Skip Holtz Press Conference- West Virginia
Monday, October 11
BIG EAST Room - USF Athletic Facility

Opening Statement
"I'm gonna start by looking backwards to what was really a disappointing week. And I say disappointing not just because we lost, but disappointing because we are a football team and we have so many things that we are improving on. So many things that were going well, to have a lack of productivity as an offensive football team when we lose a game, we not only should have won, but we very easily could have won, it was very disappointing. I say that to say that I look at the positive things going on with this team right now with defense and the improvements that are being made and even having derrel young out and moving minstral in to safety. Seeing our secondary play, Webster stepped up and played as well as he did. And the job that Lanaris is doing and Jacquain Williams and linebacker Lattimore continues to get better and better. I think the defensive line, the three we have been talking about, with Marshall probably having his best game with three sacks and had about five tackles. David Bedford still doing to positive things and Hampton coming along and seeing Cory Girssom continue to develop. It was a shame to see Terrell McClain come out of the game, but you start looking at some of the good things going on defensively and the way that they are playing right now. As a football team I am really excited about the progress they are making. Then I look at the special teams and the way Terence Mitchell has come along as he's still doing from a punt returns stand point, and to see the kickoff return and get a shot in the arm. And the roll that Lindsey Lamar is making, I think we are improving with our cover teams on punt and kickoff. I just think there are so many positive things going on right now on the field, it's just a shame that the result came out with a loss on Saturday. When you look at it with all the positive things I've said, I think that the offensive line is still playing really well. I think the receivers are getting better. I think it was great to see Moise Plancher play that many plays and play as well as he did on Saturday. The thing that was unfortunate was that we just couldn't capitalize a lot of opportunities we had as an offensive football team. I said on the press conference afterwards that it was a day of missed opportunities offensively. I give Syracuse an all full lot of credit for what they did. They utilized the open extremely well, the protected the ball, they didn't have a turn over. The only one they had bounced off a guy's foot on a punt cover. I thought they did a nice job protecting the ball, they didn't put it in danger, they didn't ask their quarterback to do a lot, they punted the ball away. Defensively, they said they were going to come up and stop our running game, and they filled with their safeties and robbed the ball. They brought their secondary in, and that's why there were four or five times with guys running wide open down the field. Unfortunately, you don't have to cover them if you don't throw to them and you don't catch it. So, it is just unfortunate that we had some opportunities, we just couldn't capitalize on them on an offensive standpoint , because really if we could have capitalized on some of those big plays, it really could have been one of our better productivity days from an output stand point offensively.