Corsair Football Loses Another Tough Road Game, 56-24

After another tough loss on the road to the Cerritos College Falcons, Coach Robert Taylor sat down with the Corsair for a little Q and A to answer a few questions on what his team has done well and what they need to improve on when division play starts at Santa Monica College on Sept. 27 against Los Angeles Valley College.

Corsair: Coach how did you get 56 put up against you?

Coach Taylor: Well it was spread around. We gave them a couple; we haven't played as well as we want to play yet. I told the football team after the game, that, I knew that being on the road was going to take its toll on us.

Corsair: How do you get the team to play better?

Coach Taylor: I got to get both sides of the football team to play better. One's up, one's down. The sooner we get this team even, we'll be a pretty good football team.

Corsair: How was the offensive play against the Falcons?

Coach Taylor: We made a little change at quarterback we put in McManus in for Nasouf. He delivered some good things, we did this to ignite the team a little bit and it worked. We finally scored a touchdown, got that monkey off of our back.
Running back Daron Bartholomew had a 97-yard touchdown run, I think it's the longest from scrimmage in SMC history or at least since I've been here. Nasouf is still going to play.
Some good things happened in the loss, these kids need to see that they can score and play well. I like McManus' poise, hitting receivers.

Corsair: And the defense?

Coach Taylor: Defense was out of sync. Defensive end Marcus Miller had a fumble recovery and ran it back for about a 60- to 70-yard touchdown.
We got behind quick; it was 14-0 before we could blink. That made us change our game plan a little. We had to start throwing the ball more. We need to limit our mistakes; the offense needs to put drives together, stay on the field and let our defense rest. We'll be alright; These guys are young.

Corsair: How was the team's attitude?

Coach Taylor: Better, we hung in there until the end, the team had some fight in them, no one wants to go down 0-2, but only two teams have won games in our Conference, so we still got a shot at a championship.
I started the 2003 season 0 and 3 and we won 7 in a row, but the side line was better.

Corsair: You got a game this Saturday in Bakersfield?

Coach Taylor: We play them this weekend, surprisingly they are also 0- 2 and they were number two in the country last year, reputation doesn't give you wins, Bakersfield will be our fourth road game, that's including the scrimmage at Long Beach we had.
Hopefully I'll get these young guys to play as together by then. We also lost our starting fullback Andrew Heric, he broke his leg, he'll be out for the season, and we lost our other FB Eric Boyd before he even got into the game, but again we'll be fine.

Corsair: Anything else we should know about SMC Football

Coach Taylor: Come on Sept. 27, break open the field, that game is at 1 p.m.; you can still go to the mall after.