SAN MARCOS, Texas – Quotes from Texas State football following the game against Southern Miss at Bobcat Stadium.
 
Jake Spavital, Head Coach
Opening Statement…
A little bit of a loss of words with that one. It was just a sloppy football game overall. Just talked to their head coach (Will Hall) afterward to just talk about the nature of that game. There were a lot of turnovers for them. It was a defensively driven game; we knew we had a tough opponent. We knew that this was one of the more athletic defenses we're going to play all year. We didn't do a really good job at controlling the line of scrimmage. That's what it came down to. They dominated defensively in all phases. We literally threw every single type of play out there, from screening it, to running RPO, to double-check protection and slide protection to spread it out. They dominated the line of scrimmage, (that) is what it came down to and that's why we were 2-of-16 on critical counts. That's terrible. Thought our defense played well like they always do. We knew it was going to be one of those games that can be very similar to the one against Troy. The defense gave us multiple opportunities to add success and win that game. Everything's going to be magnified on those last couple of plays of the game. Offensively, we couldn't establish anything. It was fourth and one and we can't even get a yard on some of those. That's kind of embarrassing from an offensive standpoint and how special teams was inconsistent. We had lots of opportunities to block their kicks. There were just some things that we didn't do well on. The defense is playing very well and they were on the field the entire game and we threw everything at them as well. They went spread and had about 10 different quarterbacks and did the Wildcat a lot. All the way down to the last play of the game, and our defense gave us multiple opportunities. So, it is frustrating. This bye week is coming at a great time and we need to regroup and get healthy. We went eight straight weeks and we're sat at 3-5 and we still got a month left to figure this thing out and keep working. We'll be back in here tomorrow and plan to make corrections for our game at ULM.
 
Thoughts on the emotions of going up a touchdown and then getting scored on soon after…
Yeah, it's like it's just I felt so bad for the defense, you know, because they played (hard), and they got to a fourth down and (four) and that happens on a scramble and you know, it's just it's kind of one of those deals where the offense was just getting destroyed the entire game, and we finally kind of sparked (Ashtyn Hawkins) to make a really good play for us. And so, you see the relief that we got out of that one after playing extremely sloppy on two phases. And then we put the defense out there again. We had one of those short kicks that kind of (put them in favorable) field position. The defense got to a fourth down and that was just unfortunate man, but it is just draining everybody. This one hurt probably the worse. You see it in the locker room because those kids fight. They left everything they got out there. And we talked about that it was going to be kind of one of those games. It's going to be a wild game, and we just got to work our way through it together. To see them finally get that emotion where they might have pulled it off was awesome to see but, you know, a major player made the play.
 
Thoughts on what contributed to the offensive line's struggles…
(Southern Miss is) a very talented team. We talked about it all week. And then you play Troy who has a very talented D-line with their experience. These guys were just kind of right there, they are very talented guys. We knew that we were going to have some issues with the interior, and like I said they are a very talented team and they played hard.
 
Thoughts on how physical Southern Miss was and how it affected the offense…
Everything, I'm saying we tried screening them. We couldn't block them in space and there's multiple plays that would go for a long, long ways. But at the end of the day, we have to block people. That's what it comes down to. We had -6 yards rushing. That kind of shows where it's at. We couldn't establish anything and there's no holes to go anywhere. They weren't doing anything that we weren't prepared for. They just outplayed us up front. They were more physical than we were and I couldn't get Layne comfortable because he had just gotten in his face the entire time. We tried everything.  We went like what we were talking about, chip-prone and getting guys out. We're going to match-go and sliding everybody and getting three guys out and we're spreading out and getting five guys out. We couldn't establish the run in any set 12 personnel, 11 personnel, 10 personnel. We were motioning on them we tried to screen them like you know, they just got after us like it's going to be frustrating watching tape because there is a ton of opportunities for plays. We just couldn't execute them.
 
Thoughts on what to clean up during the bye week…
Efficiency on offense. It's extremely hard to call games for these guys because you just don't know what you're going to get. We really have a lot of game plans and a lot of different ways to move the chains with these guys. It's frustrating because, you know, we have to call plays based on what our kids are capable of doing, which is a little frustrating. Because if you can't protect them, you got to help get protection, and you're not going to get very many guys out when they're dropping in coverage. We kind of got to work with that. It's like, how do you roll the dice? Do you want to get Layne (Hatcher) in a situation where you can get the sack or give him enough time to get around?
 
Thoughts on the first loss of the season at home…
We take a lot of pride and trying to, especially on Homecoming. A lot of important players are back. We take a lot of pride in playing as hard as we can for this program. I said last week after the Troy game, this team believes that they can win every game and we are in all these games. I know that's why it hurts probably the most because they know that they're capable of winning, but you know, even just being at home and just being around a lot of family and a lot of former players coming back, they want to make this place proud. And it's unfortunate the way that game ended for them because the defense played well enough to win the game. It's about understanding we got to regroup and we got to go take a shot at it. We can't completely dwell on it, but there's a lot of frustration because we appreciate the home crowd, and being at home and all the people that came back and watched us play.