Babers on MAC Teleconference: "Unrecognizable"

All weekend, I have been thinking about how Gregg Brandon would have talked about that defeat Friday...

• Seniors need to step up (name a few).
• Part of a process.
• WKU great team.
• Only so much coaches can do.

Coach Babers yesterday was the 100% opposite of that.  It was impressive.  He called it (as you will see below) "unrecognizable," which is a word I think we would all agree with.

You can listen to it yourself and you should...only about 3 minutes long.  Here are the highlights.

Elton Alexander of the PD asked Coach about the defense, noting that we are using guys who have played.  Alexander said it had to be "shocking."

Babers:

"It's not one of my high moments, that's for sure.  We're probably not as bad as we looked but not as good as we were hyped up to be.  We're probably somewhere in the middle."

My note:  that's a pretty bold statement there.  It recasts a lot of expectations in one statement.  Maybe he's challenging his guys.

Alexander follows up, calling it "amazing."

Babers:

"A lot of things went right for them, we were missing tackles and some of the alignments were not exactly right.  It was not a good day for us, that's for sure."

John Wagner asked what jumped out on film.

Babers said that the team was out there for a lot of long drives and got tired, citing 14 of 18 conversions on third down.

My note:  That is in some contrast to his previous presser when he said he didn't care about time of possession and that if the defense was good, they should be on the field.

On the coming week:

"When a team comes out and plays like that, the head coach has to take responsibility for it and I do.  I think our guys were reading their newspaper clippings a little bit and Western Kentucky wasn't....  So now we get to go back and do it the old-fashioned way.  I like that way better anyway."  (Emphasis added)

"We need to go back and work on us some more.  We are not ready.  We have a long stretch coming up, but it was so unrecognizable out there that we need to go back and work on us for a couple days."