Georgia State Head Coach Trent Miles
Opening Statement
“Well my hat’s off to San Jose State. They did an excellent job defensively, stopping us from rushing the ball and throwing the ball, moving the ball. We were unable to convert on third downs. We were one of 10 on third-down conversions. They killed us with the time of possession, and they did an excellent job of getting us off the field offensively. And then at the end, they did what they needed to do to move the ball and score and making it the situation where we didn’t have enough time to come back. So my hat’s off to them and I wish them the best and I’m very proud of our team. Disappointed in some of the emotions that get into some of our guys. I’ve got to do a better job of not making that happen and that’s not indicative of who Georgia State is or our program.”
On the decision to go for it on fourth down…
“We put the ball in the hands of the best player in our conference, the best player on our offense and on our team – Player of the Year. We had a guy that was one of the best receivers in the nation running wide open for a touchdown and it just didn’t work. If the ball was about six inches shorter, it’s a touchdown. We’re back in the lead and everybody says what a great play call that was made. But he over threw him, and that’s football. We hadn’t shown anything running the football that we were going to stuff it down their throat and get it. We ran it the play before and got about an inch. We had it pretty well set up and I don’t fault the call at all. I thought Luke Huard made a good call. The guy was wide open for a touchdown and we just didn’t execute it and that’s something that we had done all season long. That’s football. That’s the way it is. We were one of 10 on conversions, so that didn’t help.”
On what they did to try to take a lead…
“Well we did everything. We tried intermediate game; we tried quick game; we tried drive concepts, shallow crosses, verticals. They did a really good job of coming out and rushing three guys and dropping eight. Again, they played, at the beginning of the game, they played a defense that they never shown on film so I thought our coaches did a good job going in and making adjustments to get us to be able to move the ball against it and put some points on the board but they were way off. They give a lot of things and drop guys underneath the underneath stuff. If that happens and you don’t have the ability to run the football, it makes it for a long day and when you rush 23 yards on 20 carries, that really makes it rough.”
On what was said in the locker room after the game…
“I said that I’m proud to be their coach; I was very proud of them. I was disappointed. I’m not disappointed in the fact that we lost the game. That happens. The disappointing part, anything that I was disappointed in, was letting the emotions get the best of you and getting penalties, penalties at the end of the game. Get a penalty when we threw the interception and a couple of the penalties earlier. Young, immature decisions that don’t represent the class that our university has and our program has. That’s part of what I said to them, but at the same time I’m not mad at them. I’m disappointed in letting the emotions get the best of them. That won’t happen again and the guys feel bad about doing that. But at the same time, we got beat today by San Jose State, didn’t play well enough to win and that’s football.”
On what he will remember from the season…
“I’m going to remember a bunch of guys that pulled together to take a team that’s been playing FBS football for three years and got themselves from 2-6 to a bowl game. That showed a team that would never quit, never gave up on each other, believed in what was going on. A great group of guys that are still young. We’ve got nine starters back on defense and eight back on offense that are still very young, that still need to learn how to control emotions and how to act with class when they need to and there’s no shame in losing. I told them that. There’s no shame in losing football. You have to learn to lose. If you lose, you have to act a certain way. You’re humble when you win and when you lose, you act with dignity and class and you handle it the right way. I tried to teach them. It was a learning moment for them because I saw some guys emotionally. They put so much into it that they didn’t know how to handle it.”
Nick Arbuckle, Sr., QB
On the challenges San Jose State’s defense posed….
“They did a really good job with their game plan and their scheme. They came out with a scheme and coverages and defensive front that we hadn’t seen in film. I watched every single play they played this entire season, and they were doing things that they hadn’t done this entire year. They did a great job of adjusting their stuff to what we were going try to do and had taken away, basically our entire game plan. We were game planning for one thing and they gave us an entirely new thing so our offense started out really slow. We were just trying to make adjustments on the sidelines and we got it going sometimes but we just weren’t consistent enough and we definitely weren’t efficient enough on third down. They brought a whole new third down defense to us that was really kind of backwards to what they had done in most games before so it was a process just trying to adjust everything and get things settled on the sidelines for it.”
On the first touchdown…
“It was something in coverage that we kind of changed. The touchdown that we threw actually was a play we’ve been prepping all week but the coverage we got and we threw a touchdown on wasn’t the coverage we anticipated on getting during practice. (Jeff Jagodzinski) created a good adjustment, managed a little differently than we practiced with a different coverage and was able to create some good separation on that and our offense line and pick-up protection. Our offense line did a tremendous job. They ran a defensive front with their front seven that they had never run before. We’ve never seen in film; we never practiced before and we hadn’t faced a team that ran that front maybe once all year. So our offensive line did a tremendous job and at being able to adjust and be disciplined and execute.”
On the long pass on fourth down…
“I’ll probably be re-living that for the rest of my life. It’s one of those things you remember because it’s something that I had total control of and it was close. It was a game of inches, literally. It’s crazy that you’re throwing the ball to someone who’s running full speed 50 yards down the field and, in the end, you’re an inch off. That happens. It’s an incredible thing when you complete it and when it came out of my hands I thought it was going be good. But it’s just something - I won’t miss that throw again. I guarantee you that. I really want the opportunity to throw that again and hopefully this won’t be my last game of football.”
Coach Miles: “He’s made that throw a million times. I have complete confidence in this young man, that’s why we threw that. He’ll hit that many, many times so he doesn’t have to relive it. He’s lived many of them before.”
