Sept. 13, 2008
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Northwestern Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Opening Statement...
"I knew we were going to have to stop Larry Warner, and for the most part, I think we did that. He only broke out for a couple of runs. He's a dynamic football player, and I'm proud our defense could stop him. Amado Villarreal going 100% today, what a great job by him. And then there's the play of Jacob Schmidt. The ball is fumbled on the kickoff, and he was on the bottom of the pile trying to get it. Then the big blocked punt. We made a small adjustment and took advantage of a little high snap and blocked the punt. Great job by him."
On the Wildcats' defensive effort...
"I thought we took our pride back on the defensive line. We kind of lost it down at Duke. It's still not as consistent as it should be, but we got back to basics, back to fundamentals. We came off the ball, attacked the line of scrimmage and the guys did a great job transitioning into a good pass rush. Our defense is just playing well together. They fit well at the beginning on some runs and guys came over to the sideline to take responsibility for missed tackles or not closing their gaps. When you've got that, you have an opportunity to get it fixed. That's where they've got trust, and I think our program has a lot of trust."
On the red zone offense...
"We were 6-for-6 in the red zone, even though we weren't necessarily 6-for-6 with touchdowns. We'll take a look at a couple of those things. The main point is that we went down the field and scored. Amado with his kicking going 100%, you can't get any better than that. If the conditions were a little different, maybe we call a couple different plays. We mainly wanted to take care of the football. We felt like the points were on the board, so we didn't want to do anything too exotic or risky."
On the play of Corey Wootton...
"He continues to get better every day. He's been out there for a number of battles, and just continues to grow. I though he was going to intercept that pass, but the quarterback made a good adjustment. He's just got great experience for us, and he's now a veteran. He is still a young guy, with a year and a half still to play, but there's no doubt, he's a veteran for us."
Quarterback C.J. Bachér
On preparing for the rainy conditions...
"We had a practice last Thursday (Sept. 4) where the conditions were pretty similar to this so we had some recent experience. I don't think it affected us much at all. Maybe in the red zone we were a little more conservative but we feel like we can run the ball when we get down there, and we need to be a great team. I trust in our offensive line and Tyrell (Sutton) to get us in the end zone."
On differences he sees in the play of the defense...
"I think we're attacking a lot more and having more fun. It's more fun when you're attacking rather than sitting back and waiting. We have a lot of good athletes. Our line has been playing awesome and our linebackers and DB's have been doing a great job. They're trying to make plays rather than sit back and keep everyone in front of us. They're doing a great job and it's been fun to watch to this point."
On how the team improved its performance on third-down...
"Well, I think in the first two games we did a good job in the red zone but not a great job converting on third-downs. This game it was kind of the other way around. We have to go back and be more consistent. We've been relying the last few weeks on our explosion plays and if we can get more consistent I think we can have one of the best offenses in the country. We have a ton of players who can make explosion plays, it just comes down to doing your job every play and being more consistent."
On taking some hard hits in this game...
"I'm not really thinking about that too much. I think the offensive line did a good job but we're turning a lot of protections away from where they were coming from. So there were guys coming free and that's on me. Most of the shots I took were on me. I was trying to hold it and squeeze the ball as long as I could to let receivers get into their routes but they did a good job picking everything that was coming up to where it should have been protected."
Running back Tyrell Sutton
On preparing for the rainy conditions...
"I don't think it affected us. Coach (Kevin) Johns preaches to us about doing wet ball drills every time it rains so the first thing he said to me today was "Wet ball drills." Getting to practice in this weather last week was a great advantage for our team. We can't let ourselves worry about the weather conditions. We also have a great kicker so if we don't get in the end zone, when we stop ourselves, he was right there to put points on the board and he had four field goals today."
On how the no-huddle is operating with three different speeds...
"I think it's pretty good. I would say the spring practices helped us get an advantage in running that no-huddle attack and you can see we are using it to our advantage. We try to wear teams down in the first half and we condition for it every single day. Other teams aren't conditioned to come right out and go fastball and get the tempo going. We try to control the tempo by going as fast as we can."
On how the offensive line handled SIU's 3-4 defensive scheme...
"We always preach that it's all about us and how we prepare. We've been game-planning for it since we got back from Duke. Kudos to the offensive line for opening holes for everybody and for giving C.J. enough time to find our receivers. The 3-4 defense gives our offense time to block guys one-on-one and I thought today showed our offensive line's strength and character."
On having no turnovers even in wet conditions...
"In these conditions, we talked about as an offense how we were all turning ourselves into possession receivers. You want to be able to catch the ball first. We always do the circle drill in practice where you have to look the ball all the way into the tuck and that really prepped us for today. You can't go anywhere if you don't have the ball, if you do we say you might as well be running track. The biggest thing was focusing on just catching the ball rather than trying to make explosive plays and make sure we have it first."
Place-kicker Amado Villarreal
On kicking in the rainy conditions...
"As C.J. said, last week's practice before Duke was in almost exactly the same conditions as today. My foot was soaked but that prepped me well for this game. It wasn't too much of a difference for me, I could still do my normal approach. I was talking to Kyle (Daley, the holder) and he said it was extremely difficult for him. I didn't notice it, which is a testament to how well he did but ultimately it wasn't really much of a difference from what I normally do."
On how teammates from Texas are coping with the effects of Hurricane Ike...
"I room with Kyle Daley who is from Texas and we were watching the news at the hotel last night. We saw right where it was headed and we were thinking about that. They're all in our hearts and in our minds and I think they're handling it well. It was in our mind but I think from what we hear all their families are doing OK right now."
Defensive end Corey Wootton
On his performance today...
"I thought we did a good job up front and we had the linebackers getting in the backfield making a lot of plays. We're happy with it but we can always improve on a lot of things. I think we did a good job swarming to the football. They have an elusive back who is very shifty so you just have to get population to the football."
On the conditioning of the defense...
"We had a great off-season of conditioning and Coach Hankwitz has brought tremendous strides to our program with different calls allowing us to make plays. It comes down to just getting off the ball fast and getting after it."
Linebacker Quentin Davie
On his performance today...
"We just came back from a hard week last week and this week we won the game of inches, as Coach Bates always calls it. We just kept pushing and tried to recreate the line of scrimmage at the linebacker level. I thought there were a lot of positives. My hat goes off to No. 21 (Larry Warner), he was a good back. We needed a lot of people to get to the ball, drive our feet and wrap up. That was the key to shutting them down today."
On the ability of the linebackers to make tackles in the backfield...
"We always talk to Coach and he tries to put us in position to make those plays so I give a lot of credit to him. Also conditioning is everything. We face teams that run the no-huddle, we face teams that do huddle, so whatever they throw at us we're ready because of the condition we're in and the pace of practice we have every day."
Southern Illinois Head Coach Dale Lennon
Overall thoughts about the game...
"I was pretty disappointed with the second half. We really felt we played well the first half. We did some things offensively and defensively that we wanted to do and we knew we could do. Going into halftime, the feeling in the locker room was pretty positive, especially because we were getting the ball back in the third quarter. We knew that was right in front of us. The quarter came up on the negative side. The first series we had offensively was anything but impressive. We had to punt and next thing you know, you're playing the field position game. They just took it to us. My biggest fear with Northwestern is that they are a well-coached football team. They don't make any mistakes. They are very methodic with everything they do. And if you do make a mistake, they're going to make you pay for it. That's exactly what you saw in the third quarter and fourth quarters. They were basically living off of our mistakes."
On the most disappointing aspect of the game...
"We didn't live up to our potential, play up to our potential. I think we saw a little bit of what we we're capable of doing in the first half. The second half, we just didn't rise to the occasion. That was the one thing that was disappointing. We had this opportunity in front of us and we just didn't play at the level we needed."
On the lack of turnovers in the game...
"That's what we were preaching to the defense. Going into the fourth quarter, we're still in it. It was 26-7 at the time. One big play here or there and you're back in the ball game. That's where Northwestern did an incredible job. They didn't give us any holes at all. That's a sign of a very good football team."
On the play of SIU's defense...
"The defense still was playing pretty hard. I'm not ready to throw the defense under the bus. I don't think the problem today was completely on the defense's shoulders. The thing that I was very proud of was that Northwestern was moving the football, but several times we held them to a field goal. Giving up three points isn't your goal, but at the same time, you're not giving up touchdowns. I still think there's that acclimation period that's happening with the defense getting used to the schemes that they're doing. I think their comfort level is getting greater. I'd like to see a little more pressure, more hits on the quarterback. Those are definitely areas we can improve upon. I really do feel that the schemes are what we're looking for."
Southern Illinois Player Quotes
Quarterback Chris Dieker
On the difference between Northwestern and Hampton...
"The biggest difference was probably the physicality. I thought they were a lot more physical team than Hampton was. They're a bigger size than Hampton was. Nothing that we shouldn't have handled, though."
On whether he felt overmatched against Northwestern...
"I didn't feel overmatched at all. Our size matched up. Our speed and all that matched up. There were just some times in the game where we didn't take advantage of the opportunities that we had."
Linebacker Brandin Jordan
On the defense giving up over 30 points for two consecutive games...
"Anytime you give up over 30 points, it's not good. But you've got to basically go watch the film, break it down."
On his impressions of Northwestern running back Tyrell Sutton...
"He's a fast back but it's kind of a scheme too, just in the zone, give it to him and get outside or through the hole. He got the best of us and he was the better man today."