Kansas Head Coach Mark Mangino Quotes
Oct 08, 2005 | General
Head Coach Mark Mangino
On the difference in today’s game...
I want to first give credit to Kansas State. It was a hard fought game, a physical, tough football game. It was a very good battle. Credit them. They made the plays when they needed to to win the game. I think the difference more than anything is that we have been a good red zone offense this year. We were 1-for-4 in the red zone today and we turned the ball over three times, which in a close, hard fought game, you cannot do that. And penalties, we had some costly penalties today that cost us dearly in field position. It was a game that was a defensive battle. That was two good defensive units. I’m proud of our defense. I felt they played extremely, extremely well today. They played good, hard, tough, physical football. But, we didn’t convert in the red zone, we didn’t make enough plays on offense, and some costly penalties and turnovers I thought made the difference today.
On whether his team beat themselves with penalties and turnovers...
"I want to give them credit because they played well. They played hard-nosed football, I think, just like we did. But when you make the kinds of mistakes we did today, you don’t win in close games. That’s the bottom line.”
On switching quarterbacks throughout the game...
"We wanted to take an edge off of Brian Luke and see what Adam could do to get a spark and just take a little edge off of it so that Brian could come in and be in a comfortable situation. Our quarterbacks are one and the same right now. We wanted to go with Adam, and we thought he’d give us a spark. We were close on a couple of plays, but Brian is the guy we hoped coming in, throwing the football, would give us the spark. But, you know what, it’s not an indictment of either quarterback, we’ve got 10 other guys out there. There’s nobody, except for Cornish and McAnderson’s blocking, that puts us in a position to say we’re not making enough plays at quarterback. Heck, we’re not making enough plays on offense across the board. To blame it all on the quarterback would be unfair.”
On where K-State’s defense stands compared to those of the past...
"I would say that these kids here at K-State don’t have the kind of star power that maybe perhaps they did a few years ago. But we knew, watching on tape that they were hard-nosed, aggressive, well coached, and very sound. So, we knew that they were going to be tough.”
On whether his defense’s effort went to waste...
"It’s a team game. A couple years ago our offense scored all kinds of points, but we couldn’t stop anybody. As a team, you have to play well in all three phases of the game. When one’s not working, you have to find a way to get it going, and that’s my job to do.”
