From the man
@C. Level.
Initial Reaction?:
"I'm so proud of the guys. So many highs and lows in that game, chances to give up, chances to pull away on both sides. We turn the ball over, we cause turnovers and don't get anything out of it. They get the momentum going into half. Our message at half was that we had the momentum. We expected to come in and be in a football game and we're in a football game. So all we gotta do is come out and play. Defensively, our guys played great tonight. DeRuyter had a great game plan and the guys responded. We've gotta build on it."
Take me through the defensive performance:
"Well you know what I think of CJ Ah You, and if you go back our last three years. Our DEs we lose some guys to injury last year, lose guys this year to injury. Start without Chuck Esters for four games and now he's playing. He just gets his guys better. Guys like Harvey Dyson are hitting their strides. Jacob Rodriguez had a good game. They're a really good football team, they're 11th in the country, got two NFL receivers, a really good QB, three good running backs. We just kept swinging and coming after em, we mixed in pressure when we needed it. We moved a lot up front and that helped slow their running game."
5 of 16 on third down: "Huge"
Take me through the 98 yard drive that felt like it set the tone for you to win the game:
"I want to go back, it should've been 14. It's really disappointing getting a flag there. You go back and watch it, we can watch it on the tablets and the guy slipped. Should've been 14 there. A lot of it was, we're talking about the No. 1 defense in the Big 12...a lot of that in the second quarter, a little bit us forcing some things but a lot of them what they were doing. They did a good job of bottling Tahj up, he came out on fire and we couldn't get anything going. Frustrating, we had a good call for their touchdown, we don't attack the upfield shoulder, we got a free runner at the QB, we're playing a trap corner and he should've been glued to the guy who caught the TD. Reminded me of Baylor, somewhat."
4th & 1...:
"I called timeout, Kenny Perry called timeout. It's frustrating, couple of things. The officials, its such a tough game, but you can't miss that. You should expect a timeout right there. I said I called timeout, Perry is running, Juice is running. We were still in a go, we wanted to be aggressive. That was the thing tonight, we tried to be aggressive when it was time to be aggressive. Josh Kelly was open there and we just came up short."
Take me through the last drive:
"We had two wide deep balls. One we overthrew Josh. One that JB didn't come up with, he came up with the right one. They were playing some two-man when we had to throw it, so that gave us a good box to run in. When we felt like they were in two-man, we put a lock on and handed it to Tahj. He had some good runs right there at the end. We had so much time and two timeouts, so it wasn't, college football is so different, it's not a two-minute drill. You've got to have no timeouts and inside a minute to go that fast. I will go back, what a fricken drive. That first year whenever we won it here, we went on a drive like that to either kick a field goal or a touchdown to win the game."
How fitting is it that you've got a dirty work guy like Tahj to finish it:
"Great call by Kittley. We figured they're gonna bring pressure. With Tahj at wildcat, that's something we haven't done. Conyers did a great job, the whole group, so Tahj could get to the edge."
"Getting bowl eligible is huge, getting six wins. We've got a great team coming in next week. We've got 24 hours to celebrate it, then we're going to work."
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