Thank you to the AutoZone Liberty Bowl for providing the following quotes from Scottie Hazelton and Kansas State's defensive players.
KANSAS STATE DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR SCOTTIE HAZELTON OPENING STATEMENT:
“First of all, I want to say thanks to these guys, the Liberty Bowl, Memphis--it’s been a welcoming environment for us. We’re excited to play against the triple option. I know that’s a different thing, different for our player. It’s a little bit different scheme than we’re used to seeing. It’s been a joy to work through those things. The town has been great and the Peabody has been great to us. It’s a good environment, so we’re excited to be here.”
ON WHAT IMPRESSES HIM MOST ABOUT MALCOLM PERRY:
“His quickness. He’s got great lateral ability to move. His decision making is very good. For an option team to do the things they do and not put the ball on the ground very often. We’re hoping to see the ball on the ground a lot. If it was raining like this, it’d be an OK thing for us on defense. He’s a guy that runs that offense very smoothly. He’s a good athlete, really just his ability to make people miss. It’s just a game that gives you so many one-on-one tackles because you’ve got a guy running the pitch, you’ve got a guy that tackles the dive that doesn’t cover the ball and then he’s got it. Now, if it’s a one-on-one he’s got the ability to break some.”
ON IF THIS WILL BE THE BIGGEST TEST THE DEFENSE HAS FACED:
“Yes, just a different scheme. Whenever you play option, it’s just a whole different deal. The guys have never been around anything like this before. We’re glad we had the bowl prep time so we could babystep it in and work it in. It was a deal that a lot of these guys have never seen before. It’ll be a good challenge to us to see how good our discipline is this time of year. Hopefully, we’ve come a little ways and we can defend it a little bit. I know they’re going to score some points.”
ON PREPARING FOR THE TRIPLE OPTION:
“We started at phase 1--this is exactly what it is, this is the triple. This is how they’re going to block, how we’re going to lineup. We moved the receiver to quarterback that has run the option before so that we could get a look from there because I think that’s a different style of thing that we’ve seen. Thank God we had the bowl prep because it take a good week for your scout team to start to even look like it. I know we’re never going to match the speed that Navy is going to play with and that’s the hardest thing to simulate Those guys come off the ball, they come off the ball low, the run. To be able to see that tempo, the first time we’re going to be able to see it is on Tuesday. To work through that, we had to start off with that walkthrough--here’s where you’re going to fit. Here’s the next block that happens and the next part of the triple option. Here’s the next block and how we read it. We just kind of step through it all the way so scouts knew who they were getting and the defense knew what they were supposed to do and we just continued from there.”
ON FACING THE TRIPLE OPTION:
“There’s similarities. Air Force and Navy are a little bit different in kind of the styles they do, but the same basic triple stuff is in there. When I was at Southern Cal, we played Georgia Tech. There are probably more similarities with Georgia Tech than Air Force with this team. It’s kind of one of those deals that seems to follow me around. I don’t ever truly enjoy it to tell you the truth. I think it’s a hard thing to get ready for and it’s a hard thing to prepare your kids for the amount of cuts, how fast, all those things. At least we’ve been through it before so we know how to step into a program.”
ON NAVY’S PASSING GAME:
“It’s a hard deal because you’re in a lot of one-on-one matchups and you hope you can win those one-on-one matchups because that’s the way they force you to play because you have to put a guy on the quarterback. We also have to be worried about him running around as soon as he does drop back. It’s a difficult kind of triple thing. They have all the different wheels, they have all the different things out of it, but you have to match up and hope your eyes are right. Then after that happens and you do your job hopefully, then you have the threat of their best guy running the ball and taking off. They called a lot of passes on 8 last week, but he didn’t pull the trigger on any of them. That’s a big part of it, too. The guy is a good runner. He can make plays.”
ON HIS FIRST SEASON AT KANSAS STATE:
“Really, seeing these guys take us in under their wings, really, is special. Guys like Trey or Wyatt, our captains, our seniors, those guys really embracing us. I know it’s new. They’ve been around here a lot longer than we have. They had a culture. They have a tradition. They have all those things and accepting us, sometimes that’s hard for people that have had success. It’s been really cool to see them embrace us, take us in and make us a part of their family. The things that we’ve changed, them allowing us to do those things and going through it. I think that’s been the coolest part of it all is just being able to hang out with guys and letting them be men, letting them be themselves. They’ve embraced us more than anything.”
ON WHAT HE’S MOST PROUD OF:
“All year long, no matter what game you looked at, win or lose of whatever we did, those guys gave great effort. That was the number one thing we started off with. The guys on that defense play hard. We might not always be right. We might not always do the right thing. We might not always play with the greatest discipline all the time, which is all going to be tested on Tuesday, but those guys play hard. Sometimes it eliminates a lot of mistakes just by how hard they play.”
ON FACING NAVY:
“It’s a great test. We were discussing all the different bowl options we could’ve been in and who we would’ve played. Our safety coach said this is the best team for us to play because it’s like the ultimate of listen, everyone has to do their job, everyone has to have great eye discipline. Everyone has to be able to tackle their one-on-one matchup. It’s the culmination of everything we’ve been working on. I didn’t see it that way. I would rather do the things we do and work on those things as much as we can and get better at that. It’s a deal that, you’re right, it’s something that will be a challenge, a great test for us to see how far we’ve come. If we had started this same journey in week two and had three days to prepare, I don’t know that we would’ve been ready for it. It’s a different deal.”
ON YOUNGER PLAYERS STANDING OUT IN BOWL PREP:
“Doing the developmental stuff that we’ve had a chance to do. We can start out at the linebacker position, look at Austin Moore. He’s a guy that I didn't really have a chance to work with him in fall camp because he didn’t come to fall camp. He’s a guy that comes in and we make fun of him because he’s like a machine, he just does everything right. A guy like Tyron Lewis is a guy who really needed that time. To be able to hit it in fall camp and kind of learn it and go through and get some playing time and kind of figure it out. Now, to get the chance to install it again, he really accelerated. It was good for those kind of guys that you would say, ‘Hey, they just had the chance to learn our defense a second time.’ That will help them have another step. T. Lew [Tyrone Lewis] looks like a different cat than he did at anytime during the whole season. It’s one of those things that you wish you wouldn’t have played him in four games so he could play this week because maturity wise, he came along. It’s going to help him for spring ball, which will be the third time he learns it. Then, you get fall camp and it’s the fourth time he’s learned it. OK, now we’re into fall and let’s see where it goes from there.”
ON DENZEL GOOLSBY:
“Denzel is a great dude. The thing about Denzel that you like about him so much is that he’s in a different place in his life. You always have those guys on the team, whether they’re fathers or whether they’re married. You have two or so of those guys on every team that you coach and he’s that guy for us. He’s just in a different place. When his perspective comes in, he sees it through an adult’s eyes. He’s in a different spot. To have a guy like that on your team, it’s awesome because when we say something, he has the wisdom and can see it through a different set of eyes. He can also talk to these guys in a different way and it reinforces the things you say. To have that guy on your team is priceless. He’s like a conduit for us almost. He sees it in a different light and that’s what has been the best about him.”
ON HAVING EXTRA TIME TO PREPARE:
“You come up with some ideas and you find out a lot of them don’t work anyway so you go back to what you know. It’s hard because you would say in a week, you would have one call and you would try to get two different looks in and if you can get them run and down well enough then you might be able to do it. To play this kind of offense, we can’t do what we do every week, that’s the hard part for future growth. It’s not like we’re going to play cover two and cover three and play some man stuff. You have to build a different style of defense so it’s kind of like making up a defense to stop it. If you do your normal stuff, they’re going to keep six yards per carry and you’re never going to see a third down.”
ON HOW THE DEFENSE HAS IMPROVED:
“For me, we started out a long time ago. We started talking about we want these guys to play as hard as they can. They did that before we got there and hopefully they’ve improved on that. We want them to understand what they’re doing and play as fast as they can. Hopefully, through the bowl prep they’ve done that. I think if you looked at where we were against Nicholls State and where we were against Iowa State, and you say hey we run the same call, we got better at running that defense. We got better at knowing where our keys were. Those are the things we look at. We’re in a better position now going into spring ball running, doing what we do than we’ve been. I think those are two important things to us. I think these guys truly love one another. That’s a big part of it. They go out there and they don’t care who makes the play. They understand that they’re all part of it. It allows a trust between them all.”
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WYATT HUBERT (#56 DEFENSIVE END)
ON MALCOLM PERRY:
“We’ve compared him a lot to Kyler Murray when we played Oklahoma last year, just how dangerous he is with his feet. They don’t throw the ball a lot, that’s pretty obvious, but the main thing is he’s just so elusive, so quick. He’s a smaller guy so you he’s kind of tough to see in gaps and holds sometimes, but everything will take care of itself if we’re on our right keys.”
ON HOW MALCOLM PERRY COMPARES TO OTHER QUARTERBACKS HE HAS FACED:
“It’s definitely going to be a tough challenge. There are so many differences compared to the offense that they run, the triple offense compared to a spread offense and weapons that come from both of those. A lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences on how they make plays and how they do that.”
TREY DISHON (#99 DEFENSIVE TACKLE)
ON NAVY’S OFFENSE:
“They do a good job with the cutblocks and their positioning. They’re scrappy and they like to fight, that’s the way that offense is successful.”
ON PREPARING FOR MALCOLM PERRY:
“I think that preparation goes with how you prepare for any game. The way I look at it is if that offensive lineman isn’t down in a four-point stance coming at me and he’s sitting back, I know they’re passing on that first down or that first play of the series. I’ve been studying that, so I think I’m going to have a good handle on that.”
DENZEL GOOLSBY (#20, DEFENSIVE BACK)
ON WINNING THREE BOWL GAMES IN HIS CAREER:
“This senior class has talked about it a lot, and the captains too, we’re not just playing for each other, we’re playing for this coaching staff. When Coach Klieman got here last spring and last winner, he talked about just believing in just so much and wanting to win now, not just waiting and not having a rebuilding year. I think we’ve surprised a lot of people with the way we’ve played this year, but definitely not over with year. I think that if we can go out and win this bowl game, not just for the senior class, not just for this team, but also the coaches on it just for appreciation for them, just want they’ve brought to the team this year, would mean a lot to everybody. I think the guys are really fired up and extra motivated for that.”
ON HIS LAST COLLEGIATE GAME:
“I don’t want to look too far ahead. I think that can burn you if you do that. If I was looking too far ahead into the future, I probably wouldn’t have practiced as good this week. Just trying to take it day-by-day and just embrace the moments with these guys, try to plug into some of these younger guys that maybe I won’t be able to talk to as much in the future. Just trying to soak it up, that’s all I can do.”
ELI SULLIVAN (#3, LINEBACKER)
ON PLAYING FOR COACH HAZELTON:
“He’s a funny guy. He’s real cool, but at the end of the day he gets the job done. He does really well with our linebackers as far as explaining things, knowing what we’re supposed to do and what not. That part of it, being able to explain and actually listen to what he’s saying, get it and receive the message. It’s been real fun. I’m getting ready for next year too after this game.”
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