Eastern Michigan Head Coach Chris Creigthon
Opening Remarks
“I want to congratulate Old Dominion, Coach Wilder, and his staff, and their team on a great victory. Obviously, they’re a good football team with 10 wins on the season. We played a really good team today. I’m proud of our football team. Obviously, we came up short. We played really good football at times, but it wasn’t just quite good enough to win. Kids hearts are broken in the locker room right now. We’ve had a wonderful week here, this is not how we wanted it to end, but we sure do appreciate the opportunity to be here. It was a heck of a football game.”
Best Experience of the Week
“That’s a really difficult question asking what we enjoyed the most about the Bahamas. It’s all tainted a little bit right now for us, but our guys had so many different experiences. We had some time the other night where some of the guys were sharing their time with the kids. The community service trip was a big deal to some guys. And some guys, being in the ocean for the first time was a big deal. Some of our captains were swimming with dolphins for the first time. But I think we would all, in the end, just say it was a special team we had, and just being together on a trip like this, preparing to try to achieve our goal – our full goal – being here and having that opportunity I think was our best experience.”
Second-half Adjustments
“You’re always making adjustments at halftime. We felt that we were moving the ball. We had 41 plays. They only had 31 at halftime. We had the interception, and then we didn’t get the field goal off. So you’re potentially talking about 10 points right there. So I don’t want to minimize the first half, but you’re right, we didn’t have points. I think we just had some confidence. I think we thought we could take it into the fourth quarter and just wear them out. We found some ways to run the football. We packed it in there on short yardage in the first half. We struggled to get some first downs on short yardage, and I think that’s really the one thing that really hurt us. We tried to vary that up in the second half. I thought, in a lot of ways, we were very consistent. And statistically, we had a pretty good game, and just didn’t get a win.”
On Old Dominion RB Ray Lawry
“He’s really good, obviously tough to tackle. We’ve become a pretty good tackling team, and I think today, he had a lot to do with several missed tackles. He’s low to the ground. He’s powerful. He doesn’t give up. He has good vision. And their running game obviously didn’t trip today.”
Eastern Michigan Quarterback Brogan Roback
On second-half adjustments
“Obviously, the interception down in the red zone, that’s on me. We can’t have that. There were potential points down there. Just sticking to what we know, and what we’ve been doing all year long, and not trying to do too much. We knew we had to fill holes and just kind of calm me down. Like coach said, we ran more plays in the first half. We were moving the ball; we just weren’t finishing. We had the ball five minutes more throughout the game. So we were controlling the ball. It was just a matter of executing to the finish.”
Disappointment of losing
“This wasn’t a vacation for us. We knew that coming in, our year-long goal wasn’t just to go to a bowl game, but to win it. So this a year-long goal that we were going after, and it’s tough. It’s a tough pill to swallow. We didn’t just come here to play around in the sand for seven days. We came here for business. That’s why coach says it’s a little tainted. We can’t thank (enough) the Atlantis, everyone else with Popeyes and the bowl game for doing what they did and making it a great experience, but like I said, we came here to play and win a bowl game, and we’ll just continue it next year.
Eastern Michigan Wide Receiver Sergio Bailey
Experiences of the week
“We appreciated this opportunity, and we’re not taking anything for granted. I appreciated this opportunity, not just for myself, but for our team and our coaching staff. “
