University of Connecticut Athletics
UConn Hosts Weekly Media Luncheon
10/14/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
October 14, 2003
STORRS, CT - The University of Connecticut football team held the latest installment of its weekly media luncheons on Tuesday at the Hale Hall Lounge as the Huskies gear up to face Kent State on Saturday. Here is a sampling of what was said.
Head Coach Randy Edsall
On Kent State:
We’ve got a tough challenge this week. When you watch the film of Joshua Cribbs you find a guy who’s very athletic. He played a great game against Marshall last week. They’re saying he’s hampered by a little bit of an ankle injury but you sure couldn’t tell it by what he did last week. I see a team that does a lot of good things on offense. They’ll spread you out and also run the ball. Defensively they run pretty well and we’re going to have a tough challenge. You’ve got to put aside what took place last year {a 63-21 UConn win]. This is a new year and we don’t even concern ourselves with what happened last year. We have to go play the game this week out in Kent, Ohio and we have to play to the best of our abilities...I think they’re a better football team and I didn’t think they were a bad football team last year. I think that they had some injuries and other circumstances last year. They’re playing hard and they’re playing well.
On Kent State QB Joshua Cribbs:
He can run. He can throw. You have to defend the play, but then you have to defend the scramble too. You have to be able to do both with him. He has a strong arm and he’s coming off of a career day. He hasn’t been running the ball as much as he did last year but he’s still a threat to run with it and he’s a threat to throw it.
On QB Dan Orlovsky's mindset after his interception at NC State:
He’s fine. The game’s over and you move forward. You worry about one play at a time and when it’s over you just move forward. It’s over. You can’t get it back. You learn from it and you work like crazy to make sure that it doesn’t happen again...A lot of the good quarterbacks that I’ve been around all have great confidence in their abilities. They feel like they can always thread the needle and sometimes it’s just experience and repetition to make them understand the big picture. You don’t need a completion to make a big play. Sometimes taking a sack or throwing the ball out of bounds is making a play. It isn’t always a completed pass. Those are the things that come with experience.
On what caused the improvement on the offensive line from Lehigh to NC State:
It’s just a matter of fighting every play and being physical. That’s all it is. To me that is what offensive line is all about. Then you put the intelligence into it such as keeping your hands in so you don’t get holding penalties. If you’re fighting and being physical then [the only difference is mindset].
Junior Running Back Chris Bellamy
On how the team feels about the late interception at NC State:
Dan knows he had a great game. We don’t talk about the game. This is the most I’ve talked about the game since Saturday. It was a tough loss. Nobody really wants to relive the memories. Dan had a good game. He just had a couple of mistakes here and there, but we don’t get on him and say ‘you lost the game for us.’ It isn’t helping the team. What’s he going to do now? The game’s over with. He knows he had a couple of bad plays but he also had a lot of big plays. It’s a team game and he takes the fall with the rest of us. It’s never on one person.
