Alvarez Speaks on the Badgers' Loss to Michigan
November 17, 2001 | Football
After the Badgers' 20-17 loss to Michigan Saturday afternoon at Camp Randall Stadium, coach Barry Alvarez addressed the media.
A partial transcript of the news conference follows.
Opening statement: 'Obviously I'm very disappointed, I really thought our players played extremely hard, there was a tremendous effort, there was a chance to win the game. I know the seniors really wanted that game badly and the guys played hard. Lloyd Carr told me after the game our players deserve better than that and I agree with him. But when you make as many mistakes as we did in the kicking game'we overcame it through four quarters and then the last one, we didn 't even have a deep guy back there to return the punt. We tried to get an extra guy to rush, try and get a block on the kick, we didn't get it, we'll just go to overtime. So it's inexcusable. Part of it's our fault as coaches that we didn't explain it a little more thoroughly, tell those guys not to go back. I'm pleased with the effort, hope our young guys can learn a valuable lesson, why we spend so much time in the kicking game and how one person in a number of different situations can cost games, particularly in close games. We played a good team, I give Michigan a lot of credit, they're a good football team, they do what it takes to win.'
Thoughts on the kicking game: 'Today was really hard to watch. It was hard to accept because we spend a lot of time on it. Today was very difficult to sit there and watch because our other guys were playing so hard and they just kept hurting us with field position, points.'
Thoughts on missing a bowl game: 'First of all it's a disappointment we lost this game because we played well enough to win. That's the biggest disappointment to overcome. We wanted to win this game for our seniors, the last time they played in this stadium. A bowl game' That's out the window, the disappointment of losing today is paramount right now.'
Thoughts on the Badger offense and defense: '[Michigan 's] a good defensive team, we had a few drives where we had some rhythm; we hurt ourselves with some penalties there that took away some good plays for us. Defensively, I couldn't imagine them (UW) playing any better. With the short field they had most of the day, they didn't give up many points, many yards. Offensively, I thought we did what we had to do.'
