Oct. 9, 2005

Fresh off Saturday's 23-13 victory at Iowa State, the 4-1 Baylor football team now turns its attention to Saturday's home game against 4-1 Nebraska. Here are Baylor coach Guy Morriss' thoughts heading into Saturday's game against the Huskers, the Bears' first home game in some five weeks and only their second of the 2005 season:

What did the Iowa State win mean for your vision of this program?

"Obviously I think it will help recruiting. The kids like to go play where they are having success and get involved in a program that is successful and have the opportunity to go play in bowls and that sort of thing so that should help us recruit a little more and get in on some better athletes. The thing that has changed is the mindset of a group of young football players, an entire university, a community and an alumni base just trying to teach everyone how to win again here at Baylor."

Last year, Texas A&M, was that a jumping off point?

"I don't know if you can attribute it to that win but that certainly was a small piece of it. It's hard to say really, I think it has been a gradual process of just getting kids confidence up and developing that trust back between coaches and players. It seemed like about that time we would take one step forward and two steps back. This is a new year, a good, positive new attitude and the kids are believing in what we are doing. We've got them playing hard. To me, that's key when you are trying to turn around a program and kids won't play hard for you, you don't have a chance. We as a staff have done a pretty good job of putting them in the position to be successful and they go out and make the plays. We've got a bunch of kids that stepped up yesterday and made the plays for us to get that win. It's confidence and a new mentality. We have to walk the walk everyday and keep preaching the message and sooner or later, the light will come on for them. Maybe it already has, I don't know."

Did you have a prototype player in mind when you took over at Baylor?

"The big key for me is I want somebody who wants to be at Baylor, that has a passion to come to Baylor and play in the Big 12. Second of all, we made a concerted effort to try and start recruiting right here in our own backyard. There are a lot of football players right here in central Texas and in my mind, Baylor should have been an attraction to them, to stay close to home and play for this region's home school. I think we are starting to turn to the tide there. We got in on some players at Waco High and some local kids in the Waco area and central Texas so you can see that start to turn as well. Just recruit better athletes, we were very lacking in athleticism height and speed, the same things everybody's looking for. We just didn't have enough of them in every position."

On winning on the road:

"We've been racking up some sky miles and some bus trips and it will be nice to play back home again. It has been five weeks since we played in Floyd Casey Stadium so we are looking forward to unpacking our bags."

What are you hearing from fans about the mentality change?

"The enthusiasm for football at Baylor is back again. Everybody is excited about what these kids are doing and it's been a long time since our folks have enjoyed football success and I get tons of emails and letters every week saying "good job" and stuff. I'm looking forward to this weekend at home and hopefully the place will be full and it will be rocking and we can have some success this weekend."

Is the basketball scandal still hanging over the athletic program and how is the football program helping heal that wound? Are people starting to feel good about things again?

"Yes, I think so and I think it started with the success of the two track kids over in Greece and then the women's basketball program (winning the national championship), the baseball program (first College World Series appearance in 27 years), our tennis team was runner-up for the national championship. All our sports right now are really competitive and having great success and that's something we challenged our football team with this summer is that if all these other people here at Baylor can be successful, why can't we? Our kids really bought into that and it's been great. I think it is behind us and everyone here has had to deal with and we just have to move forward in a positive way with all our athletic teams."

How did you feel about the Iowa State win?

"The bottom line is the win but there is still a lot of room for improvement. I think the thing I liked most of all is the way we responded after halftime and I think the key thing to the whole second half was Daniel's (Sepulveda) punt. From that point on, it kind of juiced us back up and you could visibly see a difference in the playing. The plays we weren't making we started making because our energy level was up and we shifted to another gear."

And he really hadn't punted that well up to that point...

"I know it, it was really uncharacteristic of Daniel and maybe he was...well, the kids took the field early and they were saying, don't worry coach but I felt it during the week and we addressed it and sure enough, we got off to a good start and then I thought, after our second drive, we put the three up but then we kind of flattened out the rest of the first half and it could have gone either way at that point."

What did you say to the team at halftime?

"That the half that we are about to play when we come out is probably going to be the most pivotal that we play this year and if we don't pick it up, our whole season could go down the drain right here. If we could get going and win this one, it could help springboard us into the next season. At that point I didn't feel like we needed to be yelling and screaming, that we just needed to keep our cool. I told them I was going to leave the room and I left the room and there was a long time between when I talked to them and when the coaches came in a talked X's and O's and it was a good 5-6 min that they just sat there and thought about it and what was at stake. I told them after the game, "You guys must have listened to me for a change." You could tell in the difference it the energy we played with the second half. We needed a spark and we had people running to the ball, knocking the ball out and we got in it."

On the fumble recoveries by the Baylor defense:

"You can't really tell if it was Harper (Jamaal) or (Colin) Allred (on the strip) and the player was trying to reach out over the goal line and then you see it pop out and there it was. The other guy (on the other fumble recovered) caught it and it looked like he was trying to shift it from his right arm to his left and Tyler (Lindstrom) got his arm in there and popped it out. I think the kids are starting to realize how big a stat turnovers, plus or minus, can be"

You don't want them to celebrate the Iowa State win too long?

"You can't, it's already enough. I think it will be for them when we go through the film from yesterday and we start thinking about Nebraska. I don't think this one will be a problem. It's just the fact that they are playing at home that helps and it's another conference game and another step towards our goal so they'll be gassed up for this one. We have one job to focus on this weekend and we can do all that celebrating and stuff later."

On Glen Oskin's first start at center:

"He did pretty well. There are little things we can correct but he did well and directed the traffic well. He didn't have any bobble snaps, he did pretty well."

Overall thoughts on the Iowa State victory:

"We had too many, 2 holds, 3 false starts, we've got to get that out of our system. There was a pass interference call."

"I thought it was probably Shawn's (Bell) best game from an overall standpoint, everything's better. We pulled out his running ability and that was good. It caught them by surprise. He did a good job of selling that. It worked out good and Shawn did a good job with it."

"We saw a lot more people making plays, I guess normally we haven't seen to this point. I thought Michael Gary played well and Forman (Marcus) made some big tackles for loss. Montez (Murphy) did well with that sack that came at a good time, C.J. (Wilson) with that pick...It was good to see everyone get into the action."

"We could be the first team from Baylor to have two conference wins. That's our next goal."

Does it intensify now?

"It's like now, the more we win, the more we need to win the next one. I hope we don't get too tight but right now, they are in a good frame of mind and they are having fun, I just can't foresee this one being hard to get them up on."

Sunday Baylor Football Notes: At 4-1, Baylor is off to its best start since the 1995 season when it also owned a 4-1 record after five games en route to a 7-4 finish in the Southwest Conference's final season of competition ... Baylor ended a 37-game Big 12 Conference road losing streak (38 conference games overall dating to a 48-7 win at SMU in 1995) with Saturday's 23-13 victory at Iowa State ... Baylor has won three road games for the first time since 1995 ... The Bears, who rank 13th nationally in scoring defense (15.2 ppg), have held four consecutive opponents under 20 points for the first time since the 1986 squad fashioned a four-game streak ... All-told, the Baylor defense has held each of its first five opponents to 23 or fewer points for the first time since the 1991 team enjoyed a six-game string ... The Baylor offense has scored on its opening drive in four straight games ... Baylor has forced 12 turnovers over the season's first five games, surpassing the Bears' 2004 season total of nine ... Junior WR Trent Shelton, who caught a pass in his 27th straight game at Iowa State, is tied for 13th on Baylor's career receptions list with 81 catches ... Junior PK Ryan Havens' 49-yard first quarter field goal at Iowa State was a career-long and the longest for a Baylor kicker since Kyle Atteberry's 52-yarder against Texas A&M in 1999 ... Havens' has 11 made field goals on the year to move into a five-way tie for ninth on Baylor's single-season list ... Senior FS Maurice Lane recorded the 17th double-digit tackle game of his career with a 10-stop effort at Iowa State ... Lane now has 325 career tackles, good for a sixth-place tie on Baylor's all-time list ... Junior P Daniel Sepulveda's third-quarter 68-yard punt was the second-longest of his career and his 11th of 60 or more yards all-time, a new Baylor career mark ... Seven of Sepulveda's 20 punts on the season have pinned Baylor opponents inside their own 20-yard line and he has only punted 20 times over the season's first five games compared to 29 punts after five games a year ago ... Baylor improved to 7-1 in Guy Morriss' tenure when holding an opponent to 20 or fewer points, including 3-1 this season ... After playing four of its five games on the road, Baylor plays four of its last six at home ... Baylor, which has won four games for the first time since the 1996 squad posted a 4-7 mark, now takes aim at another first since joining the Big 12--multiple conference victories in the same season ... Kickoff for Saturday's game at Nebraska is set for 6:05 p.m. (Central).