COACH BARNETT?S PRESS CONFERENCE QUOTES
BOULDER ? Head coach Gary Barnett addressed a select few media members on Monday afternoon at the Dal Ward Athletic Center. The following contains quotes from the informal roundtable session.
ON THE STATUS OF TB BOBBY PURIFY?“He’s got a calcium deposit on his foot that keeps him from totally being able to move his foot up and down, so it’s really affecting his rehab. It’s minor, but they will go in and remove the calcium deposit. He will have surgery on Friday and should be ready to go by spring ball. He’ll be full go in the spring " the first play will be a run. ”
ON THE 2003 NEBRASKA TEAM?“I think they are a vastly improved defense. They are tackling better and are more physical. Statistically they are better.”
ON THE NEBRASKA GAME?“I like playing the Nebraska game the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t care whether there is 10 days between games or four. Its visibility on national TV " there isn’t a better day to play college football than the day after Thanksgiving. Everybody is off work, everybody wants to watch football, and who’s on? " Buffs and Nebraska ? first game up. Other than the state of Texas, I think it will draw more national attention than Texas-Texas A&M.”
“All you have to do is say you’re playing Nebraska. That in itself creates momentum. And then, just coming off four games where we’ve played pretty well, that in itself creates a lot. I don’t think you have to jumpstart it at this time.”
“We’ll do whatever it takes for us to win the game. Nobody is out there trying to make any improvements on one side or the other " we’re trying to win the game. So, whatever that takes. This game, for us, is going to come down to how well we play, not how well Nebraska plays.”
ON THE NEBRASKA RIVALRY?“It’s a rivalry. It doesn’t get put in red on your wall and talked about if it’s not a rivalry. We’ve only one two, it’s not like we’ve won 10 or 11. We were close in the other two, but we lost. I don’t think we’ve been so successful that we can rule out rivalry from our end of it. For us, we need to win this game to go to a bowl. So it doesn’t make any difference who comes in here, we’ve got to find some way to win it if we want to go to a bowl. We just have to beat Nebraska.”
“I was here when it (the rivalry) was created, I know what it meant for interest in the game and I know how hard it was fought for to get it on this date. I know the kind of energy that went into making it into a big-time game and the result of it. I felt like it was deserved to have the rivalry status.”
ON THE EARLY START OF THE NEBRASKA GAME?“We’re going to treat it like an altitude and time zone change " just go play it. What would we do (differently)? We talked about practicing early in the morning, but it just makes the guys tired. We’re just going to play.”
ON THE SENIOR CLASS?“I don’t think we would have had this improvement the last four games ? we’ve played pretty well ? without, for the most part, the play of our seniors. They have held the locker room together, held the young guys together and have been patient in the process " and then themselves playing better. This senior class is large enough and there’s enough guys playing to where they have a lot of pride, and that’s made a big difference.”
ON THE CU DEFENSE?“We’ve started playing more guys in there and I think keeping them fresh and keeping the incentive for them to play has helped a little bit. We’re just playing better. We’ve got a better concept of how fast you have to play. We’re doing a better job on the back end, and that keeps the front end a little more engaged. It’s all related. At the end of the K-State game we just weren’t playing very well on defense. And then we had a huge turnaround in that one week. It has been more of a total defensive change than it was any one player. They were relieved when they came out of the Oklahoma game that they finally could play the way they thought they could play " the way that I bragged about I thought they could play.