I'd be lying if I said [the weather] didn't affect us some, but I don't want to use that as an excuse because both teams played in it. Clearly we had balls that were on the money that we dropped. We missed some reads. Offensively, our backs didn't get to the back side of things in time. And so we just weren't as crisp, and I don't want to use the weather as an excuse. |
I'm very pleased with both sides of the ball. Our offensive and defensive lines, I thought, dominated the game. |
I've never seen a lot of difference from what customers order on New Year's from the rest of the year, really. |
If you came and watched five minutes of one of our games at the wrong time, ... you might think, 'Wow, this guy screams a lot.' But what you don't see is him put his arm around a guy afterwards, how much he helps [the players] with their academics, how he helps them find a tutor. What you don't see is how much he loves those kids. |
It looked to me like we had the balls delivered where they were supposed to be, we had the right patterns called, and we didn't execute or make the catch. When the game is on the line, we talk about who can you count on when the game counts, and we didn't come up with a play to win the game or at least a play to keep the drive going. |
One of the main reasons our defense has played so consistently is our work on and improvement in our tackling. We haven't had the missed tackles that we've had in the past. That's something the defensive coaches emphasized in the spring and have continued to emphasize in practice now. By making sure we stress the fundamentals, and that's one of the things we do each week, that has paid off with how well our defense has tackled compared to previous teams. |
One of the things we're striving for as a team is to find the knockout punch. Today we were able to do that. |
The cost of an Ivy League school to a West Coast family is not the same as it is to a family say from Nebraska, |
The kids are very test-oriented out there. There is a greater test-taking awareness, just a greater emphasis put on test-taking in California. |
The mentality [was] we had to run the ball effectively to win. |
There's a lot of pride on our team. They don't expect to play badly, and they don't want to have anything ruined. |
We have not handled success well [in past seasons]. It's a 10-round fight, and what happened in the third round today has no bearing on what happens next week. |
We have not handled success well. We have not handled prosperity well. So my message to the kids is, listen it's a 10-round fight and what happened in the third-round today has no bearings on what happens next week. That's been the mindset, and I think this team has the culture of holding each other accountable so that that doesn't happen. |
We just can't have the penalties, especially in the red zone. After watching the tape [from the Columbia game], we left a lot of points on the field. Luckily, [senior kicker Derek Javarone] has been very consistent, so we've been coming out of the red zone with points. |
We just keep harping on the fact that if you remain humble and don't get too full of yourselves, good things are going to happen. |