OPENING STATEMENT
First of all just really happy to get the victory. I thought our players fought hard and played hard. Needless to say, North Texas did the same thing, they came in ready to go and had a good game plan on both sides of the football and those guys really competed.
Certainly compliment their effort. There was nothing easy out there today. You watch the film, watch the game and it's obvious we have a lot of work to do right now and that's what's in front of us. I think probably my biggest concern is we have to improve faster, seeing some things that need to get addressed and improve on a little bit better there.
But, you know, I think part of that, too, at halftime the coaches did a good job of making some adjustments, and certainly we played better in the second half. This team has been resilient, they have pushed through things -- the challenges that get in front of them, and certainly the second half we did a lot better, time of possession, third down conversions, fourth down conversions. During the course of the game some of those things were really positives and part of the deal was we were hoping to keep their offense off the field and we did a good job of that in the second half as well.
Those are things that I think stick out right now. We're happy to be 3-0. It's not easy to be 3-0, and then it's exciting to start conference play here, too, so that starts up here tomorrow afternoon. I'll throw it out for questions.
Q. Do you know the health of Akrum and James?
KIRK FERENTZ: Akrum tried to walk out without an ice bag, so sent him back in for that, but it doesn't look like anything serious. He just didn't feel real confident in that second half. James, we'll have to see. I don't think it's anything overly -- I will probably know more Tuesday but I'm not overly concerned, but hopefully he will be okay.
Q. You said something to Toren, to hang in there. After a couple of games of seeing him not play, he was in the game.
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, you know, one thing I told the team in there, both Toren -- last spring we found out more about Toren. He had a great spring.
Then with, you know, Ivory, it's been more so since August when we got going, but both those guys have really practiced well. They really conduct themselves well. Toren is a tough, hard-nosed runner, that's his deal, and Ivory has impressed us with his ability to focus. He's a really quietly serious guy and that's unusual for a guy just out of high school like that.
He has a good skill set on top of it, and to me it was no surprise that they played well. I think we all had really good confidence in them. You always worry about a guy's first couple of carries, just to get his confidence level, but both those guys really did some good things, and they both missed a couple of runs today they will see on film which will help them down the road, but they both gave us -- they're a big part of us winning this game.
Q. What about going on fourth down?
KIRK FERENTZ: You know, at that point we just kinda felt like we needed to do something. We were just running in quick sand a little bit and just felt like we had to try to get something going. It was a great call and great execution. Nate is not out of the woods yet, but you think about the progress he's made from week one, when we were out here last time, he was struggling a little bit, but the last two weeks he's really done a good job of sitting in the pocket and finding the open guy and getting the ball there pretty accurately.
So that's really good. That third down, fourth down stuff to me is really impressive. Big part of that was Nate's dealing. He did a good job there.
Q. When did your fourth down philosophy change?
KIRK FERENTZ: It started the year the new Kirk stuff started, you know, quite frankly! (Laughter.) And I don't know if because of our approach to fourth down or those fakes didn't work, I'm still trying to decipher that. I think we started a different approach, and that was an out-of-season study we did, and we just talked about it, and we spend a lot of time talking about it every Thursday ask now -- and part of it is the feel of the game. That particular juncture I just felt like we needed -- you're either going to dig in and do something or we were going to keep screwing around here, so I felt like we just had to do something.
First of all just really happy to get the victory. I thought our players fought hard and played hard. Needless to say, North Texas did the same thing, they came in ready to go and had a good game plan on both sides of the football and those guys really competed.
Certainly compliment their effort. There was nothing easy out there today. You watch the film, watch the game and it's obvious we have a lot of work to do right now and that's what's in front of us. I think probably my biggest concern is we have to improve faster, seeing some things that need to get addressed and improve on a little bit better there.
But, you know, I think part of that, too, at halftime the coaches did a good job of making some adjustments, and certainly we played better in the second half. This team has been resilient, they have pushed through things -- the challenges that get in front of them, and certainly the second half we did a lot better, time of possession, third down conversions, fourth down conversions. During the course of the game some of those things were really positives and part of the deal was we were hoping to keep their offense off the field and we did a good job of that in the second half as well.
Those are things that I think stick out right now. We're happy to be 3-0. It's not easy to be 3-0, and then it's exciting to start conference play here, too, so that starts up here tomorrow afternoon. I'll throw it out for questions.
Q. Do you know the health of Akrum and James?
KIRK FERENTZ: Akrum tried to walk out without an ice bag, so sent him back in for that, but it doesn't look like anything serious. He just didn't feel real confident in that second half. James, we'll have to see. I don't think it's anything overly -- I will probably know more Tuesday but I'm not overly concerned, but hopefully he will be okay.
Q. You said something to Toren, to hang in there. After a couple of games of seeing him not play, he was in the game.
KIRK FERENTZ: Yeah, you know, one thing I told the team in there, both Toren -- last spring we found out more about Toren. He had a great spring.
Then with, you know, Ivory, it's been more so since August when we got going, but both those guys have really practiced well. They really conduct themselves well. Toren is a tough, hard-nosed runner, that's his deal, and Ivory has impressed us with his ability to focus. He's a really quietly serious guy and that's unusual for a guy just out of high school like that.
He has a good skill set on top of it, and to me it was no surprise that they played well. I think we all had really good confidence in them. You always worry about a guy's first couple of carries, just to get his confidence level, but both those guys really did some good things, and they both missed a couple of runs today they will see on film which will help them down the road, but they both gave us -- they're a big part of us winning this game.
Q. What about going on fourth down?
KIRK FERENTZ: You know, at that point we just kinda felt like we needed to do something. We were just running in quick sand a little bit and just felt like we had to try to get something going. It was a great call and great execution. Nate is not out of the woods yet, but you think about the progress he's made from week one, when we were out here last time, he was struggling a little bit, but the last two weeks he's really done a good job of sitting in the pocket and finding the open guy and getting the ball there pretty accurately.
So that's really good. That third down, fourth down stuff to me is really impressive. Big part of that was Nate's dealing. He did a good job there.
Q. When did your fourth down philosophy change?
KIRK FERENTZ: It started the year the new Kirk stuff started, you know, quite frankly! (Laughter.) And I don't know if because of our approach to fourth down or those fakes didn't work, I'm still trying to decipher that. I think we started a different approach, and that was an out-of-season study we did, and we just talked about it, and we spend a lot of time talking about it every Thursday ask now -- and part of it is the feel of the game. That particular juncture I just felt like we needed -- you're either going to dig in and do something or we were going to keep screwing around here, so I felt like we just had to do something.