point in time. It feels great, obviously. The school paper said the pope is in town and we needed a Hail Mary. God was on our side today.

Not bend but don't break but force another snap. Let them snap it one more time and good things will happen. It's tough to keep drives going that long time after time.

Penn Quarterback - Alek Torgersen

Our mindset coming into the game was to grind it out and go hard every play and do our best.

Penn Defensive End - Tyler Drake

Defensively we knew that we were going to need to force turnovers in order to win the game. In years past we weren't able to do that. Today it really helped our offense and our offense really helped us. It was a complete win.

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Players Mentioned

John Robertson

#19 John Robertson

QB
6' 1"
Senior
Javon White

#11 Javon White

RB
5' 11"
Junior

Players Mentioned

John Robertson

#19 John Robertson

6' 1"
Senior
QB
Javon White

#11 Javon White

5' 11"
Junior
RB