Monday's CAA Football Coaches Call Transcript

10/22/07 12:30PM

Williamsburg - The following quotes were taken from head coach Jimmye Laycock's session on Monday's CAA Football Coaches Conference Call:

• You’ve bounced back well from a couple of tough losses this season, winning two in a row after Delaware and then beating Maine after the loss to Villanova. How good of a job is this team doing, especially considering their youth and being resilient this season?

JL: Well, I think I see it where they come back and don’t hang their heads. They practice well, and they’re attentive and that’s all you can ask for. You try to make corrections. Sometimes, games get away from you. But, we’re getting better in some areas, and I hope we continue that.

• You’ve been around this league a long time, looking at a schedule now where you close out the season with four nationally ranked teams, how tough is this schedule coming down the stretch?

JL: It’s a very strong league from top to bottom and you’re going to have people competing for national rankings and playoffs, a lot of teams will be competing for the league championship. We’re going to be facing good teams every week and a great team this week in UMass.

• With the bye week, did you get some guys healthy?

JL: Well, hopefully a lot of guys got themselves back healthy. I know we got rid of some shoulder injuries, some sore knees, things that had been bothering a few guys. With [defensive tackle] Sean Lissemore, I don’t know whether or not we’ll have him back this week. We’ll have to see how practice goes. I think having an open day this late in the season, you can approach it in different ways, and we approached it with the idea we’ve got to work hard to get better and then give them some days off to see if they can heal up a bit. We’ll practice tonight and see how they are.

• How helpful is it to come off a bye week going into a match up like this?

JL: I’ll tell you in about a week. This is a tough one, whether you’re coming off a bye week or a win or whatever. It doesn’t change that this is a very good team we’re facing. A team that we had a lot of trouble with up there last year, and they’ve been playing very well. They’re very physical, very talented, very well coached. None of that changes. Again, we hope we’re getting better, we hope we’ve improved, and then we hope we get a little spring back in our step at this stage in the season and we’ll go from there.

• Can you talk about some of [UMass]’ guys. Does their defense concern you?

JL: Their whole defense concerns me. The way they play, coach Brown does a great job with their defense so far as mixing it up and giving you so many different looks. David Burns, the defensive end, he’s quick and he can play. He’s a good player. They’ve got a lot of good players. Miles in the secondary is quick around the football, makes a lot of plays. You could just name them all really. I’m really impressed with the intensity of which they play.

• How has defensive coordinator Bob Shoop changed the way you guys are approaching defense?

JL: I think he’s put his mark on it so far as game wise and being solid about it and how we do things. I think he’s done a very good job.

• On the subject of the bye week, practice-wise was it moving around, was it scrimmaging?

JL: We had a good week, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We didn’t scrimmage, but we went pretty hard. We really took the approach of backing off and working with ourselves, meaning not so much game planning, as going back and checking technique and fundamentals and that’s what we really worked on. Thursday, we had a nice rain storm during practice which gave us the chance to work on a wet ball which we haven’t had at all this year, so we practiced pretty good in the rain on Thursday which we hadn’t done so that helped us I hope.

• UMass quarterback Liam Coen has been banged up a little bit lately, is there a way to prepare to play against him and then [back-up] Scott Woodward, or do you just prepare for one quarterback?

JL: We just try to play and then adjust as the game goes on. Their scheme is very solid and with Coen in there he runs the show very very well. He knows how to move the ball around to the open receivers, he gets good protection and they have such a good running game too. The offensive line is solid. There’s a reason why they’re one of the top teams in the nation. They’re very solid. They’re very good.