Oct. 11, 2008
UCF Head Coach George O'Leary
On the game
"Well, you can't give up points on mistakes, that's what I thought we did. There was the penalty on the field goal, a blocked punt and there was a personal foul out of bounds and we can't misjudge a punt return. I thought our defense really for the amount of times they were on the field played a very solid game. They competed the whole game. Offensively, I'm somewhat disappointed in their performance, with the field positions that they had in the first half. It was a tough loss, give Miami credit, they made plays when they had to and we came up short."
On Burnett's fumble
"I think what happened was that we didn't do a good job on the double on the gunner coming down field and Joe took his eye off it. He was trying to run before he caught the ball. It grazed his chest and went underneath. He played such an outstanding game to have that one thing, it's a shame. He's a great competitor. I wish I had about 30 of those guys. That was a mistake there that cost us a touchdown, but he also got a touchdown back and got numerous yards on the punt return."
On quarterback play
"Mike Greco said he was about 60 percent, so that's why he wasn't out there earlier and when we had him in there he just couldn't plant on the foot, so we just took him right back out and put Rob [Calabrese] back in. It think what Rob did today was typical freshman stuff. We had some open receivers and he either under threw them or overthrew them. That's part of growing up with a freshman that we have to go through sometimes."
On creating turnovers
"That's a good thing, because that's how we are scoring touchdowns. I'm real proud of our defense. We put them in some awful tough situations and too often out there. I feel like I'm always apologizing to the defense.
On containing Miami's offense
"We are a solid defense. We are very stingy when we don't give up the big play ourselves. I thought [Graig] Cooper was a good running back. He made us miss a couple times and got some things done there. We played a solid game and probably gave the ball to our offense in good field position that we didn't make hay on. We will continue to work on that, I promised these players that I will get this right for them on offense."