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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 20, 2007

Pete Carroll

COACH CARROLL: Well, this was a really important day for our football team to work our comeback here. We've been pretty well banged up, got shocked a few weeks back, and really important for us to gain our stride.
Last week, whether you liked it or not, we played a good solid football game. With Mark in his first chance he comes back on the road and he puts together a beautiful job of leading our team offensively. I thought he was really in command, extremely farther along than he was in his first game. He started to show in the fourth quarter against Arizona, but boy, today he was really on. If it weren't for a couple drops he would have had a spectacular day. I'm really excited that he was able to lead us in that regard.
I thought it was a day for our defense to show that we were capable of doing this, and we did it. You come in and you know that they've been struggling and having some problems, and if we do what we're capable of doing, we can turn out a game like that, and we got that done.
And for us we came out of this game healthy for the first time in a while. We felt coming into this week we were getting stronger, some guys were returning, and we'll get more guys back again next week. We think that we can really start to push in the second half of the schedule and have an opportunity to play some good football.
So we'll see what happens, but I'm really happy across the board for our football team. I thought in all phases we did fine, and there's always stuff to clean up, but the things that we needed to do today, we did. It seems pretty balanced on offense, and defensively I don't know what the numbers were or anything like that, but obviously it's a big day when you don't let them score. So we were pleased with that.

Q. With Mark throwing four touchdown passes, he had four different receivers to throw to. How pleased are you to know that there are multiple targets in the passing game?
COACH CARROLL: Well, that's important, but we don't care who catches them. We spread the ball wherever the plays that are called. That's not as important to me that Mark was able to connect and find his guys and do the right thing. He made a lot of great decisions today.
The big bonus we get out of Mark playing well obviously is we have two quarterbacks that can play in football games for us. That's a huge, huge advantage for us, and we've always felt like that would be the case, but you don't really know that until they do it. Mark has got two good games under his belt. John is coming back; he was really close to playing this week. We'll just see what happens next week. I know you want to know what's going on with that. But I'm just going on what we have. We're just lucky to have both these guys ready to go and we'll see how far John is along the middle parts of the week. But Mark came through and it was really his day.
One other thing that happened today, our seniors, it was really important to them to see if they could through their time when they played here and have an opportunity to beat Notre Dame in all their years. It's a big tribute to Sedrick and Lawrence Jackson and Keith Rivers and Spanos and all those guys, Radovich. It really was a big deal to them, and I'm very proud of that.

Q. How critical is this do you think in terms of momentum?
COACH CARROLL: I think it's really important for us. It's important for every football team to feel good about themselves when they do well, particularly heading into great match-ups and all that.
I'm really not surprised. We needed to get Cushing back on the practice field. We needed to get these guys coming back out there and playing for us. We'll get Rachal playing for us next week and Sammy will be back next week. We feel like we're gaining our momentum again. We got whacked pretty good there for a while, and unfortunately we had to give up a game during the process.
Now that we're back on track, this could be very pivotal for us. I know that the guys feel great about it. They're real excited about the way it turned out, so we'll try to take a step forward against Oregon next week when we go up there.

Q. I was wondering if you could just talk about the keys to getting such good quarterback play out of a kid making his first road start, second start overall, and what you did to bring him up to that point.
COACH CARROLL: Mark has been around our system for some time. All of our guys for the seven years we've been here have played really, really well. I don't know how much more you could ask from Carson and then Matt and John David last year and the way he was going until he got hurt. He broke his finger, and we just played him and he didn't do very well in the second half of that game.
But this is the system, I think, for you. I think you can see it. This is how we've seen our guys play. This is what we've come to expect. These guys are really good players obviously, too, but I think it all fits together well. Sark has done a marvelous job bringing Mark along, and I thought the improvement from last week to this week was really obvious. We can tell. We'll see a much better film than we saw last week.
Mark played an inspired game last week but didn't play very clean, and today he played very sharp in all areas.

Q. Was the shutout important for your defense? Well into the fourth quarter the defense --
COACH CARROLL: You never talk about that stuff; it's kind of like throwing a no-hitter. But then when you get down to the last drive or two, Alex Morrow jumping up and making a big sack in that last drive after we gave him the football was really a big event. That's a huge confident play for him in his last game here at Notre Dame. But it takes a couple plays here and there to make that happen. It was a day when we were able to do it, and I love that we pulled it off.

Q. You ended up pretty close in rushing yards and passing yards. Is that what you were expecting coming in?
COACH CARROLL: We always have the goal of being balanced, every game we've ever played in. We go in with a balanced approach, and when that happens it's right on point with the philosophy, so that's a good thing.

Q. So you aren't going to say who your starting quarterback is going to be next week?
COACH CARROLL: I don't know yet. I'd tell you but I don't know.

Q. Playing Notre Dame every year since you've been here, did you kind of, looking over your depth chart, see maybe this kind of year coming for them a few years back when you saw how old their roster was?
COACH CARROLL: Three years ago you could see it coming. They had all the juniors that played and started and they had a really good team and they played all the seniors the next year. They were fortunate to keep a few of those guys around that could have left. It's just all about recruiting, and if you're able to restock, but that's hard to recover from all of those losses from those experienced players. Those were two-, three-year starters, maybe a couple four-year starters. Some of those guys did play forever. So that's hard to overcome. I know they're working hard at it.

Q. So if John David is healthy, will he start, or is it not just going to be an injury issue?
COACH CARROLL: You are from Southern California, right? I don't have that answer for you. We'll find out. I don't have to surmise that. The guy has got a broken finger and they don't heal in two and a half weeks, three weeks. We'll see. He was in pain today throwing, but he could have played. I'd like to see the guy play when he's healed if he could. I don't know if that's going to happen or not. You can ask all those questions again Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and we'll figure it out.

Q. Are you guys that much better than Notre Dame?
COACH CARROLL: I don't know. They've had a very difficult season. They've had one win this season, and obviously it's a difficult situation for any program. We should be able to play really good football against that team I think today, and we did. We came in here just what we needed to do, and I know it's a long, hard struggle for Charlie to get these guys back on track. I'm just glad it wasn't against us.

Q. (No microphone.)
COACH CARROLL: It was a phenomenal play. He has run very well with the ball. He's had some glimpses of other chances. He's been very creative on the practice field, but that was just a sick play. I mean, he did every move you've ever heard of, spin, run over guys, cut back, cut back again, cut back again. I can't wait to see it on the highlights film. That was a great play. Everybody just went nuts about it because it was such an inspirational play because one guy is just running through everybody.
On that play I think Brad Walker had a couple blocks and then did a great job, which was really exciting. He started the play off and then he wound up finishing it with him, so it was a good two-man show down there.

Q. How much factor does the fact that you have a shutout play into making some decisions at the end like leaving the secondary guys in and challenging that pass?
COACH CARROLL: Well, we had all of our guys playing up front, and I think we had a little rotation in corner going on. We like those guys playing back there. Those guys have played so well, but in that situation we like to leave them in.

Q. How bad was that flight really?
COACH CARROLL: For the guys sitting in the back, it kicked their butt. It was just one enormous bump, and it was one of the great illustrations of why you put your seatbelt on and leave it on. It looked like Whack-a-Mole with all the heads popping up (laughter).
For a lot of guys they're really worried about getting on this plane right now. It'll be fine, though.

Q. You alluded to getting back in your stride and things, but the way the season has gone you have some ground to make up to get in one of those top two spots. Do you think you guys could make a run?
COACH CARROLL: That means absolutely nothing to me. I could care less about how that works out. All we can do is play our games and win them. All I know is we have a lot of tough football teams that we have to play, I don't know how the thing works, and it doesn't matter one bit to me. If it winds up at the end and we have a chance to be in a great spot, great. We're trying to win the Rose Bowl and get to the Pac-10 Championship game. That's what we're playing for every year. To do that we have to have a chance to win next week. Right now we feel like we have a good chance to go up there and play a good football game and we'll get the rest of that done.
I can't control that. I have no factoring into that. We don't care about it, we don't talk about it. It doesn't mean a darn thing to us. When the time comes at the end, we'll see what happens. You can see how hard it is to win all your games. It's random, how obvious it is that you can't get it done.
It's a great statement about the excitement of college football, and you can't write the book before the season is over, you've got to wait. It's exciting and we feel like we're right in the middle of everything. We'll make our run at it here one game at a time.

End of FastScripts

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