Northwestern University Athletics
Post-Game Quotes
10/18/2008 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 18, 2008
Recap |
Box Score |
Notes |
AP Gallery 
Northwestern Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Opening Statement...
"Thank you to our fans, our alumni, we had two great honorary captains in Johnny Kidd and Chris Hinton come back and be part of our football family this weekend, and it was great to have them back, and to have a homecoming weekend with the support we had, and a big heartfelt thank you to all of our fans. I'm very excited with the way that we performed today, especially in the kicking game. We really needed to respond in a positive fashion to give ourselves an opportunity to play a very good Purdue team, and I thought that today from a kicking game standpoint we performed the way that we're capable of, and the way that we have in the past five weeks. Offensively the ability to spread the ball out, get the ball out to our weapons, I thought we managed the game pretty well, but there's still some major room for improvement. On defense, I thought the ability to get to the quarterback, create and cause turnovers and to get off the field on third down were critical, but a lot of things we can fix and improve as we move forward."
On the second half...
"As I looked at the game, I'm really proud of the way our guys came out in the second half. We talked at halftime about the scoreboard being 0-0 between both teams, and to come and play better in the second half than we did in the first, and I thought we did that for the most part. We came out relatively healthy, I'll have a report on Malcolm Arrington on Monday (at the news conference). I haven't had a chance to talk to the training staff yet. My hat is off to Purdue and Coach Tiller. He's changed the landscape of Big Ten football, this league will never be the same without him. We'll miss him. He's just a great mentor to all of the coaches. He coaches the right way, gets his young men to play extremely hard and buy into what he's been teaching them for a long time, and college football will not be the same without Joe Tiller."
On his team's response, and playing a 60-minute game...
"I thought for the most part, minus being down 6-0 in the first quarter, we started pretty fast, moved the ball well and were able to get off the field. At the end of the day, we set that as one of our objectives, we'll take a look again and see how we performed in the first quarter when we watch the tape. I'm proud of our guys, we talked last week about 90-10: life is 10 percent what happens to you, 90 percent how you respond, and I thought we responded pretty well today."
On Eric Peterman being a double threat...
"Eric is like a lot of our seniors in the back half of their careers right now, and the leadership from our leadership council, our captains, our seniors has been outstanding this year, that's what you get from Eric. He is a very dynamic football player, but that's not where Eric ends, he does so much for the community, is up for many national awards, and is a tremendous leader in our football program, and I'm looking forward to being with him for a couple more weeks."
On Jeremy Ebert's role increasing as the season goes on...
"Along with Tyrell (Sutton), Eric (Peterman) and Ross (Lane), at the end of the day, we're going to spread the ball out. We're playing Jeremy as a true freshman, he's a very dynamic athlete, and we're very excited to have him in our program. Not many freshmen play, but the ones that are, him and Jeravin (Matthews), are really producing."
On winning the turnover battle...
"It's the number one stat that I think correlates to victory. Typically if you win the turnover battle, you have a good chance of winning the game. A week ago, I think our inability to force turnovers and our lack of ball security really hurt us, especially in the kicking game. We need to do a better job of securing the football, but I think we did a nice job on both sides of the ball."
On C.J Bachér having an effective game...
"He managed the game quite well. There were some things we saw on tape and thought we thought we could use him as a running threat today, and he did a great job, but I'd like to see him secure the ball more. A lot of things we can correct, but I think he managed the game well, spread the ball out to our playmakers. That's our recipe, get the ball out where we need to have the ball and we've got a good opportunity to be successful as an offense. I thought he took care of the ball pretty well."
Northwestern Player Quotes
DE Kevin Mims
On responding after last week's loss to Michigan State...
"I thought we learned what we could from that game, put our blinders back on and did what we could to prepare to go 1-0 this week. We learned that we needed to fix the small things. As a defense, if everyone does their job on every play, it works like a well-oiled machine. If one guy is out of place or doesn't do his job or tries to do someone else's job, then mistakes happen."
On responding after Malcolm Arrington was injured...
"I had been in that situation a couple years ago when Nick Roach got hurt and I thought about that when Malcolm went down. But I trust Nate Williams and Mike Dinard to come in and do their jobs. They'd been studying all week, they knew their roles and they knew they were one play away from having to play a whole game. I think that speaks to the maturity of our team, being able to prepare consistently to win everyday."
On the play of the defensive line...
"We have a lot of guys and I'm very confident in our backups, any one of them could play. It's great because it improves competition among us and ensures that we're working hard as a line. That makes for a great team. We got pressure on the quarterback and knew we were basically playing our offense in Purdue so being able to bat balls down and get pressure, hurries and sacks is really critical to disrupting the rhythm of the quarterbacks."
On the defense's ability to generate five turnovers...
"We always have an emphasis on stripping the ball and we work on it after every practice. You have to give credit to Michigan State for not turning the ball over last week but we worked on it more this week and we knew if we kept doing it would come."
QB C.J. Bachér
On the team's overall performance...
"As a team I think we set out what we wanted to accomplish. We had a good game plan this week and executed on offense and defense and it's why we were able to come out victorious. The offensive line played great. We were going up against one of the best defensive lines in the country and they held their own all game and were pushing them around. The credit really goes to them."
On carrying the ball more in this game than previous games...
"We knew that Purdue spreads out and we knew their ends chase hard when we're trying to run Tyrell (Sutton) up the middle. I knew I had to run the ball a little bit today and like I said the offensive line did a great job opening up holes for me."
On scoring 24 points in the second quarter...
"This offense has always had quick-strike potential. We just really started to click in the second quarter and carried it over to the second half. I think this is our best all-around game as an offense and it all started up front."
On spreading the ball around...
"We have a lot of weapons and I come in and say that every week. We spread out the field and get our guys into open space and our receivers are doing a great job getting open. There's so many of them who can make plays so we can shuffle them around. Tyrell gets a lot of respect from other teams but he's got great hands and a good feel for how to get open. We've known for a while we need to utilize him as a receiver and we're going to keep doing that."
On his touchdown pass to Sidney Stewart...
"It was fun going back to my glory days as a high school quarterback. But it was a great call by Coach (Mick) McCall and I'm glad it worked out and Sidney got his first touchdown. It's something we've been practicing and it's been in the game plan for a long time. I'm just trying to do everything I can to help the team win. He was wide open and I just threw it high so he would have time to adjust to it."
On his touchdown catch-and-run...
"It was great blocking first of all. With the great defensive line Purdue has and all the sacks they've been getting, we knew we were going to have to throw some screens today. Again it was a great call and C.J. did a good job getting the ball off. The offensive line threw some good blocks to help me turn the corner and the only guy left was the safety. That's on me, I have to beat him to successfully complete the play. It started with the offensive line getting downfield and finding guys to block."
On the play of Jeremy Ebert as a true freshman receiver...
"It's a little similar to my situation coming in because he was a high school quarterback and didn't know if he'd play his first year or not. But he wound up on the field and he's starting on offense. He has a lot of weight on his shoulders and he's a real mature kid for his age. He's very cool and calm under pressure, which is uncommon for most true freshmen. Our offense is based on concepts and Jeremy's doing a great job learning as a true freshman and now producing on the field. He has a good head on his shoulders and he comes to work every day. His locker is right next to mine and we talk a lot about different situations on and off the field. It's comforting to me lining up next to him on the field because I know he'll be in the right place at the right time."
On the play of Eric Peterman...
"When he came to the sideline after he caught his touchdown pass I asked him if he was going to run for one next. He'd done everything else so he might as well go into the backfield and play some running back for us. He's a great leader and probably the biggest threat we have because he can run and he understands the game as a former quarterback, he can throw, he can catch. It's just great having a player like that on our side of the ball."
On what NU's game plan was coming into the game...
"We knew they had great depth at defensive line, rotating in eight or nine guys, so we knew had we to throw a lot of quick-ins and screens to get those guys running and bait the line out to get them gassed. It's a testament to our conditioning and our ability to run our fastball. In the secondary we knew they had some smaller guys so we thought we could exploit their size and go right after them. We trusted our game plan, ran a lot of quick screens and did what we had to do to get a victory."
On responding to the loss against Michigan State...
"I think we proved we're a lot more mature than in past years. Last year we had some losses and we were sulking about it, we didn't have the mentality of going 0-0, we were too worried about the loss from last week. The leadership of the coaches and this entire team is a leap from previous years. We go out every day and practice at the same level whether it's after a win or a loss. The leadership has done a great job for the last eight or nine months and that's prepared us for this season."
Purdue Head Coach Joe Tiller
On the quarterback change...
"I talked to the coaches and said I don't want to wait until the fourth quarter to make the change. If we're going to make one, let's make one now, and let's see if we can generate some more offense and get into the end zone and that's what we did. (Joey) Elliott partially separated his shoulder and probably will miss a period of time, I don't know how long. It's better than what we first assumed, which says something about assumptions, but it is better than a dislocation. We're about to put a jersey on Chris Bennett because he wears 17 which is the same as (Aaron) Valentin."
On not playing a solid, clean game...
"It was particularly frustrating when I saw some of the same stuff occur that the other team did that didn't get called, so that's frustrating. The only penalty that I thought was really, really frustrating was the unsportsmanlike penalty on Golding. You hope that you don't have a lot more of them than the opponent has and we've been a pretty good team. We're ranked second or third in the league in least penalties, I think it's safe to say that this was an uncharacteristic game for us all the way around. Defensively we've been playing pretty well, we didn't play as well today. The ball didn't bounce in our direction and we had penalties, when we haven't had penalties. It was a bad day. They scored points off of turnovers."
On how frustrating the turnovers were for the defense ...
"Well, you can't make assumptions, they don't have as lofty a status or standing as the opponent we just played, but you can't make the assumption that it's not going to be a real challenge for you. It is. It's the Big Ten, all these teams are good teams. If we had practiced poorly this week, I would have been concerned coming in, but I wasn't concerned. It's the best week of practice we've had all season. I thought that our team, as they were getting ready to play this week, was as good as any other. The rougher part is behind us now, it will only get better. Our practices were up-tempo, and things went well for us on the practice field, so to have our defense not get many shutdowns when they needed to, that certainly has not been characteristic of this team."
On the performance of Curtis Painter...
"I don't think he was as sharp this week as he was last week. They presented different problems, every week it is going to be a different thing as to what you see, so they did some things differently than what they have done on the tapes, but we do things different from week to week, too. I felt that last week he was exceptionally sharp mentally, although our productivity wouldn't necessarily reflect it. He made the comment a couple times that "well I was getting hit," but I didn't see him getting hit and sometimes you imagine these things when somebody is close, you assume you are going to get hit."
On the season possibly slipping away...
"Well if you are a competitive person, you think you are going to win. That's why we onside kick, that's just the nature of competing, that's the nature of coaching. You'd like to think that that's just the nature of playing the game. So you never say never. And I never do, never have and never will."
On his perception of the game...
"Whatever could go wrong did go wrong, they made a couple of interceptions. But to their credit, they made plays."
Purdue Player Quotes
QB Curtis Painter
On whether it was difficult to re-enter the game after Joey Elliott's injury...
"Not really. I think I've had enough experience that it's kind of like just going in after halftime or when the defense is up there. I was up. I was into the game."
On the performance of the offense...
"I think, in the first half, we really moved the ball well. We had it deep in our own field a couple times and really drove the field. Those two red-zone situations where we set up the field goals, those were tough. We needed to put some points up on the board. We did a few things well, moved the ball fairly well and just didn't capitalize on a few opportunities."
On the penalties against Purdue in the game...
"It's tough and you never want penalties. I think we had a few at probably the wrong times. It really set us back that one time we were really deep in our own zone. It's always tough to get going when you're set back because it makes things twice as hard. So it's unfortunate and we'll try and get those corrected obviously and hopefully we can control those."
RB Kory Sheets
On whether penalties decided the game...
"I don't think it was penalties. I think it was turnovers. We had five turnovers and two or three were inside the 10, coming out. You can't put your defense in that position. When coming out or going in, we cannot have turnovers in the red zone. It's heartbreaking for our offense and it's heartbreaking for our defense."
On his role in the team at this point in the season...
"In my eyes, I need some help. I can't do it all by myself. Everybody's coming to me saying, 'Sheets, get the offense going.' I do something good then something bad happens. I need some help."
On the play of the offense...
"Since I've been at Purdue, the offense usually starts off well, tapers off in the middle of the season, and finishes well at the end. I guess that's what we're doing, tapering off in the middle of the season and we'll finish well at the end."
On his 76-yard run...
"We were just looking for something good to happen. I didn't think it was going to come like that. That play that we were running was open all day and it seemed like every time I got that ball on that play, I got 10 yards here, 15 yards there. It was only a matter of time before I broke one."
CB Royce Adams
On what the defense needs to work on...
"We've got to make more tackles. When we've got opportunities to make tackles, we've got to make tackles. Wrap them up and take them to the ground."
DT Mike Neal
On playing with tough field position...
"That's football. You get put in bad positions, but I always think it's the way that you respond that shows character. I think that we didn't respond. We didn't respond when we got put in those situations."
