Sept. 27, 2008

Head Coach Chuck Martin opening statement...

"Obviously, in the first half we were smoking. They're averaging 40 points per game and they've played some of the top teams in the league and they've played their bitter rival (Northern Michigan) and they've run up and down the field. Our defense suffocated them. They can pass, they have a tailback leading the nation in scoring and our defense was phenomenal. They gave us a couple of short fields. The offense ran two plays. The first play of the game we knocked them seven yards off the ball, so you figure we had a good chance of running the ball tonight. I mean there was just a wave, tight end to tight end, marching full speed down the field. We executed, we played hard, we competed better, special teams were better. When you get up 45-0 at half, your kids came ready to play. I told them on Monday, `I'm honestly not doing a good job. I can't put finger on why the guys can't prepare the way we want them to and be as good as we want to be.' Obviously they prepared this week like the prepared Saginaw Valley week. Some of the other weeks it has not been as good. We still have a way to go. If we prepare hard we're going to be a dang good Division II football team. If we don't we'll put on a show like we did last week against Ferris and it will be a long year here.

"Second half, I thought our two's did good. Our two's took a lot of snaps against their one's in the second half and we got some first downs and we got stops so any time that happens you've got to feel alright about it.

"I thought we learned at Saginaw that if we prepare the way you're supposed to prepare, but I'm still not sold because I thought then that they learned this is how you have to do it every week. It doesn't matter who you play, your preparation is going to go a long way to determining your success or failures on Saturday night, and it will certainly determine your execution. Our execution was embarrassing and that was how we executed in practice. This week we tried harder, we still made mistakes in practice, but we prepared harder and obviously the results were a lot better.

On the second team's play: "It's nice for us because you get kids that have been practicing and waiting to play and they get experience, that's how you get better. You can practice all you want, you can say things all you want, but you get better by playing in football games. Any time you can play your two's and three's, and at some positions your five's and six's, and kids are getting opportunities to compete and get better and I thought tonight, more so than a lot of times when we've put our bench in our two's really played hard."

Linebacker Brad Howard

On practice this week: "The week before (Ferris State) we didn't prepare as hard as we should. All this week the coaches emphasized what we needed to do. All we thought about this week was setting up the run and we came out and executed.

"We get a little upset when we are told that we can't do things that we know we can do and we just want to prove it to them and make the coaches happy. We want to prove to them that we can do it, we can be a successful defense. We worked hard all week and we showed tonight that we are that type of defense."

Tight End John Mathews

On improving on dropped passes: "I don't know if last week I just wasn't focused, but it just seemed like everything was going wrong. I just had to focus this weekend and make sure that if the ball is in the air I'm going to get it.

On quarterback Brad Iciek: "The ball is always on the money. I got pass interference on me and the ball was still right there. He's got a golden arm.