University of Hawai'i at Manoa Athletics

 

 

I am extremely proud of players today, this team did a great job of preparing. They’re truly champions on and off the field. It was a spectacular day—the takeaways defensively were unbelievable, and what an exciting football game to watch.

 

We came back out and had some unbelievably explosive plays in the second half—it was a tremendous game for us beating a ranked team very soundly and hopefully I believe we should be in the Top 25.

 

We have 10 wins for three of the last four years and we’ve been in three bowls in the last four years. I’m very proud of our guys and what we’ve been able to accomplish this year.

 

It was very physical today and I think that was the key—we impacted their quarterback and got after it on both sides of the ball. I thought we dominated both sides of the football and we had some special players make some brilliant plays.

 

We are a very close football team and I’m very proud of them and I’m very, very honored to come to Hawai`i. I’ve been to a lot of Bowl games over 26 years of coaching and this is the finest Bowl I’ve been to—absolutely spectacular—the events, it’s a tremendous place to come and the people were incredible and it’s been a great experience for our players and it’s a great reward for the finest team I’ve ever coached.

 

 

I thought our kickoff team and our punt team did a good job of minimizing his (Demaris Johnson) ability. He’s a great player, one of the best in the country, but he made some big plays to hurt us. He’s fast, he out-ran some of our guys and out-quicked some of our guys.

 

I thought their quarterback was outstanding, he threw some great balls. I think they have a good football team.

 

We’ve accomplished a lot of things this year. We’ve won a championship, we’ve won 10 games which has happened only 4 or 5 times in the history of the school. We’ve had some good times playing football, tonight wasn’t necessarily one of those. One of our goals was to get 11 wins and remain in the Top 25 but obviously today we’re not going to get that. Up until today, everything’s been pretty good.

 

Give credit to Tulsa. They flat did a good job of beating us.