USF Football

Postgame Quotes

September 19th, 2009

USF Press Conference Room

Raymond James Stadium

Jim Leavitt, Coach, USF

“They um, I was happy that we went out and did what we were supposed to do. You know we hadn't been doing that the last two weeks and we talked about playing, you know, just better football. And um, you know everybody knows we should, that's what we should do. You know we should win like that against Charleston Southern. It's, you know I'm not here to, it wasn't about winning or losing, it's about just playing good football. And for the most part we did, for the most part we did. Um I, I just, for our defense to shut them out is, I don't care who you shut out, it's very hard to get a shut out today in college football. I thought Joe and the staff did a very good job, you know with that. You know we had told them they had gotten eighteen first downs and three hundred yards on Florida and I don't, and so they are very capable of moving the ball. The quarterback throws well, they've got very good skill people. So they do have some talent there. I don't know, you know and I thought we kind of, they hit a couple seam routes early. You could see the quarterback and some of the throws he had. I think they'll do fine in their conference. Um, but overall, I thought we played a pretty, pretty good game. Um, kicking game, we missed the one field goal. Uh, the kickoff went out of bounce one time. Our punt return team, we got to, we got to work on that. That's, that's something we really got to get working on. You know pretty much everything else, you know we, we made some errors; penalties that we don't want, we had a couple chop blocks in there and a personal foul; a couple of them. Leslie Stirrups and Ketchel, which you don't want. I mean there's really no excuse for that stuff. Um, but overall, um I thought they did a decent job.”

And how, will Matt Grothe not be able to play on Saturday?

“Uh, I don't know. I'd rather not say until we get, we get it checked out and see. You know we'll know more after tomorrow probably, tomorrow or the next day.”

Will you talk about if you guys aren't able to have him Saturday; does that, does that change, how much does that change your team, with B.J.?

 “Not really, no, what we have to do is, is get him and Landi more work at quarterback. That's what's going to happen and we got to find a number three quarterback. Which is a, probably be Theo. I would imagine, I don't know. We'll have to find somebody. We got a third guy. Or Epps, we've got to keep bringing Epps along. But Evan's going to have to spend more time now, time at quarterback. I don't know if we can even play him at receiver anymore. That's what, that's what makes it real difficult too. I mean Matt, Matt's a franchise guy. We all know that. What he's going to do in college football is extraordinary. He's, you know, one of the great names out there. We all know that and I feel bad for him and hopefully it won't be too bad but we have to wait and see. And we don't know. But he's a special, special guy. I'll tell you that right now, special guy. And let's just wait and see, see what turns out to be.”

What'd you talk about before you ran that play, when it happened? What your reaction is?

“I, I saw right away. He planted his, it was almost like before it happened something told me to sprint out to him. I, I don't even know why. And you know, that was a, a tough moment.”

Jim, the decision to replace Delbert with the field goal, was that a one game thing or is Schwartz until he proves he can't hit it as far?

“Well, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I can't answer that right now. I'm just going to go back and kind of watch the tape and think about things, you know. I wanted Schwartz to do the kickoff just to probably take some stuff off of Delbert. Then when Delbert missed the one I just felt like going with Schwartz just to see what he would do. On a fourth and two I wouldn't normally always go for that field goal but I wanted to get Schwartz in that field goal situation, just to see how he would respond to it. And he did hit it, which was good. You know so, I just want to breathe on it…”