TRANSCRIPT: Tressel's Post-Game News Conference

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Below is the full transcript of the news conference following the Buckeyes' 31-27 win over Navy Saturday.

COACH TRESSEL: Well, it was a great football game and we have to tip our cap to the young men from the United States Naval Academy. We knew they would fight to the last play and they did just that. We gave them a little help along the way in that fourth quarter, did some things that obviously you wish you could have back.

As I look back, I certainly should have kicked a field goal on fourth and one, which was a huge mistake in my mind, and of course we didn't make the fourth and one and made it a bigger mistake. And then of course we had the long play against us and a missed extra point and all the rest, threw an interception, so it wasn't a dazzling fourth quarter for us by any means, but that does not take away from the play of Navy. They're great kids that play hard and have great class. I told our guys, I said, you'll remember this day for the rest of your life, it will remind you how proud you are to be an American, to compete against folks like that and know that our country is in their hands in the future and pageantry and the electricity and the excitement and obviously the game, but we've got a lot to do to get better and that's what life is all about is studying the film and working to get better and understanding the things that it takes to be successful. And our guys -- I promise you, our guys prepared extremely hard to get ready for this football game and they'll prepare extremely hard to make sure we get better the next time we hit the field.

REPORTER: Coach, all the preseason, all the camp, as you approached today, as it's over now, how did it compare to what you thought your team was going to look like today? In other words, going into the game, your perception of your team and then after the game as you kind of reflect on it right now?

COACH TRESSEL: There were some moments that I thought our team looked just like we'd hoped and did some great things and then there were some moments where we did some things that I had hoped we wouldn't. But, you know, they played hard. I never saw them stop playing, competed hard, they were playing against folks that competed hard, and we were put right up against it, which is always healthy. So we've got a lot of work to do, we knew that, and our guys won't shy off that.

REPORTER: Two questions, Coach, did you wonder at some point how is this effort going to sustain us against USC and with one of the bright spots the return, it was Rolle who took it back on the two-point.

COACH TRESSEL: On the two-point, yeah, it was Brian Rolle. He did have a little speed there. He downshifted when that QB had the angle on him and obviously that was good to see, but we still needed to get the on-side kick. So, I mean, I wasn't breathing that easy at that point. As far as was there ever a time where I reflected forward to the next week's game, well, no.

REPORTER: Well, thinking now.

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, now?

REPORTER: Is this effort --

COACH TRESSEL: Effort? Yeah, I don't concern myself with our guys' effort. Our guys gave excellent effort to prepare, to come into the game, but we're going to need to get much, much better. We know that. Our guys will be willing to go forth, though.

REPORTER: Could you assess Terrelle's day? It looked like he had a pretty good day up until the interception and how much of a damper does that put on his overall performance today?

COACH TRESSEL: I know when you're a quarterback, that really puts a damper on how you feel about your performance. As I look at it, it's one of the plays and it's a big play that you can learn from and we always talk about, we like the ball delivered to the numbers or lower because if accidents happen, usually fall on the ground, and if accidents happen above the numbers, they're problems.

But I thought all in all Terrelle did some very good things. It's going to be fun to study his footwork. It's going to be fun to study all of the various things that are part of playing the position and the decisions you make and so forth, but I thought he threw the ball well and I thought he made good decisions.

I'm sure there's going to be plenty of things that we evaluate that we need to do better, but knowing the kind of competitor he is, I'm sure that interception will damper his thinking of his performance, but what we have to do is get to the point where we evaluate each play independently, and you learn a little bit the impact of mistakes, but I thought all in all, he did quite well.

REPORTER: Jim, you mentioned wishing you had gone for the field goal on fourth and one there. Can you go into a little more what your thinking was in the moment there to go for it on fourth down?

COACH TRESSEL: You know, probably let the emotion of wanting to score and wanting our offensive guys to knock a hole in it get the best of me, and when we didn't make it, what went through my mind? I was hoping the next voice on the phone wasn't Gene Smith's because, you know, it was a poor decision. It might not have looked as poor at the moment. The thing I said to our guys, I said, you know what, we didn't put it to three scores and that was a poor decision on my part.

REPORTER: Coach, Terrelle looked like he had a Mike Vick with his eye black, what did you --

COACH TRESSEL: I'm not tall enough to see his eyebrows, I don't know what he had.

REPORTER: Well, he did. Any thoughts?

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, did he? No thoughts. Didn't know it.

REPORTER: And then injuries, DeVier looked like he came off. Boom, after the touchdown, looked like he came off limping and he didn't look like he had the burst on the fourth and short.

COACH TRESSEL: I don't know. I haven't seen the trainer yet, but I think Boom had a pretty good burst on that run on the last drive where we put the game away. He exploded pretty good. I don't know if he had a cramp or -- I don't know. Who was the other one you mentioned?

REPORTER: DeVier.

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, DeVier? I think he had a little ankle or something. I don't know if he played much at all, did he? Didn't seem like it.

REPORTER: Jim, did any of the pageantry or any of the extra things that took place off the field, did that ever distract, do you think, either your players or the game as a whole?

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, I'd like to think it did not because that's -- that's part of college football. We're one part of it, but there are a lot of other parts of it. The pageantry, the band, Chris Spielman and his family out there and the soldiers being recognized and all those things, they're every bit a part of that afternoon as we were, and if we allowed that to distract us, I'd be surprised. It was an honor being a part of all that.

REPORTER: Coach, you had three turnovers there in the fourth quarter that kind of sealed it for you, you talked about how big it was for your defense to step up and make those plays and get the victory for you.

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, we came out after half and got the field position and then we didn't cash in, which was very disappointing, but our defense did come up with turnovers, which we didn't quite have the cash-in mode that I would have liked to have off those turnovers, you like to score seven-pointers every time. I thought our defense played hard and that's a tough offense to get ready for.

I thought their kid was a good thrower. I thought he threw some good balls in there and it was a hard fought ball game and coming up with those turnovers was huge.

REPORTER: Jim, a big challenge next week, coming here for a night game, just your thoughts on that, having to prepare for Navy and an offense you'll never see again the rest of the season, does that put you behind the eight ball a little bit because you had to train so long for something that you're really not going to see again?

COACH TRESSEL: You know, it was the schedule, and in my opinion, it probably was good for us to have to really get focused in on something so different, so totally unique to this game. If you didn't prepare for that offense, you really would have been in trouble, so I think it was a good thing. As far as thoughts on next week is that our job is to get better because we know the team coming in next week is a great football team. It's going to be an exciting moment in this stadium and you sit back and you think, how fortunate are we? We have a day like today with this kind of situation and next Saturday night, it's going to be special. So our task is to get better and make sure we're up for the challenge.

REPORTER: Not to belabor the fourth and one call, but when you go for that, you don't get it, does that make you less likely to maybe go for something like that again in the future?

COACH TRESSEL: Probably if you're up by 15 points, yeah.

REPORTER: Coach, can you talk a little bit about Brandon today? It looked like he was just as quick as he was a couple years ago.

COACH TRESSEL: Brandon Saine?

REPORTER: Yeah.

COACH TRESSEL: I thought B. Saine had a good spring, was healthy preseason. Brandon's a good football player. He did some good things out there, started the game with a bang, that reverse in the kickoff. And Coach Hazell had been talking about that reverse for three weeks after he'd studied the film and thought it was there. I thought the kids executed at grade and Brandon's speed was helpful. But Brandon Saine is going to get better and better and better. One last one.

REPORTER: You said in the spring one of your emphases was going to be score being touchdowns in the red zone, are you disappointed that didn't happen as frequently as you'd like today?

COACH TRESSEL: We had a goal at the nine or the 10 and it ended up we had a first and ten on the ten and a half and I think we ended up with -- those are difficult -- those are the ones we had trouble with a year ago, the ones that started between the eight and the 10, so do you leave a little disappointed? Yeah, because you want to score touchdowns and I don't remember exactly the whys and the wherefores as to what play, but probably the thing that jumps up in my mind that was most disappointing is we had a penalty down there that 12 of our 14 times to the red zone last year that we didn't score a penalty was involved, and yet we were like 96% red zone efficient last year, but too many of them were field goals.

So for us to have another penalty, that was very disappointing and you're not going to be able to survive that all the time. Let's talk to these guys, they did a good job leading.

REPORTER: How difficult was that offense and was their speed a little better than you thought it would be?

COLEMAN: No, we knew coming in this game, our scout team could really not match the speed of their offense, so we knew coming into this game that they were going to be a lot faster and we felt we needed to execute that first series so we were a little disappointed coming off the field after that first series knowing we had to step it up. But we knew that they were going to come at us fast and come at us hard and keep coming.

REPORTER: Jimmy, just your feeling on the fourth and one, Coach said he really should have kicked the field goal, but as a lineman, just your feeling on not getting it?

CORDLE: Well, I think the couple plays before was disappointing, I think it was the second one, started out, maybe, and I know we ran on second down ran a lead, a hurried lead and came up on the edge, guy came up own the edge real fast and got ahead of me and then we had another inside zone to the left and stuffed it and then obviously you want to get that on fourth down. We had a fourth down, we got it earlier in the game, I think, and we were on -- everybody was on the field. I didn't think there was any doubt we were going for it and it was definitely disappointing that we got stuffed three times there.

REPORTER: As the captains and seniors how do you guys feel that the younger players stepped up today?

WORTHINGTON: I think they did a great job. Looking out there and seeing how many plays they all made and I seen during camp, little Carter was great. He caught a lot of balls and he looked awesome out there as well as a lot of other guys as well and I'm proud of a lot of guys stepping up, they looked great.

REPORTER: Austin and Kurt, what did you learn in this football game today? What do you think after the game today you've learned as a team today from playing Navy?

COLEMAN: It was a great game for us to really handle the adversity. Navy kept pounding on us even when we felt like we were ready to stop the game and call it quits, but they kept coming after us and I think the team responded well. Even though they scored and we got two points, when B. Rolle intercepted it and took it back, I think a lot of guys got good experience from close games and that's something we haven't had in the past going into the big games, so this is a great game for us to take steps forward.

SPITLER: Obviously there was a lot of good things out there that happened, but this game shows we have a long way to go and preparation starts tomorrow.

REPORTER: I want to ask the defensive guys again a little bit about that, about when it's a two-point game suddenly, I mean, how shocking was that? Talk about how you responded to it. Also I want to ask about how you defended the option, the quarterback got free on a few of those.

WORTHINGTON: I give a lot of credit to Navy's offense, they played hard all game. They have a great offense. They do everything they do very well. You can't give them anything, no space. A couple times they gave us a space, we got out of our gap or whatnot and they made us pay for it. A lot of credit to those guys. The Midshipmen are great guys, great players, they played all four quarters as you see and when you go against a monster like that, you know you're in for a battle and later on in the fourth quarter we paid for it, so much credit to them.

COLEMAN: Like Doug said, this offense does a great job of capitalizing on any slip-up that we make, so what we had to do, we had to keep playing the same defense over and over and if one guy didn't get over to his gap and one guy didn't stay on his man, they made us play, and they did a great job of that. But I felt like we did a pretty good job of limiting their big runs. We held them to 160 return yards which is far below what they usually have, but in that aspect I thought we did very well but definitely not up to our standards. On that, just the way we were planning them and scouting them, we felt like our safety could come down and play outside leverage on them and Ricky Dobbs threw a great pass. It was just one of those plays where he made a great play and that's about that.

REPORTER: All right. To Doug and Kurt, when you got in that situation, you're senior captains, when you got in that situation, I seriously doubt you expected to be up against it like that where you've got to stop a two-point conversion to keep them from tying the game, how did you avoid panicking? And how did you avoid letting younger players -- since you have so many, how did you get them to settle down?

WORTHINGTON: Coach did a great job of getting us to come together and settle down, making sure you capitalize if the ball comes your way. We have it in practice all the time, much credit to Coach Tressel for putting us in those positions. We just made sure we calmed down, relaxed, the crowd was great, they gave us a lot of noise and whatnot and B. Rolle came and made a great play.