Sept. 16, 2012

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Massachusetts Head Coach Charley Molnar
Opening remarks ... "It was a sloppy day for us today in a lot of areas. Offense, defense, special teams, everybody was complacent in today's game. We have a long way to go as a football team. It was a farrago of things that went wrong. You name it, from penalties, to a miss exchange with the quarterback and running back early in the game, dropped balls in the punt return game, and a missed field goal. Just about anything that could go wrong did go wrong today at least in the way I viewed it."

On the running game and starting back Michael Cox ... "I really wanted to get Mike (Cox) more meaningful touches. We had so many penalties offensively and gosh, we were just pinned back, and we had to throw the ball a little bit to try to get out of some of the holes that we dug ourselves into. I really, really thought we could have established him. He was on track to have a good day. Made a couple of bad decisions and gave up some ground and that was very atypical of him. Still in some ways, even though he has been around a long time, he still in some ways is a young player. He doesn't have a lot of carries under his belt for a guy that is a fifth year guy."

On kicker Brendon Levengood and the kicking game as a whole ... "Even the miss was a good miss. He really struck the ball well, a 45-yarder. You would like to think a Division-I kicker is going to come pretty darn close, which he did. He really, really struck the ball well. I think he will make one of those before the year is out. He obviously has the range."

On defending Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson ... "It is impossible to replicate in practice, that is the number one thing. There is nobody like that on our football team, really there is nobody like that in the country. How do you get ready for him? You can't. You just have to be able to be athletic enough and disciplined enough to try to make the plays when he comes to you. When he got space, it is impossible to tackle him. Our guys just weren't capable and up to that task today."

UMass Running Back Michael Cox
On what it was like to see his old teammates and get a chance to speak with them following the game ... "It was nice just seeing all my real good friends after spending most of my college career with them. It was just cool coming back and seeing them all again."

On what it was like to come back to Michigan playing on a different team ... "It was definitely weird at first, especially going to the visiting team's locker room and everything. It definitely brought back a lot of memories. It was definitely weird going to the opposite sideline. It was fun though."

On what he told his teammates to expect coming to play a game at Michigan Stadium ... "I just kind of told them what the experience was going to be like. Obviously, Michigan has 110,000-plus people, and you know it is going to be loud. I just tried to help them prepare for the experience and tell them about the personnel of the team -- pretty much whatever they wanted to know."

UMass Quarterback Mike Wegzyn
On how Cox's strong performance in the running game opened up the field for the passing game ... "As an offense, when you have a running back that is making big runs like he was today, it definitely makes the defense back up a little bit more and kind of opens up windows for passing a little bit more. Whenever you have a running back like that, it helps a ton."

On if he felt that this was the team's best performance of the season, even though they were going against their strongest competition ... "Definitely. I think as an offense we felt a lot calmer. I know personally I felt a lot calmer sitting in the pocket behind my guys. Obviously Mike [Cox] was doing a great job today running the ball. Our receivers were catching the ball really well and running good routes. I don't think it really affected us too much that we were playing a big team -- I think that actually helped us. Mentally, we said to ourselves that we needed to step up our game a little bit and play up to their level."