Texas Tech Football: C.J. Baskerville Postgame Presser vs Washington State | Sept. 7, 2024

good all right questions for CJ Baskerville CJ obviously it's not the results you guys wanted but I thought the secondary played better than you guys did last week CU can you give your assessment on what your your guys' group did tonight uh yeah we uh during the week we were you know last week we felt like wasn't us and we still do uh so we were really harping on like our eyes and communication cuz we felt like those two components were really the issues last week with our eye discipline and commun ating through the back end so um just reassessing those uh fundamentals throughout the week and uh just harping on them going into today um really helped on that um but there also again there's some areas like we know we we did better than we did last week but there's also some areas that we can definitely help out on the defense especially in the Run game coach talked about it but giving up scores after the failed conversions you were a part of that defense last year that really excelled at that is there any difference in mindset or anything like that that kind of that you see from your guys no I don't think it's a difference of mindset I think it's uh you know we we had a lot of experience last year so you know the guys on the field um last year they they had been in those situations before so uh as many would see it as kind of your your your backs against the wall kind of last year a lot of us were we had a lot of experience so we had been there before and like we kind of knew how to handle it so um having newer guys um uh starting or on the uh playing this year it's just kind of the thing that we have to kind of get through our our our heads that you know no matter what happens we still we always have an opportunity to make something out of nothing so what what would you like to clean up from this week moving into next week yeah uh tackling I feel like tackling can always be better um especially uh with the quarterback I felt like he you know he was just kind of running all over us tonight and you know we could have got him down uh before the sck many times and we weren't able to do that um and also we can always get better at communicating um communic just knowing and just doing your job I felt like uh on some on some plays there was just one person uh who just didn't do their job and you know you need everyone 11th and uh and so just not doing that can can have a big burst of a play so uh just just getting down the basics knowing and doing your job uh keeping eye discipline a key factor in what we're doing but also communicating again those two things especially in the in the secondary can can make or break your secondary so obviously this week we did a a better job at doing that but we can always get better at that especially when it comes to the Run game because I feel I feel like that's where they kind of got us tonight and as defensive backs like we do you know our our main job is you know the passing game but we also have a big job in the Run game CJ uh can you speak to I mean the difficulty that the quarterback run added to your your responsibility defensively um considering you coming out last week the story was you know they had two receivers who went over 100 yards and tonight he heard more with his legs than with his arms almost yeah it's uh it's it's it's really just another Athlete on the field you know uh the last week you weren't really worried about the quarterback you know scrambling and whatnot but uh whenever you could have you could have everybody covered and when you have an athlete uh like the quarterback you have tonight he can make plays happen so it's essentially just another it's another player to guard uh un likee last week and when when they're as as elusive as they are as he was tonight it can really uh har make make a difference into what we have to do and also for our game plan whenever whenever you have everybody covered you're going to drop eight you only have three three down linemen you know and the pressure is not there then uh it can kind of make it difficult to contain that quarterback especially with how elusive he is um so just uh we have to get we have to get better at our Rush lanes and our underneath coverage guys um noticing whenever the quarterback's about to take off and kind of leveraging between whether the quarterback and uh and our playing in the flat and curls so we we'll get on that this week and we'll be better for next week anything more for CJ you guys lost as you last year you lost your uh first game on the road you already have one win but the last you lost two the next three how do you not let something happen again like allow us to you know Snowball into more losses yeah absolutely I think it's we're going to get back Sunday and we're going to go through all of it um the the good and the bad and I think it's you have to learn I feel like last year we had let things snowball like we we had the tragic loss the first game and and we let it roll into the next into the next and you can't you can't have that you know if if you want to be if you want to have an optimistic year and if you want to keep climbing you can't let one week affect another you have to learn from that week and not necessarily just drown in in what it was you have to learn and you have to take what you've learned what you did well and learn what you didn't do well and into the next week and get better at it and just keep on going so yes we're we're sitting at one in one but that's not where that's not where we wanted to be uh going into week three um but we're just going to take what we didn't do well here and we're going to fix it and we're going to take the things that we did do well and we're going to be even better at it I think that's the only thing you can do at this point and to stop things from snowballing because when whenever things are snowballing you dwell on the things that you didn't do well and I feel like last year that's what we did before we got into later in the season to where we we stopped doing that and we just need to take this loss take on the chin understand what we didn't do well and the things we did do well and do better at them all right thank you CJ thank you CJ