Ken Stephens

Q: If it turns out to be Florida State and Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl, will the two best teams be playing for the national championship, or should Nebraska be there?

A: I don't know. [Virginia Tech coach] Frank Beamer and [Florida State's] Bobby Bowden are friends of mine, and I'd make them mad if I said anything different. But when Frank [Solich] comes in here, he'll probably want to be playing in a playoff.

Q: Did Nebraska change its pass rush from the first game earlier this season?

A: Yeah, they were faster. It was the same guys, but they came harder. I think we made 'em mad last time, or you guys made 'em mad reminding them that we beat 'em three straight times. They ran over our guys and made plays. The blocks we made last time, we didn't make this time.

Q: Field position and special teams didn't work out for Texas. How big of a factor was that?

A: Special teams were real, real good except for punt coverage. We didn't cover well, so I said punt it out of bounds. In the second half, we punted out of bounds short. If we had been able to move the ball, we could have corrected that field position. That was not the difference in the game. Our inability to move the ball was the difference. We were no dimensional. We couldn't run or throw in the first half.

Q: What was your team's emotional state coming into this game off the loss at Texas A&M last week?

A: I thought they played as hard as they could play, and emotionally, they were in the game. If we could do anything different, all I'd ask our guys to do is block them. If we hadn't played as hard as we did, Nebraska would have beaten us pretty badly. So the emotion was there.

Q: You didn't seem to pass as well on first down as in the first game with Nebraska. Was it a different game plan?

A: We played much better in the first game than we did in the second game. The game plan was to be balanced running and passing, and they whipped us at both. When you're not executing and blocking, the plan goes out the window. So the plan died. When theirs whip ours, the scheme doesn't matter. We weren't calling protections without people to block them. But we just didn't block them. It was a defensive ball game with two great defenses, and their offense just made more plays than we did.

- Ken Stephens