One More Look Back at the Ole Miss Loss for Tulane's Sumrall

At his weekly press conference, Tulane football coach Jon Sumrall reflected upon last week's loss to Ole Miss while looking ahead to their American Conference Opener at Tulsa this weekend. Look for Sumrall's thoughts on the Golden Hurricane Wednesday morning.

On the Different Kind of Schedule to Open the Season

"It's been a unique schedule, from a non-conference standpoint," said Sumrall, "with three Power Four teams and no FCS game....That's probably not really normal."

"I do like playing four non-conference games," Sumrall continued, "then going conference play, because there's a very clear line of distinction.

"I like to tell our guys to start conference play, 'This is the beginning of a new day.' We're 0-0 in conference. We're 3-1 overall. These conference games count on your overall record and your conference record. We get to choose what we do with these new opportunities in front of us," Sumrall said.

"We've got to really be focused on Tulsa and getting ready to play as the best version of ourselves," Sumrall said, "because that wasn't us last week."

And Speaking of Last Week...

Sumrall responded to a question from NOLA.com's Guerry Smith about Saturday's loss to Ole Miss, "One of my good buddies texted me Saturday night, and he said, 'You get a quote from a win, and you get a chapter from a loss,' I think there's a lot you learn in a loss.

(During the three-game win streak to open the season) "They (the players) go out on campus and they get pats on the back, 'Hey, you won a game.' Yeah, we didn't play that good, but we won," Sumrall said. "When you lose, now everybody that was on the bandwagon, our guys are going on campus, now everybody is telling them how much we suck. Now when they hear we suck, they're like, 'Now I've got to get better.'"

"I don't get "roller coastery" with the highs and the lows," Sumrall said has he motioned his hand up and down. "We celebrate victories after the game. For 24-hours, I'm really pissed, maybe longer when we lose....Regardless of the outcome of the game, we're constantly in search of getting better."

Playing a "Different Beast" Last Week

"I thought the past game was trending good coming off the Duke game," Sumrall said when talking about being ready for Ole Miss, "and then we played a different beast on Saturday. Our matchups were maybe not as favorable at times on the perimeter, and we didn't execute some things. We had two third down drops with the ball in our hands, and we'd get first downs early in the game. If those conversions happen, then I'm feeling a lot better about the flow of the game."

Sumrall said, "Some of that was on us. Some of that was a credit to our opponent (Ole Miss). They smothered us a little bit in coverage and played really sticky and physical at times. I thought we looked a little sluggish at times. Our GPS stuff will tell you we still ran fast, but we were also playing a really fast opponent....Those windows were tighter, things were more suffocating."

When talking about injuries and shuffling on the offensive line, Sumrall said, "I did think we held up up-front pretty good. We ran for 178-yards....I thought up front we held our own a little bit more respectably than I thought we might. Because you go into one of those kind of matchups sometimes and the biggest discrepancy is the line of scrimmage."

Wednesday morning, Coach Sumrall talks about this week's opponent, Tulsa.