Everything Scott Satterfield said after Louisville’s loss to Boston College

Video of Saturday’s postgame presser can be found here

OPENING STATEMENT

“First of all, give credit to BC. Coach (Jeff Hafely) has done a great job with his program and those kids played hard. I thought our guys played hard as well, all the way until the end and we gave ourselves a chance in the end and unfortunately, a batted ball gets intercepted. We felt good about the chance to go score, we felt like we could have done it. Offensively, man, we moved the ball tonight. We had close to 200 yards rushing and a lot of yards passing. I thought Malik (Cunningham) played well. Again, it comes back to turnovers.

“Our losses have all been three turnovers and it was that again. The first one, Tutu (Atwell) was just trying to tuck the football and it’s something he has done 10,000 times in his life and the ball just comes out. Hassan Hall was trying to get extra yards and was bouncing it out and the ball was in his inside arm and the guy comes to tackle him and strips it. And then the last one, the ball gets batted straight up in the air and to a defender. We turned those guys over as well, but just not enough. Another key was we get down into the red zone and don’t get touchdowns but have to settle for field goals, I felt like that was big. But at the end of the day, it really comes back to not possessing the football. I was proud of our guys fight all the way until the end, we just came up a little short there tonight.”

Q: BC RAN FOR 188 YARDS, DO YOU CREDIT A LOT OF THAT TO MISSING (JARED) GOLDWIRE AND (DEZMOND) TELL IN THE MIDDLE?

Satterfield: ”Yeah, that’s a big part of it. When Gold’s out there and he’s healthy he’s a force to be reckoned with and he’s a big guy. I think No. 1, BC has a really good offensive line. They have leaned more on the pass this year but they can run the football. But yeah, I think not having those two noses there and Monty Montgomery is dinged up as well. That’s tough. And we have some other guys dinged up, Dorian Etheridge missed half of the week. Those guys are dinged up and they attacked us some and then I thought their quarterback was very efficient throwing the football. They had a good balance of both and that makes it hard to defend.

“That’s probably the biggest difference in the game, they occupied the ball and took the ball away from us because we felt like when we had the ball we could move it.”

Q: THE TURNOVERS WERE NOT AN ISSUE LAST YEAR, WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST ISSUE IN 2020?

Satterfield: ”It’s hard to put a finger on it. We have way too many fumbles this year and we really haven’t had many fumbles in the past, not as many as we have this year for sure. The interceptions, I just think this year there have been a lot of fluke interceptions. There have been some when we should have not thrown the ball and I get that but there have been some that are just kind of fluke. Fourth-down interceptions, batted-ball interceptions, tipped-ball interceptions, catching a ball that we tipped right to them interceptions. I can think of six right now that are just kind of fluke interceptions. They still go down as interceptions, I get that but it’s not your variety interception where you make a misread and try to fit a ball into there type of thing. We have had a few of those. I think it has just been some crazy stuff that has happened to us this year. Just like (the fumble), how many times has Tutu (Atwell) tucked the football in his life? He catches a bender and gets the first down and is trying to tuck it and loses the ball. That’s just freak thing, it doesn’t happen.”

Q: WHAT DO YOU DO IN THE OFFSEASON TO TRY AND STOP THIS FROM COMING A RE-OCCURING PROBLEM?

Satterfield: ”We’re going to do a lot of things in the offseason to challenge ourselves mentally and turnovers are going to be a big part of that. Because I think we need to create more of them as well, on the defensive side of the ball. When we are going against each other, we are going to create that competition. There will be winners and losers within that every single day and that’s how you have to do it. I think you just get used to trying to get turnovers if you are on defense and offensively just everything you are doing being very intense in how you carry the ball and how you throw the ball because we all know we have moved the ball and outgained a lot of the teams we have played this year. You know, the Notre Dame game when we didn’t turn the ball over, we’re right in the game and they’re the No. 2 team in the country and it’s 12-7. I told the guys it’s such a fine line of winning and losing but I know this, if you are in the top 10 in the country in turnover margin then you are going to have a winning record.”

Q: YOU HAVE THREE WEEKS TO PREPARE FOR WAKE FOREST; WHAT WILL YOU DO TO KEEP THE GUYS MOTIVATED?

Satterfield: ”Speaking of Wake, I think they are one of the top teams in turnover margin. So, we are getting ready to play another team that is really good at the turnover margin. We’re going to have three weeks and we have been in this kind of situation before at App State where we had a bowl game three weeks later. We kind of have to play the same kind of schedule with that here. What we’ll do is have some fundamental practices, we’ll give the guys some days off within these three weeks. It’s not like we’re going to just go out there and practice every day. We’ll give them a couple of days off and then we’ll probably practice three days this week and a couple of days off and then give them maybe two or three days off again and then come back and maybe go three days of practice again and then a couple of more days off and then we’ll come back and do our game week. It will be maybe six practices in those two bye weeks, maybe seven, and try to have some fun with it. I want to get those guys excited about wanting to come over to the building, excited to get better and really working on fundamentals and working with the young guys. Try to have some fun with it and then push forward into the last week and get ready for Wake.”

Q: WHEN YOU ARE 3-7 AND NOT GOING TO HAVE A WINNING RECORD; DO YOU GO INTO THE GAME THINKING YOU EXPERIMENT AND PLAY SOME OTHER GUYS?

Satterfield: ”Well, you certainly think we have played a lot of young guys and we’ll continue to do that. You would like to think some other guys would get healthy in the next couple of weeks. We’ll just kind of see where we are as you look heading into next year, who is coming back, and all of those kinds of things. We’ll figure out the guys that we need to go play in this last game to try and get a win. We are certainly not going to cash this game in and say, ‘Hey, let’s just go play the young guys.’ We’re going to go out here and try and win this game. But we will certainly work on fundamentals with a lot of young guys as we move through and the reason for that is the wear and tear on the guys that have been playing so you want to work the young guys and let their bodies heal up. We’ll approach it that way and see what we have game week, Hopefully, we’ll have most if not all of our guys back and we’ll go out here and try and win this game.”