Sept. 23, 2004

Recap Final Stats Notes Photo Gallery

HOUSTON HEAD COACH Art Briles
"You don't want to search for morale support, and we're not. But I think there is a touch of reality in there, with the effort and the attitude and the toughness that we played with tonight. We've got to do a better job coaching. We can't allow people to block a punt and take it into the end zone and take us away out of the game at the start. They got another turnover, which resulted in a touchdown.

"Our guys battled hard - they battled hard. I am extremely proud of them. Now we've got to refocus. We've got seven weeks to go. We can't look back and say, `okay, we've played two of the toughest teams in the nation. You've played the two best teams in the nation since the year 2000.' We can't sit there and say what's wrong. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong. We've got it right, and we've got it headed in the right direction."

"It was 17-13, really, with five minutes left. We left too many points on the field offensively. You get down in the red zone, and you only get one touchdown, two field goals and miss another (field goal), and we've got to score touchdowns when we get down there (red zone). They're (Miami) not the easiest team in the nation to score touchdowns against. In fact, that (Kolb's rushing TD) was the first one they've allowed this year. We can't just all of the sudden decide that they are too good and not score."

"We're a good football team, and we're good enough that if we get our butt down there we've got to score.And our defense played well enough tonight to give us a chance to win the football game."

"Our defense played great. Stats are deceiving at times. We played hard. We played good enough to win. The thing is, against teams like this (Miami), the margin of error is nothing. We made a few too many mistakes and they capitalized on them."

"What we have to do is understand where we are as a football team. But I think we are a much better team now after four games than we were last year after four games. We're going to fight hard for seven weeks, as we've got a hard stretch in front of us...We're going to continue to get better."

"It's been a whirlwind to play four games in 18 calendar days. We're the only Division I program who has done it, and the way our players have handled it really makes me proud. We're not going to complain about it, we're just going to go about our business and continue to fight."

QUARTERBACK Kevin Kolb
"With talent and speed like that (Miami), you have to get them thinking and can't make them feel comfortable. We tried and made some things happen."

"My thinking of the plays, we had many that would have made us right there with them (Miami). But we have to make those plays."

"Any game like this is going to take you a while to calm down and gel with the defense and offense. It took us about a quarter to calm down. I was a little jittery in the beginning, but I calmed down and we started to click."

"We always knew we had three talented backs, and that whoever was in there, we knew we had someone to fill in. So when Anthony (Evans) went down, it was a blow, but we knew we had someone who could do the job. Ron (Gilbert) played well tonight."

LINEBACKER Wade Koehl
"If we could get in his head (Berlin), then he couldn't use the talented receivers he has and we would be able to stay in the game. Our plan was to stop the run and bring pressure on passing downs."

"Miami is a good team and they have a lot of speed, but like them, we have a lot of speed, too. Our d-line did a wonderful job getting to him."

DEFENSIVE END Joe Clay
" I think we confused the o-line and the quarterback a lot. Nobody knew what we were doing half the time."