Texas Tech coach Matt Wells

Opening statement

“First thing I want to say is I was happy with the crowd, thankful for the crowd. They helped us win it at the end. Thanks for staying at the end. That was a big stand there at the end. The other thing I would be remised not to talk about is 9/11 and the importance of that day and the significance of that day upon us. I know America is fighting since then.”

“We wore Luke shirts today to represent Luke’s fight and honoring Luke Siegel in this game. I think you can say that we did fight at the end. In a game that you’re not real crisp and didn’t play very well on offense, just to tell you like it is.”

“We handed them things, and that was one of the things we talked about all week, and we certainly did not do it. We gave them cheap scores and cheap points. One off a fumble, one off a fumbled punt and then the pick-six on a miscommunication. You can’t do that and hand teams 13 points, it doesn’t matter who they are. Credit to SFA and Coach Carthel, (quarterback Trae Self), (receiver Xavier Gibson). Those two guys are good players, and they’ll have a good team.”

“I was proud of our guys finding a way to win it at the end. Defense certainly has played with their back against the wall and played a lot of the game. Again, I’m proud of our players fight we found a way to win. It’s hard to win. You look back last weekend in college football (and) six teams lost in this same scenario. Five of them were just like us and you escape with a win, and you learn from it. … We’ll learn from it, coaches,

Players, and I think the key is that and moving on. But again, proud of our players and proud of the fight at the end especially.”

Question: Why did you go away from the run when it was working so well?

Wells: “They started adding guys in the box and blitzing and we couldn’t pick it up in terms of the run game. Them adding an extra guy into it and they got us. They got us for a little bit, and we didn’t execute. Popped a couple runs there in the third quarter when we did fit it up, and they brought pressure on one of those and we fit it up nicely. It wasn’t really clean in terms of the passing game, and I think when you start looking at the running game trying to find ways to run it better, we need to do that better. We certainly didn’t do it, that’s a good point, but they did a nice job of mixing that pressure up and we didn’t handle it very well.”

Q: What did Xavier White’s run game bring to the offense tonight?

Wells: “Both (Xavier White and Tahj Brooks) ended up finding creases there in the third quarter. That obviously provided a spark to get us back in the lead and then extend the lead to two scores. (White) was there and he made some good plays.”

Q: What was SFA doing to prevent you from spreading the ball to other receivers?

Wells: “I think we do need to spread it around. We need to get the tight ends involved. We did not get them involved early in the game and we need to get them, as well as some other guys. We had some schemed-up touches for some of the other guys and we got it taken away. The whole passing game wasn’t as clean as we needed it to be. and we need to do a better job.”