Oklahoma Cornerback Eli Bowen — New Mexico Week

Eli, how was practice today, especially after what happened on Saturday? It was good, we gotta wash out what happened this week. We gotta learn from the mistakes and just continue to get better throughout the season. We can't take this week lightly, so. What's it been in practice, just trying to replace leadership from Kip being out for the injury? I don't think it's been much different because we have more than one leader on the team. So, I mean, obviously it's a tough situation, whatever you're going through. But we just gotta keep going, keep getting better with who we have and what we can do. Is it tough on that Saturday defensively? You guys played pretty well. What did you just take out of the way that you guys played? I do agree there was a lot of good, but there was a lot of stuff we could have done a little bit better. There was a lot of balls on the ground that we didn't end up getting on top of. And that could have been huge momentum shifts in the game. So in tackling, we didn't really tackle that well. That carried over from last game. So we just gotta keep continuing to hammer on those things and get better. What do you think the tackling has been so far? I think sum it up in a strain to finish. I think we're just lackadaisical sometimes and not finishing the play and believing that our teammates will make the play and everyone not hustling to the ball. I mean, I think that sums it up, just expecting the guy to miss the tackle so that we're gonna be there if he misses it. How much do you get to really work on it in training camp? Isn't that almost the last thing to come around, because they don't want you guys to kill each other in training camp? I feel like here we emphasize it a lot. We do a lot of tackling drills, we practice during individual and whatnot. So I don't think it's something that goes under the rug. I just think that we just gotta be more intentional with it during the game and during the week. Is there an amount of frustration with the missing the interceptions? Did you start to sense a little bit of frustration, like things just weren't going your guys' way that Saturday? I fight this frustration every game, but I think definitely there's always moments of, dang, I wish I could have been a player, I wish I could have that back. But at the end of the day, we trust in each other to pick each other up. So even whenever those things happen, we believe that we can still win through it and finish the game through it, even with those things that didn't fall our way. How do you reset after a loss, just personally? I feel like it's almost, or I won't say it's like, but it's similar to after a win. I mean, after a win, you can't go off with a high and think you're unbeatable. You gotta watch the tape, you gotta see what y'all did wrong, see what you can do better, see what plays they could have called better, what leverage you could have fit with or maintained. So I feel like it's the same way, or we treat it the same way, win or loss. Just go to the tape and see what it shows and fix what mistakes are on that tape. Michigan got you for quite a few plays in the first half, but they didn't do much in the second half. Three first downs, all in the same drive, and they punted on that drive. What did you guys do in the second half to sort of tamp all that down? I think we just went in the locker room and we just regrouped. We spoke on what's happening. We fixed a little tendencies that we had or little things that we were doing wrong. And we just reunite as a team and got back out there and we were ready to fight. When you have so many big games left on the schedule, is that you guys still have plenty of time to make everything up, right? Yeah, I think that's also an emphasis we were preaching, that everything we want is still in front of us. So we can't be all down and think the season's over just cuz that loss. Obviously, it's a tough loss, but we still got everything we want still in front of us, and we can't get hung up on this for too long. We gotta learn from it and finish the season how we want to finish it.