Chattanooga Football - Postgame Quotes
No. 17 Wofford at Chattanooga
Finley Stadium - Chattanooga Tenn.
Sept. 26, 2009

UTC Head Coach's Russ Huesman
"I've coached 30 years and this is the best victory I've ever had in my life! I've been to bowl games, and won a national championship. This is the best win I've ever been involved with."

Do you call this a statement win?
"I've told the guys many times it's a long season and we cannot get too excited by one win. We can't get too down on a loss, or too down if something goes wrong. We can't too excited if something good happens during the course of a game."

"I was adding the points up and when we had a 29-point lead and I knew that they had to score four touchdowns and a two point conversion with about six minutes left in the game. I said no way that was going to happen."

"These guys played so well. We took care of the ball. Our running back ran hard. We had creases to run the football, our receivers caught the ball and got yards. On defenses, we ran the ball and created some turnovers. That's football. I hope we play like that the rest of my career here."

In regards to out rushing Wofford:
"We weren't even close to this defense in 2007. We beat them 24-10 and we barely scraped out a win. They had them on the one yard line and got nailed on an illegal procedure and scored on us."

"We played good enough to win this football game. They were dinged up. They had their full back out. They were missing a wide out today, which hurts. Once, we knew that their full back wasn't in the game. We were doing things to take the quarterback and pitchman out of the game. Adam [Fuller] did a great job. Our kids played well and they deserve everything they got today."

"I said we had to win special teams! We couldn't tie it, we had to win it!"

"We didn't give them any big plays. They had a 27-yard run early, the long pass of 35 yards, and in the first half was a little mishap in coverage. But other than that we did what we had to do."

"The first thing I thought when I knew we were going to win this game was these guys deserved it. They've taken a beating for a long time. To see how happy they were, made me even happier."

What changed from last year?
"I am not sure what changed. We got some good players and I credit the previous coaching staff for those guys. I've got to give credit to Rodney [Allison] and the staff that were here last year."

"We have to stay healthy. We have 20 players that can play on defense unless we pull people out of a redshirt year. I think we came out of this one healthy, too. "

Wofford Head Coach Mike Ayers
Thoughts on the game:
"It was a real good day for Chattanooga, but it was probably one of the worst for us. We made way too many mistakes. Chattanooga did a great job of defending us and we just didn't execute. We made way too many mistakes mentally and that is really concerning. We have some young players playing so there are going to be some mistakes. It is going to be a learning curve, but at the same time, you hope that your older guys are going to be the guys to step up and make the plays for you."

Thoughts on Chattanooga:
"Chattanooga came well prepared. They fought the fight and played well. They did some real good things, defensively. Offensively, the quarterback did a great job of leading them. They are a physical football team. Chattanooga came to play and we didn't, that's why it ended up the way it did."

Thoughts on Wofford's situation:
"Our team's situation is bad, that's all you can say. We have to go back to ground zero and start again. Our problem is fundamentals. On defense had poor tackling and blown coverages. Offensively, we had way too many mistakes. It's hard to figure out why but we have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what is wrong. It's no doubt our boys wanted it. There is no doubt they were willing to go out there and play hard, but we were playing hard in the wrong direction. We are a team in search of finding out who we are, what we are about and what it takes to win."

Thoughts on mistakes made by Wofford:
"One mistake we made was the first time that we ran the reverse and dropped the football. We had a body on everybody. It's a chance to maybe score, but instead it goes down as a fumble and we don't get any point production. We have young guys in there, but we have to coach them up better."