After losing one it probably should have won against Kansas State last week, Tulane lost one it could have stolen against Oklahoma today. The Wave was fortunate to be close, but once Tyler Grubbs had the pick-six early in the fourth quarter, the momentum clearly was in Tulane's favor. It all turned on Darian Mensah's interception on third-and-1. That call will be criticized, but the coaches were trying to take a chunk when they thought Oklahoma would sell out to stop the run. Didn't work. Don't think it was a bad call.
Sumrall is 1-2 for the third consecutive year. Tulane has a whole lot to work on to make Sumrall a conference champion for the third consecutive year as well, but all is not lost. Beating UL is essential next aturday and then the AAC schedule begins.
Sumrall, Mensah and Grubbs talked after the game:
SUMRALL
Disappointing loss. Against a team like that it's almost impossible to dig yourself a 21-0 hole and think you've got any chance to come back to win. That falls on me. I didn't get us ready to play the game early the right way. Very proud of the resilience our guys showed to come back in a 21-0 game against an opponent like that to make it 24-19 and have some opportunities to come back and win the thing, and just didn't quite get it done. Everybody in the locker room, I just told them we have to look in the mirror and own what just happened. It starts with me. We've got to be men. In our program we definite a man as someone who is accountable for their own actions. I've got to own what I've got to do better to help this team be their best, and everybody on the team has gotta do the same. We'll get back to work. We've got to respond quickly. We've got another good opponent coming up, but very disappointed with the outcome today. Frustrated with a lot of things I think we could have done better. Hats off to a good opponent. They are a quality team. They are very talented at a lot of spots and they're well coached, and we'll get back to work and get going."
On third-and-1 pass decision that ended in interception:
"Yeah, they'd been really aggressive. They'd shown some things that maybe we felt like maybe a run action with a shot was in our best interest there because they'd knocked us back a couple of times. We were trying to hit a dagger, and it backfired."
On if hurricane-altered prep work was factor in dismal first 27 minutes:
"I can't blame that. It would be real easy to sit here and go we didn't have our normal week. Well, who cares? Like, nobody is looking for excuses. I'm not going to allow that to be an excuse. Was our schedule abnormal? Sure. Was it really goofy and funky for everybody? Yeah. Does the scoreboard care? No. I'm not going to sit here for one second and act like that (was the. reason). We clearly started slow. I don't know if it was first road trip, if it was the movement of the week that was not normal from a schedule standpoint. I'll look at all of it and see if there's stuff I can do better to help us address that. but while we ha n abnormal week, the scoreboard doesn't care."
On what changed defensively in second half:
"It's weird. Slim Despanie is one of our best players, and he went out for targeting, and in a weird way, we got better after he left the game. It's almost like it sorted of jolted our guys. We sent Kevin Adams and Jack Tchienchou in the rotation a lot more there. At halftime we came in and our guys just responded. We probably called some things a little differently, too, to maybe help them pin their ears back. I felt like there was a different sense of urgency. I don't know that we've played out best as a D-line or even close to it all year, but for the first time in the second half you started to feel the front turn it on, so that affected the way the game went there in the second half. We stepped it up defensively quite a bit. We've got to start faster to do that, but I did think we finally showed a little bit of life in some areas that I don't that we had."
On if Oklahoma looked like SEC-level defense:
"SEC, Big 12, whatever, Oklahoma looked like one of the best defenses I've seen. Dan Roushar, our O-line coach, was with the Saints forever and he was with the staff here last year and he's still here. This week I was picking his brain about what he thought about this defense, and he was like it's the best one we've played since I've been at Tulane. We played SMU last year, Virginia Tech, some good teams. I think it's a very legitimate SEC outfit defensively, and really offensively there's weapons. You can tell they are finding themselves in some areas. The quarterback's talented. No. 6 (slot receiver Deion Burks) is a real guy. The tight end (Bauer Sharp) is a special player. They've got good players and their defense is really good. The interior D-line and their linebacker group is elite, just watching them. I recruited 28 (linebacker Danny Stutsman) when I was at Kentucky, and he's a dude. He plays like a grown man."
On what happened to Jacob Barnes on 50-yard field miss (he did not play again):
"He had a little tweak. He actually had it last week, a little tweak, and was good to go today, and then on that field goal, that swing irritated himself, so you saw (Ethan) Head. Obviously his first extra point didn't go real well. Look, the worst thing you can do on a kid like that on his first shot is go over and give him an earful. I said, hey, that went as planned, didn't it? He looked at me like I was crazy. I said I know the second one can't be worse than that; you'll be fine. He'll be fine. He's a good dude. He's worked hard. He's done a good job kicking off since the first game. But Jacob Barnes definitely had something bothering him and couldn't go."
On giving up pressure in fourth quarter:
"When we got (in) predictable pass (situations), they were pinning their ears back, and I felt 32 (end Mason Thomas) a lot today, their edge guy, a lot there at the end of the game. When you get yourself in situations that are obvious pass, good pass rushers can pin their ears back and it 's hard to block them. Those guys did a nice job of presenting some six-up pictures and some looks that maybe make your protectors question who's coming and who's dropping and how you want to target it and ID it. A really good scheme with really good players makes it hard to protect."
On what Oklahoma did differently on offense than he had seen on film:
"They operated on first down better. What made them more successful on third downs early in the game than what they had been was they were in third-and-2 and third-and-3 and not third-and-8 and third-and-9. They were more first and second down efficient, which makes it harder on defense. I don't have a lot of great third-and-2 and third-and-3 calls for our defensive staff. Third-and-9, I can call a lot of good defenses. They just stayed on schedule better. They ran the ball better. Some of that had to do with us, but they committed to stay on schedule."
On clinching TD run by Oklahoma QB on third-and-11:
"We really should have had him. I don't want to speak until I catch it again, but I think we had a bad rush leverage there. We probably could have had an opportunity to get him down. He's athletic. His two long runs, that was one, and then the other one down our sideline (for 43 yards), a zone-read keep, we didn't leverage the football properly and have to coach it better, but he burned us on the last one. That was kind of the one that broke us."
On third-quarter defensive adjustments:
"It was more about us. We didn't necessarily come in and go, hey, they're doing this. The plays that were beating us was one guy not doing his job the right way, so it was like, guys, let's all play together and execute. We improved there. It wasn't necessarily a thing that we thought we had them. We just maybe did our job better."
On his being 1-2 for the third straight year:
"I'm not proud of it, but I'm pretty good at going 1-2. I've done that a couple of times now. It's not my highlight, but our response has usually been pretty good. We'll see how we respond now. I think we'll be fine. We have to show up quick. I'm not going to sit around and mope. I've been 1-2 before. We have a lot of work to do getting where we need to go."
On Mensah's performance:
"Up and down. He probably did some good things. One time I saw ball security that we've got to keep harping on. He was a little bit loose on one scrambling. Timing, he did a couple of things really well of seeing some things on time. A couple of times he didn't really realize that the shot clock was going to be faster because of the pressure. He did some good things. He's a third-game college player. He still has a lot of things he can get better at."
On struggling to get the ball to Mario Williams (three catches, 36 yards):
"One of them we took a shot. He had three catches. He had eight targets. He had a drop on the first play of the game, and then a couple of others they played well. One was a contested 50-50 ball on their sideline that was deep. There was another time we took a shot on a post to Dontae (Fleming) and we had Mario probably open on the over, which would have been a big play. It wasn't all Mario and it wasn't all the quarterback. There are just some things you've got to maybe a better look. That's a really veteran secondary. It's like senior, junior, senior, junior, senior, guys that have played a lot of football. They did a great job of identifying what was coming. I watched their defensive backs pre-snap communicate at an elite level. I was very impressed on them recognizing splits. spacing and what routes. They are well coached. I have a lot of respect for their team and their staff, and I think Mario's lack of production was them doing a really good job of knowing where he was and how to stop him."
