Mark Stoops’ Monday Press Transcript

COACH STOOPS:  Going back to last week, again, very disappointed with the way we played.  The bottom line is we’re too undisciplined.  We need to be a more disciplined football team.  We need to be tougher mentally and physically to win on the road and win in environments like that.  It gets down to us and what we’re doing and how we’re coaching.

Need to create more winning habits.  Need to practice with a better sense of urgency.  So we’ll see if we can get back to work this week and improve.  Playing a very good Georgia team, so we’ll have our hands full.  Looking forward to the challenge here this week.

1. The discipline issues you’re talking about, is it because you’re such a young team or is that not an excuse?

COACH STOOPS:  Yeah, I don’t feel it’s an excuse at this point.  I feel like our players and our coaches, starting with me, we have a choice in that matter.  We either choose to be disciplined or we choose to be undisciplined.  We either choose to be a trained football team and us as a coaching staff need to train them.

At times we’re an untrained football team.  You’re not going to win like that.

1. What do you mean by ‘untrained’?

COACH STOOPS:  Gets down to simple things:  habits, creating winning habits.  When I talk about toughness, it’s not just always physically.  Mentally being tough.  If you’re supposed to run a six step out, run it six, not eight.  If you’re supposed to follow the guard on a run play, follow the guard, not just run anywhere you want to run.

That’s what I mean by ‘untrained’.  It’s creating those habits and training to play when you’re under pressure.  When we’re under pressure, our habits come right to the surface and they’re bad habits.

1. (Question regarding injury updates on Blake McClain and Fred Tiller.)

COACH STOOPS:  They should be fine.  Banged up, but we should be okay.

1. (Question regarding if there was anything positive after watching the film.)

COACH STOOPS:  I thought the defense gave great effort and did some good things.  Defensively we’re not perfect, of course.  That’s aggravating.  Had a chance to get off on the very first third down of the game.  Missed a tackle.  Great individual effort.  That’s one of their best players.  The wideout made a great play and we missed him. That’s the difference.  They fought for those yards.  He spun out of it, extended, made a great play to get a first down, which is huge to start the game.  That’s one of our better players, AJ, coming down and has a chance to tackle him.  We missed him.

Getting back to my point, there were some other critical third downs in there that we were wrong in our execution.  They were there.  They were there for us to have a successful play.  We just didn’t do them.              So take a few of those instances out and we have a chance to play a very good defensive game.

1. Do you feel the team has lost its way a little bit?

COACH STOOPS:  I don’t know if we lost our way.  We just need to be better.  We’re inconsistent.  The wheels aren’t falling off; we barely had them on. (laughter)