Sunday Conversation With Guy Morriss
10/31/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 31, 2004
Q: What has today and last night been like after the big win?
Morriss: "Well my wife and I went to dinner, then I slept for about three hours and then I was back up here to work. Everyone around here has a smile on their face; we will enjoy it for a few more hours. But come Tuesday we will have to get back to work."
Q: What did you drill into the kids heads over the past week that convinced them they could turn around such a lopsided margin from the previous year the next time you played that same team.
Morriss: "Our kids have been playing real hard they have been giving us great effort. It was a matter of taking care of the football; we talked a lot about how A&M does not turn the ball over very often. As it turned out we did not have a turnover last night, and that was the difference in the ball game."
Q: Is the next job for you to bring them back down to earth a little bit and get them ready for Texas Tech?
Morriss: "Yeah we're going to meet with them here in about an hour. I will get a feel of them, they are coming over to the house tonight to eat some dinner, and we will talk a little bit, have some fun and enjoy the win. I think by Tuesday they will be ready to come back to earth."
Q: How did you resist the urge to go for two earlier in regulation?
Morriss: "I looked at the clock, there was just too much time left. Because we really thought about going for it but it would not have been a good call at the time."
Q: Why did you call the time out right before going for the two point conversion?
Morriss: "I wanted to check with the kids. We had a timeout to burn anyway and I just wanted to see what their demeanor was. Let them catch their breath and make sure everyone was on the same page."
Q: How did you decide to go for the two-point conversion last night?
Morriss: "We made the decision to go for it because we had some guys that were cramping, and they were gassed. I did not feel like we had the same type of depth as A&M does. I was thinking about their first possession and they really got the ball in the end zone pretty easy. I thought we may not be able to repeat this again so I thought while we are as fresh as we are going to be now why don't we slam the door. So I called the kids over, and I said 'Do ya'll want to win this thing right now?' They said 'Heck yeah' they were all gung ho to go back out there and actually it was pretty easy really."
Q: Was that one of your prouder moments with this group of guys when you asked them if they wanted to win it now and the look on their face when they said 'heck yeah'?
Morriss: "Yeah, after you do this for a while you can read people, and I think I got a pretty honest answer from them from the look in their eye. That was pretty neat and a big moment in my career as a player and a coach."
Q: You deal with it a lot but have you got the sense from even your supporters that they did not think it was possible?
Morriss: "Well I don't know how many people came to the stadium thinking we could pull it off. I think they will start believing a little more. We have three more opportunities to go out and play and who knows, I guess that's why they call them upsets, they happen every Saturday."
Q: Do you think at some point, that you still do not have that road monkey off your back, and it might come down to something similar to this. Some point where you just have to say 'you know what the heck with it'?
Morriss: "Yeah I think that's the way we have to play you have to walk that line, walk that ledge every week. I do not think we are at a point where we can play conservative football. We have to take a few chances every once in a while."
Q: How many monkeys do you have to get off your back before people get off your back?
Morriss: "We need to get a road win in the Big 12 Conference. We have not won two conference games since Baylor has been in the Big 12. So there are two I would like to get off our back right now."
Q: Dominique Zeigler had three catches for 12 yards the first three quarters, so it was obvious that Shawn Bell really went to him in the last quarter and overtime. Was that intentional or was it just where he was open?
Morriss: "It was a little of both, it was open, and sometimes it was designed to get the ball in his hands."
Q: Shawn's numbers were okay through three quarters, then it seemed that you scratched the running game and really put the ball in his hands.
Morriss: "Well it was a game of us playing catch up most of the night. We weren't just killing them on the running game. We were just trying to do what we could to stay in the game."
Q: If you were drawing it up, other then the missed opportunities early in the game, is this what you figured it would take to play pretty close to perfect?
Morriss: "We knew we didn't really have a lot of room for error. We always talk about keeping it close enough going in to the fourth quarter that we would have a chance to win."
Q: With a team that can be fragile, ya'll tie it and they take the lead twice in the fourth quarter, and fragile teams sometimes can just say 'we played them close, we beat the spread' the fact that ya'll answered twice in the fourth quarter how big is that?
Morriss: "Hopefully it is a sign that our kids are getting it. Believing in what they can do, believing in their coaches, and believing in the guys around them. Sometimes I think that we believe in them more then they believe in themselves. But I am starting to see some signs of them thinking the way they need to be thinking, that if we do not turn the ball over if we prepare well during the week, and we execute that we can hang with some people we can beat some people some ranked teams in a meaningful game. I think they are starting to understand how to do it and now that they have a taste of it hopefully they will want to go out and do it again.
Q: Did you ever think in your mind that you had to get some help from them or help from your defense in order to win, or do you look at it like that?
Morriss: "Yeah, we talk about that every game. We need to create turnovers; I knew that sooner or later they were due for some turnovers. I think we caused some of those turnovers; we harassed McNeal more than anyone up to this point. It was good to see that he was rattled, or at least I thought he was rattled. He was just a little bit shaken and we haven't seen that in the past."
Q: The halfback pass they scored on was that just the cornerback biting on that play?
Morriss: "Yeah he has to stay in coverage on that play."
Q: The defense gave up some yards, but how big of a role did it play?
Morriss: "They came up big. I felt like we were coming up with some plays when we needed them that were keeping us in the game."
Q: As well as you were playing it had to be a little frustrating there at the end of the half, you finally a turnover and then Crooks gives it right back, and then the penalty on the hail-mary?
Morriss: "I think we should have had 14 points at halftime, the one we got called back and had to settle for a field goal. I don't know if I was very frustrated because the kids were really playing hard. We had a good up-beat locker room at halftime."
Q: Did you feel like you needed to do something there in the third, just to kind of get it turned in your favor?
Morriss: "In my mind I was really concerned with their opening drive in the third."
Q: How big was Willie Andrews' return on the kick off toward the end of the fourth?
Morriss: "That was a huge return."
Q: What was last night like for you?
Morriss: "It was cool watching the kids pull the post down, watching our kids celebrate. It is very satisfactory as a coach to see your kids have some success that they are starving for. To see the student body, it was neat to watch them celebrate it is something they can be proud of. That was pretty cool, and then going into the locker room and everyone was high-fiving. I just wanted to remember that feeling. Then we went to dinner and everyone was in there eating, and we came in and got an ovation, which is always good for the ego. Then I went home and went got back to bed, and missed an hour of sleep because I forgot to set my clock back."
Q: You come off looking like a king with the two-point conversion, would you have regretted it if you didn't convert it?
Morriss: "No, I think it had to be done at that time. I think our kids will benefit from it. It's the whole gun-slinger attitude; if you're going to talk it, you have to back it up."
Baylor Notebook: Kickoff for Saturday's game at Texas Tech is set for 1 p.m. in Lubbock, as the Bears hope to snap an eight-game losing string to the Red Raiders and post their first-ever road win in Big 12 play ... Saturday's win over No. 16 Texas A&M ended Baylor's 22-game losing streak against ranked (AP) teams since a 33-30 win over No. 20 North Carolina State in Waco, Sept. 19, 1998, snapped 18-game winless streak to the Aggies since a 20-15 victory in 1985 (there was a 20-20 tie at College Station in 1990) and marked the highest rated opponent the Bears had beaten since a 16-14 victory at No. 12 Colorado in 1991 ... Sophomore QB Shawn Bell, in his third career start against a nationally ranked opponent, completed a school-record 32 passes (in a career-high 50 attempts) for a career-high 262 yards and a school-record-tying four touchdown passes ... Bell was 16-of-23 for 139 yards and three TDs in the fourth quarter and overtime against the Aggies ... Sophomore WR Dominique Zeigler caught a school-record-tying 12 passes for a career-best 121 yards and 2 TDs vs. Texas A&M ... Sophomore WR Trent Shelton has caught at least one pass in 19 consecutive games and at least two in 12 straight outings, the longest streak for a Baylor performer since Reggie Newhouse closed his career with a 34-game streak in 2002 ... Shelton had 5 receptions for 24 yards and 1 TD vs. Texas A&M ... Redshirt freshman QB/WR Terrance Parks caught 2 passes for a career-high 40 yards, one of which was a career-long 34-yard reception, in the Texas A&M win ... Redshirt freshman CB Braelon Davis had a career-high five tackles (four solos) and his first career interception which set-up a third-quarter Baylor TD that tied the game at 13-all with 5:03 to play ... Baylor's second quarter fumble recovery by senior LB Justin Crooks ended a streak of 19 consecutive quarters without forcing a turnover and for the game the Bears forced three Aggie turnovers which led to 14 Baylor points ... For the season, the Bears have forced eight opponent turnovers which have led to 21 points, while Baylor's 22 turnovers on the year have led to 75 points for the opponent ... Crooks had a season-high four TFL vs. the Aggies among his eight tackles for the game ... Senior WR Marques Roberts caught 4 passes for 37 yards against Texas A&M to move into 10th-place on the school's all-time reception chart with 84 catches and 14th on the school's career receiving yards list with 1,093 ... He also caught a TD pass vs. the Aggies, the 11th of his career, to move into a sixth-place tie on Baylor's all-time list for TD catches ... Roberts' six TD receptions on the season equal seventh-best one-year total in Baylor history, the most since Reggie Newhouse grabbed eight in 2001 ... Sophomore P Daniel Sepulveda dropped to No. 3 nationally and No. 2 in the Big 12 with his 46.7 yard season average despite averaging 47.5 yards on six kicks vs. Texas A&M with a long of 64 yards ... Sepulveda has four punts of 60-plus yards on the year, which ranks fourth on BU's single-season list, and seven in his career to rank in a tie for fourth all-time ... Junior OS Willie Andrews averaged 35.3 yards on three kickoff returns, including a career-long 59-yarder which set up the Bears' final TD in regulation play ... Baylor quarterbacks are completing 61.4 percent of their passes on the year after setting a school record a year ago with a 56.68 mark ... Baylor has thrown at least one touchdown pass in nine consecutive games (its 2003 season-finale vs. Oklahoma State and every game in 2004) for the first time since a 10-game string that encompassed the final three games of the 1986 season and the first seven in 1987 ... The Bears have thrown 15 TD passes on the year, their most since firing 18 scoring strikes in 1996, and a total which equals the sixth-best one-season total in school history and that is just five off the 1983 record of 20 ... Baylor's 189 pass completions rate as the fourth-best single-season total in school history ... Baylor was flagged a season-high nine times for a season-high 91 yards against Texas A&M ... The Bears' defense also recorded a season-high four sacks vs. the Aggies after totaling just 10 in its first seven starts ... Baylor improved to 2-2 all-time in overtime games, postings its first extra-session victory since a 16-13 win over New Mexico in 2001 ... The Bears have scored 25 or more points in three consecutive games for the first time since the 1994 season when they tallied 27 at Southern Cal, 42 at TCU and 44 vs. SMU ... BU improved to 3-0 all-time under Guy Morriss when scoring 35 or more points in a game, 4-1 when scoring 27 or more points in a game.
