Head Football Coach Mike Leach Quotes
September 11, 2000 | Football
Sept. 11, 2000
LUBBOCK, Texas - On this week's game
"We're looking forward to playing Louisiana-Lafayette this weekend. I think they're a team with pretty good players. A lot of folks are trying to search for their roles. Up to this point, they probably haven't played like they would like. Knowing about that program over the years and knowing what they have down there, they have pretty good talent. I think they need to put it all together."
On improvement versus North Texas
"Defensively, we've been having real good effort, but I think assignment wise, we stopped the run and improved defensively. We did some pretty good things on special teams. We did some good things on offense. Out biggest flaw on offense was blocking. We need to get more guys to block. I know it's the most basic thing. It's what you start with in junior high football. We blocked real well against Utah State, blocked as good as any team I've been around. Against North Texas, we didn't block."
"We've got to come a ways and stay there, overcome mistakes and stay there and not make those mistakes again. Right now we're in the little push-pull thing, where we slide back with one step and go forward two. We need to quit sliding back one and go forward two all the time."
On quarterback play against North Texas
"I thought [QB Kilff Kingsbury] he did pretty well. He's got those three passes [interceptions] I'm sure he'd like over. I didn't like those. He was pretty consistent. I thought he could have made some quicker reads."
On offensive play as a whole
"The biggest thing is we would put ourself in great position and then squander a play for one reason or another. And it would trade off as to who had trouble or who got beat."
"It helps if you block. Like in seventh grade the first thing they put all of your stuff on. Your stuff's hanging all over, and they say this is how you block. What we may have to do is walk some folks, maybe all of us should go - coaches and players - down to Lubbock Junior High and work on blocking. I guess this afternoon we'll have a discussion on who's entitled to not block if they don't feel like it and who is."
On watching the Louisiana-Lafayette -- Texas game film
"Looking at their defense, how they line up and address various sets and how they play them. It was kind of an erratic game. Bottom line, Lafayette starts out pretty good and lets it get away from them. But really just looking at how they play different sets and work against that."