Seg 1 - FB Show Nov 11 w Jim Mora

Jim & Mike on the win over Duke Saturday

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's the Yukon Football Coaches Show and welcome you aboard on
Mike Crispino along with Jim Mora. We'll talk to a
couple of the players a little later on in the hour,
Donovan Branch, Lou Hanson the tight end about what the
Huskies were able to accomplish on Saturday against the Duke
Blue Devils, and we'll also get into air Force. That's
the next opponent on Saturday at the Rent as you

(00:22):
contries to finish off an unbeaten slate at home this
season at six and zero.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
But coach got to begin with Duke. The thing that
stood out.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Among many things was the resilience that Yukon showed five
deficits in one game. You were down once in the
fourth quarter, twice in the third quarter, once right away
off the top of the first and once in the second.
I mean five bouncebacks by a football team. That's not easy.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
No, it's not easy. But I think it says a
couple of things, Mike. It says that this team has
confidence in their ability to adversity and they have resilience.
I think it says a lot about the energy that
we were able to We were able to extract from
the great crowd. You know, it just always felt alive

(01:13):
in there. It never felt dead, and I think that
had an effect on our players, and you know, it
never you know, the fact that it never got to
a two score game was important. And I know I'm
sure that at times people get frustrated when I kick
field goals because.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Everyone wants to go for it all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
But one of the things I try to do is
think a couple series ahead, you know, and sometimes play
Devil's advocate. Okay, okay, if we go for it here
and we don't make it and they score, now we're
down x amount, how does that change the rest of
the game. And so just being able to stay in
it is so important. And having the confidence that we

(01:54):
have in our ability to move the ball and score
in critical situations because we've been able to do it
through the U is critical in.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Our decision making.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
So, but the resilience of our players, the confidence of
our players, and then the energy created by the crowd.
I think all three of the three of those factors
just really helped us.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, it's a perfect example of having an offense that's
productive like yours is scoring in the mid thirties pretty
much every game. I felt like going in you needed
to score at least thirty five to beat.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
This team because they're a very good offensive team.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Having Joe Finnano with the kind of year he's having
in Skyler Bell and these playmakers on offense, does that
give you a little bit of a chance to breathe
easy somewhat when.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Things aren't going your way.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I mean always going to look over and go, well,
I know those guys are going to figure out something.
But I mean I would think, as I'm the head coach,
I would say, Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
We got a shot, we got our guys, we're gonna score.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
Well. I always feel that.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
I always feel like, you know, hey, we have a shot.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
We're in it.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
You know we're going to compete because that's built into
our team. But come on, Mike, I don't even know
if I breathe easy until I'm in the locker room.
You know, the game is like, you know, ten minutes
over before I can really kind.

Speaker 4 (03:10):
Of breathe easy. So yeah, I confidence, yes, breathe easy. No. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
I don't ever ask you this, but I'm gonna ask
you this time. When you got in the locker room
after that game, and obviously the crowd came out, was
celebrating with the team, et cetera. Now you get a
few minutes, you go into the locker room, what's the
first thing you addressed with your team? What was the
first thing you basically said to him after what was
a really emotional day and night.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
So I missed the whole crowd on the field. I
didn't even know they rushed the field. I typically when
the game's over, you know, I love, you know, meeting
an opponent, the posing head coach, shaking his hand, and
then I try to get to the locker room as
fast as I can because I like to be in
there before the players come in so I can shake
all their hands when they come off the field. Just

(04:00):
always been something I've enjoyed doing. So I'm up in
the locker room and I like, where's our football team?

Speaker 4 (04:07):
You know?

Speaker 3 (04:08):
And I kind of look out of the tunnel and
I go, oh my god, they stormed the field.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
I missed it. But at that point I was like,
you know what, I'm gonna just sit in here.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
I'm gonna take a couple of breaths, and I'm gonna
let the players enjoy having some fun with their fellow students,
and David Bennett came in and we were able to
have a nice conversation and you know, just kind of
we don't get to do that a lot after game
because it's so chaotic, that we got to kind of
talk about the game. And then as the players came in,
you know, greet him. And then the first thing is, uh,

(04:38):
you know, we have a we have a we have
a saying on our on our wall there up in
the locker room, and I stole it from Danny Hurly. Okay,
I walked into the basketball building once and he said
relentless competitive effort. And that's one of Danny's core principles,
relentless competitive effort.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
And so I plagiarized. I stole it. No, and we haven't.
We haven't.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Right up on the you know, kind of the top
of our locker room, one of the things is relentless
competitive effort.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
And I just pointed to that.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
I said, read that, and they said that's really I said, well,
how do we win that this? I said something like,
how do we win this game? I said, look at
that right there, and they said relentless competitive effort. I said,
your damn right, and then that was kind of then
they you know, they start going crazy.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
It was awesome.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
So I got to give Danny a lot of credit
from my post game well, hell, I got to give
Danny and Gino a lot of credit for what they
did pregame to help get that place full. And then
I got to give Danny hell a lot of credit
for giving me a postgame talk.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Well, he is, he's a football fan.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
I could I watched a couple of football games with
him while he's having practice, which is funny because on
a Sunday he's watching the Bengals and he's a huge
football fan. Yeah, it's great to have that support, no
question about it. You won the game on the last
play defensively, and that's I think as exciting as it gets. Right,
your defense getting pushed up against the wall, basically they're

(06:05):
driving the football. They're putting this thing in danger right there.
All they need is a field goal to tie this thing,
to win it with a defensive play boy, that that's exhilarating,
I think for the fans who were there that day.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, and you know what I think settle us down
a little bit defensively was the fact that Joe got
that two point conversion and make it a field goal
to tie, and it gave us a chance to play
the game a little bit differently on defense, you know,
where we weren't trying to defend a field goal to win,
but a field goal to tie.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
I think that.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
It was a result of a lot of work by
our defensive players and staff in terms of figuring out
how we can be better in the two minute situation
and going through the experiences that we've gone through this
year in the two minute situations, at the end of games,
the end of halves, you know, even some of the
stuff that's happened in the overt times has forced us
to really look inside and.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Understand why we'd.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Struggled in those situations, and then our players really taken
ownership of it. I think that helped us tremendously On Saturday,
when we got in that situation again, there was a
different level of confidence.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
It was a real high point for Yukon this year.
They go seven and three.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
We're going to talk a little bit about the emotion
of playing at home with the lead or the deficit,
and some of the guys who made it happen. Takeaways
another category of Yukon's starting to excel in where with
Jim Moore, We're back with more the Yukon Football Coaches
show on lear Field in a moment