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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 15, 2015

Jim Mora

Stanford, California

Stanford - 56 UCLA - 35

JIM MORA: The players and coaches, regardless of what's happened in the past, you look at each game as a new challenge, a new opportunity. At least that's what, in my 30 years of coaching, that's what I found to be the case.

Q. Yet this is the level of team that you guys have to beat at some point.
JIM MORA: Yeah.

Q. What leads you to believe that you're closer to getting that done?
JIM MORA: Because we continue to work hard. I don't know that we're closer. We weren't closer tonight, so. I don't remember saying that I was led to believe that we were closer.

Q. No, I was just asking you, was there something --
JIM MORA: No, you said that. But what leads me, I didn't say that I was led to believe it.

Q. My mistake. Is there something you see that leads you --
JIM MORA: Just need to keep working hard. That's all you can do. You go back and look at everything very critically, you look at your self first and then there's no magic formula, you just try to recruit great players, coach them up the best you can, send them out there and let them play the best they can and hope that you can break through.

So, it's a long season, it's a tough game, they're a good team, it's hard to go on the road and throw a pick six and have a kickoff returned for a touchdown and the nine offensive penalties and the 300 yards rushing, those are tough things to overcome. But I'm proud of our guys, you guys don't get to see the inner workings, you don't get to see their attitude and how they are in meetings and they're giving it everything they have got. They're giving everything they got every single day. Everything they have got. Everything. Every day. So that's what you have to ask for. And that's what you have to demand and they do it.

Q. How do you fix things in a season when it's a game like this and it seems like everything is going wrong?
JIM MORA: Well, everything didn't go wrong.

Q. A lot of things went wrong.
JIM MORA: Every game's a new game. That's the great thing about sports is every week you get another opportunity to go out and play again and perform. You do what you do when you win and you do the same thing you do when you win, it's the same things, there's no difference, at least my experience has never been different. If you won, you go back and you self evaluate and you find out what you did well and what you can do better and you apply that moving forward.

When you lose, you do the same thing. You go back and you look and say, what did we do well and what can we do better, and you apply it and you move forward. And that's how you become consistent.

We're a team that's still developing, and we're trying to overcome some things and we're working hard to get that done and I'm proud of those kids and they're attitude and their work ethic and the way they're approaching what and in over coming some obstacles.

Q. You might have addressed this earlier, but your wide receivers seemed to have some issues tonight. The quarterback had the ball right there quite a few times and there were quite a few drops that could have sustained drives. Was that a key problem in your mind tonight?
JIM MORA: No.

Q. It wasn't? Did Stanford show more explosiveness tonight than you've seen in the past?
JIM MORA: No, I think that McCaffrey is a great player and he's a heck of a player. He's, on film, he's the same as he -- maybe a little better in person than on film. He's a heck of a player. Very explosive, very fast, very physical, very powerful, elusive, runs hard. I think he's an impressive young man. Really impressive.

Q. A couple of huge rushing games against you the last three, what do you kind of assess the reason for that is at this point?
JIM MORA: I said this a couple weeks ago, we're trying to, we're trying to -- we came out of camp with a certain personnel group and guys playing in certain spots and feeling really comfortable with it and we're trying to reorganize and get guys comfortable. Sliding some guys, moving guys around a little bit. We go from Mike to Will, you know, I think on the outside it looks like it's a pretty easy adjustment, but it's not. It's very different. It's very, very different.

So, we were trying to settle in and continue to define things for our guys and help them get comfortable, help them be able to learn the fundamentals and slow the game down and keep it simple without being so simple that you're easy to diagnosis. And we'll keep working on it. That's great thing about these kids is they will keep working on it.

Q. Do you get the sense that it's more, can the other guys learn their roles a little bit better or is there something that needs to change a little bit schematically?
JIM MORA: No, here's what happens. When things aren't going really well, everyone's looking for like a singular reason and there's never a singular reason. It's, it's typically, in my experience, having coached for awhile now, it's, you get into a situation where, on one play it's one thing, on the next play it's another thing.

I go back to when I was in San Francisco and we were starting eight rookies on defense and it was hard to get through a game with a play where all 11 did it right. When they did, they were really good. It was just a level of consistency that has to build through time. And that's lacking right now.

So we're working really hard to keep the same guys in the same spot, doing the same things, so they can find consistency in their technique and their execution. And it's a challenge right now, but it's a challenge that I see them accepting and stepping up and doing -- like I said, they're working their tails off they're giving everything they have got every single day, there's no question about that. So it's been disappointing for them.

Q. Those two third and 13s, how critical was that? It seems like there were a couple of big plays at the beginning?
JIM MORA: That they got on us?

Q. Yeah. That you gave up those two third and 13s?
JIM MORA: That was huge. They're huge. Yeah, they're huge. I thought the first one we were going to get a holding call, which was interesting, the response I got was rather interesting. But we didn't get off the field on third and long and they got to stay on the field. That's been a struggle for us the last couple weeks.

We lost a couple guys tonight, I know you saw that, but Conor went out with a knee and then Alex Redmond went out with a hand and Deon Hollins went out. So we'll see where they're at.

Q. What's Hollins' injury?
JIM MORA: I'm not positive if it's his ankle or knee or something.

Q. What was your assessment of the penalties tonight?
JIM MORA: I don't know. I'm not going to comment on officials.

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