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Shane Beamer following loss to Alabama 10-12
Obviously a great college football game. Congrats to Alabama. They made more plays than we did at the end. Proud of the fight of our team coming down here. No one was surprised by our performance. We expected this. We competed our butts off all three phases. Everybody expected to win the football game. Came up a little bit short at the end, but I'm really, really proud of our guys. Credit to Alabama, like I said, they're coming off the loss last week that they had. And then going into halftime, we had momentum, and then they came back out and made more plays than we did in the second half questions. Shane again, it will start to play pretty well, but the free turnovers, but the multiple of them they come in. Yeah, you can't go on the road in the SEC and turn the ball over. Shane, what does it say about your team to go out from the performance guys at last week to come down the wire and have a chance to win this game? It says that every week's different. And I mean, people can put lines as what they want, talk about us, how they want to talk about us. It's amazing to me from Kentucky, the way we performed, what the perception of our team was really, really high. And then we had a crappy performance last Saturday. And all of a sudden, the narrative is we ain't worth a crap. And that's not the case. We had a bad game last week. We played bad. We performed bad. We coached bad against Ole Miss. And I mean, we were a bad team. So we expected to win this game. Nobody was coming in here at halftime doing cartwheels because we were in a tight game without Alabama. So we expected that because we have a good football team. Life in this conference is really, really hard. And there's really good teams you play week in, week out. So it says that we have a good team that competes their asses off, excuse my language, kids. And that's what we did today. And we came up a little bit short. It says we had a bad day last week that we regrouped from because we got a bunch of fighters in that room that love to compete and love to work. And I hurt for them. And that's what I told them in the locker room, Jack, is I've hurt for them because we're sick of this feeling. And they worked too hard during the week to come in here on Saturdays and feel like that in that locker room across that wall right there as well. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah. It was a play where we had a decent idea of what they were going to be in. They've had a couple of two-point plays this year. They've played a couple different coverages in their two-point play situations. One's more of a zone. One's more of a max blitz, covers a row type look. So we had a play that we thought was going to be good on both of them. I haven't seen the replay of it. But from what I was told, we didn't play with great technique and didn't block it great, but had a couple guys open. We just gave up a little bit of pressure there, unfortunately. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, he's a warrior. Proud of him. He continues to get better each and every week. I mean, to come on the road, 23 of 31, 238 yards, and ran the ball well, I thought he did enough for us to win the football game. And he'll continue to get better, and he'll tell you, we've got to be aware that he can't hang on the ball quite too long. I thought there were a couple of times today where we maybe hung on to the ball a little bit too long. But he gave us a chance. And I mean, to go on the road in front of 100,000 and basically execute two minute drives right there at the end of the game, we didn't finish the last one I know. But to have the ball move and operate efficiently, he continues to get better. Where did you see from your defense, kind of how they settled in after that first drive? [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, they did a great job, who they are. It was a little disappointing in the first drive, Alan. We didn't place-- I don't want to say soft, but we'd loose in our coverage. They hit that one play, where we were just loose in coverage. I think we were man free and gave too much cushion. And then there was another one where we talked all week about when Milro, he's a dynamic quarterback. When he scrambles, we've got to stay we call it plaster, basically stay locked into our guys if we're in man coverage or if it's on coverage, pick people up. And we turn the guy loose in that situation. But I think we came in at halftime. We had sacked him four times, I think, in the first half. One of the keys to the game for us was to affect the quarterback, to affect Milro. And we were, we had stopped the run. We had sacked him four times. And he had created a turnover as well. So thought they did enough for us to win, which we could have finished that drive a little bit better when Alabama got the ball back. We got them to a third down situation. And we're in man free and got beat. Now we were in a situation right there where if they had gotten the first down, we wanted to let them score, because that's the only way for us to get the ball back, because they could start taking these at that point. So if they had gotten the first down, we were going to let them score. But I wish we had not given up an explosive pass for a touchdown to begin with on that. And to the first half and end of the game, you guys. Just in a crazy amount of stuff that's happening, how did you keep your guys calm on the sideline? Yeah. Just knowing that it's on the road in the SEC, we use a term in our program, Jordan, that we're fireproof, that no matter what happens, we're fireproof, and we can withstand it. And we talked about it at the hotel early this morning before we came over here, that we needed to have great poise, that you're on the road in front of 100,000 people in one of the greatest environments in college athletics, and there's going to be adversity. And we have to stay together and just push through and stay poised. And we did. There was some crazy stuff. But our guys just kept hanging in there. And a thought coming into the game, Jordan, that the first quarter was going to be critical. They're coming off a disappointment from last week, and 11 a.m. kick off against a team that they're 21 point favorites to, and everybody's telling them they're going to kick the crap out of, it's their first day game. I think they've played three night games here. We're coming off a disappointment where everybody's telling us how crappy we are. So to me, how teams responded in the first quarter was going to be big for the way the rest of the game went. And we finished the first quarter. I think it was 7-0 after the first quarter, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, so I mean, it's not where we wanted to be, but we were in it. And then we just kind of kept battling back and stay fireproof and just continue to make plays and present themselves. And that's what we've got to do a better job at doing. I'm sorry, I'll come to you next. Or go ahead, Dale, then I'm coming to you. OK, there was obviously a lot of criticism about the offense that was last week. It seemed like things turned around really well that way. What was your assessment on how is that holding it that way? Look at the tape. I mean, obviously, at the end of the day, your judge by the final score in 25 points was not enough today. But I thought our guys-- we had a poor performance last week, and people wanted to talk about it and rightfully so. When you score three points in the SEC, you should be criticized. But you guys know me. I'm a glasses-half full kind of guy. I was last week good enough. No, was there a lot of really good to build off of with young players as they continue to get better? Yes. But at the end of the day, when you come on the road in the SEC, you can't turn the ball over against really good football teams. And we created some, but when you lose a turnover battle, it's going to be hard to win. Sort of thing you had to know for that. A lot of receivers were made some plays. A lot of guys called balls in May-Zoe, and they got a big touchdown. How nice was that to see this week? Yeah, no, it was good. I told them in the hotel last night in our team meeting before we went to bed that the way that Alabama plays defense at our receivers were going to have some opportunities. And we were going to give them opportunities to go make plays, and we did. They made some plays down the field. There's some plays we didn't make down the field. But they continue to get better. Mike Smith came in there and did some good things. True freshmen, May-Zoe came in there and did some good things. True freshmen as well. So there'll be a lot to clean up. And obviously, the end of the game from that standpoint was disappointing. But those guys did a good job. And we, for us to be the offense that we need to be, we just can't be ground and pound, triple option, and throw, dink and dunk, RPOs. We've got to be able to throw the ball down the field. And we tried to do that today. We had some shots called early that we weren't able to throw or connect to one, and we had to check it down. But we want to continue to be aggressive and give our guys opportunities to go make plays down the field.