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STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 19, 2013David ShawUCLA – 10 Q. How big was it to bounce back today with this win? COACH SHAW: It was big, and to be honest, it was the last thing on my mind. With the senior leadership that we have, Sunday was a player's day off. The weight room was open, and it was probably our biggest attendance on Sunday in two years. Guys were in there. Guys wanted to bounce back. They wanted to turn the page and move on, and the advice that I gave them earlier was bring last week with you. Bring it with you. Bring the lessons learned about how hard you have to play, about how smart you have to play, and about how you have to finish. Last week we got outplayed. We just got beat. Flat out beaten by a good football team. This week we had to come back. We knew it was not going to be any easier, and our guys played extremely hard all game long. Q. How were you able to control Brett Hundley in this game? Was it just you had the pass rush on? But I guess your secondary coverage was outstanding too? COACH SHAW: I have to give a lot of credit to Coach Mason. Just knowing that we had to contain these guys. Partially based on what happened in Utah, the swing passes. Getting seven, eight yards a chunk and giving up some yards. We shored up that. We knew this quarterback is hard to bring down. He's a big, physical guy, but he's also an athlete so we had to keep contain on him. Even then he still broke out a couple of times. But it was guys staying disciplined. When we gave a big play, we bounced back every single time. That's a sign of a team with a lot of leadership and high character. Q. Was it just a sign of confidence in your defense that you ran for it, for instance, on 3rd and 5 in the second quarter. 3rd and 6 with three minutes left? Was it just a sign that you felt your defense was going to take over? Or did you feel that those plays were actually going to work? COACH SHAW: Well, we don't call plays that we don't think are going to work. The bottom line is it's game plan. We don't call plays on offense thinking about the defense. Last week we threw the ball too much and didn't run the ball. So this week we ran the ball and didn't throw the ball enough. I don't care about any of that. It's all game planning. They played with two high safeties, and we got a third down and converted a run. We're going to make them defend the run on third down, and they did it and did it well. We had a chance to step out of a couple tackles and we didn't. That's the bottom line. They're playing over the top of Ty Montgomery. They weren't going to give up the big play, though we had an opportunity for one. We tried some screens and tried some inside things. We wanted to make sure that we continued the body blows even on third down. Run the ball in between the tackles, trapping and blocking and hit Gaffney on the trap. We ran a single back Tyler got a first down. That was just the game plan going in on third down. They're going to play with two high safeties, we're going to run it. Q. The Kodi Whitfield touchdown, was that technique? Have you ever seen him do anything like that before? COACH SHAW: I would say genetics, but Bob is 6'7, 335 pounds, so I don't think it came from dad. It was just a phenomenal play. God bless Kodi. Every time we've given him an opportunity, he's made a play, and Devon Cajuste and Ty Montgomery are playing great. But every time we put Kodi in, he makes a great play. He's got a lot of confidence from us and lot of confidence from his quarterback. Technically, that ball was thrown extremely late. But the safety wasn't over there, and Kevin Hogan feels so comfortable with Kodi, he was going to give him a chance to make a play, and Kodi made one heck of a play. Q. Why has the team been so good bouncing back after losses in the last four years? COACH SHAW: In my opinion, recruiting. Recruiting coaches and players, recruit tough people, tough‑minded people. People that bounce back. People that don't dwell on the past. People that look forward. Recruit character, guys that don't hang their heads. Guys that don't blame. Guys that learn their lessons from last week and move them forward. Just we're in the thick of the season right now. Conference games back to back to back to back to back, and everybody's tough, everybody's hard. So our guys know the road that we're on right now. We have to rest up from this game. Thankfully it was an afternoon game, so we can get some sleep tonight. Then we get ready to play a tough Oregon State team in their place, which is a hard place to go in trying to find a way to get a win. Q. What is the status of Devin Cajuste right now? COACH SHAW: I'm not sure yet. It wasn't as bad as originally thought. There will be MRIs and X‑rays and all is that tough to see if he's going to be out for any length of time and if he's going to be back up and ready to play. It was good to see him at the end. Took the ice off, didn't have the knee brace on and walked back into the locker room with a smile on his face. I'm not sure if part of that is because we won. But he told me it doesn't hurt, so we'll check him out and make sure we do the right thing. Q. We were asking but some of the up‑the‑middle runs in the third quarter. But how much of those body blows had an effect on the fourth quarter, because obviously those same runs on those final couple of drives started to work. COACH SHAW: It's been a staple of ours for a long time. I'm not going to say we wore them down. I'm not going to disrespect their team like that because those guys played extremely hard. Their front seven is a very physical football team. But we have to rotate. They're rotating their guys in and out. Their front seven, we had to rotate those guys in and out, and that is a function of playing our style of football. Q. How does Anthony Barr affect a game plan? COACH SHAW: Everything, he affects everything. Every run, every pass, every pass protection. We had to slide to him. I don't know that he got his hands on the quarterback. But we knew where he was on every single run play and every single pass play. He gets the ultimate respect from us. He's playing as well as anybody in college football right now. I'm not buttering him up because the game's already over. The film shows me that. He's one heck of a football player and one heck of human being also. Q. Does Kevin identify where he's at? What is the process like once you get to the line of scrimmage? COACH SHAW: We're not going to give away secrets, but we made sure we knew where he was. More often than not, we slid to him with an extra lineman his way. When we didn't slide to him, the backs were looking for him. There were certain plays we tried to run at him and certain plays we tried to run against him. The reverse we ran back to his side was 100% my fault. He did exactly what I thought he was going to do, which is run it the other way, which is completely my fault. Sorry about that. Q. How did you feel Conrad Ukropina did in replacing Jordan Williamson? Did Williamson just get out on the field at all before the game? COACH SHAW: No. Jordan kicked yesterday, kicked Friday, and actually kicked pretty well and got a little sore. So we thought the smartest thing to do would be to rest him. Have him get treatment through the weekend. There is a chance for next week. We'll take him to Oregon State, and try him out late next week. If he's ready to go, he'll kick. The way it looks right now, definitely for Oregon, definitely for Oregon, because he's not too far away. Q. Conrad missed the kick. COACH SHAW: Yeah, it's right within his range. If we have to kick next week, we'll keep him right in that range, because in practice that's where he hits it from. So anything there and inside, we have confidence in him he'll kick the ball. Q. Can you say whether it was Jordan's kicking leg or? COACH SHAW: No. Q. Along the lines of Anthony Barr, how do you think Pete stood up against him and how did that impact your passing game? COACH SHAW: I have to wait to see the film. But even though sliding to him, when he rushes outside, Anders has to block him. There is help inside and no help outside. As far as I know he did a heck of a job. Anders and you heard me say before, and I don't like heaping praise on players, Anders has as good a chance to be as good as anybody in the nation and anybody that's ever played here. He's special. So we knew it was going to be a battle. I told Anders this is probably going to be the best player he ever plays against here. I said that to him and he smiled. That's a sign of growth, maturity and confidence. He knew this was going to be a battle. I can't wait to watch it on film because there are two great players going against each other. Q. How did you control Hundley so well? COACH SHAW: Just trying gap integrity. We still broke contained twice. He stepped out of two sacks. You want to yell at our guys, but he's big, he's physically strong. He does it every week. We got him down more times, but we tried to contain him and make him stay in the pocket and force him into hopefully a couple bad throws. We had a couple balls tipped, and a couple balls picked. So secondary‑wise we did a good job holding coverage, and we tried to keep the pressure on him inside and on the outside. Q. Your assessment of Hogan's performance today? COACH SHAW: I thought it was really solid. I thought it was good. We did a nice little no‑huddle which he orchestrated outstanding. It was nice to see. It was something we had been working on, and we needed Ryan Hewitt back healthy because we wanted to be able to change personnel or not change personnel but change formation. Ryan's ready to do that. So we've been working on that. It was great. Kevin knows if the middle opens up, he's got the ball and takes off and runs. So he was a little gassed toward the end of that, but he got down there for the first field to get the cap off for scoring. I thought he played well. I thought he played smart, conservative. We wanted to run the ball on third down. It was our game plan. We got close a couple times, gosh, we were close. We didn't make some of those. But when he needed to make the plays, he made the plays. Great throw to Devon. Phenomenal throw to Devon with one‑on‑one coverage. Couple big throws over the middle, finding guys. Jordan Pratt early in the game for first down. Kodi Whitfield throw, giving the guy the chance to make the play. The laser he threw on the catch and run, that was between Anthony Barr and another defender. That ball was flat and hard and Ty had a chance to catch it and run. I thought Kevin played extremely well. Q. Did Luke Kaumatule and Blake Lueders? COACH SHAW: Oh, they did. They did. Lukie had a chance for a sack. I think it was his first or second play in there. Did a great job, got penetration, but once again, sometimes he's a magician back there. He spun out of it and did the whole Elway spin. But Lukie's going to keep getting better. You see his speed, athleticism, and his desire to get in the back field. I'm really excited about the move. He's going to be really good. Q. Is that his nickname, Lukie? COACH SHAW: There are about 15 nicknames going around. It's partially his energy. I don't know what to call it. But he's got energy, and life, and every day is a great day for Luke. So we have a few nicknames for him. Q. UCLA came into this game outscoring opponents 70‑0 in the third quarter. Did you make it an emphasis in practice to say if we're going to win the game, it's going to come in the third quarter? COACH SHAW: We talked a lot about the third quarter. We talked about the adjustments we'd have to make on defense. We talked about being smart, and about saving some calls for the second half we didn't show in the first half. Coach Mason I thought orchestrated an outstanding game plan to keep them guessing to a certain degree. Because that third down stat, I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that. Oregon comes out in the second half and blows people out. But that stat was 70‑something to zero or whatever it was in the third quarter. I don't think I've ever seen that before. So offensively, we made it a point to get on the board, be smart, be efficient and get down there and get points. Defensively contain them, contain them, don't give up the big play, and keep them out of the end zone. Q. Jordan Richards not only had two picks but ten tackles. How would you characterize his game? COACH SHAW: Dominant, dominant. The year that Ed Reynolds has had or had last year, the ball is staying away from Ed. What Ed put on film last year leading the nation in interception return yardage has led him to not have a lot of opportunities. The ball is going Jordan's way. Jordan's doing a great job of disguising coverage, leaning back towards the receiver, ran back over the top. He's athletic, he's smart. He's our other quarterback back there. I think the real thing we're really excited about is those two play off each other so well. Now with Jordan making so many plays and Ed ready to make plays, it's dangerous back there. Q. You alluded to earlier, but going from Hundley this week, to Mannion, to Mariota, how challenging is that? How much is it to have a veteran defense going into these games? COACH SHAW: Every week tough wipe away the last week, and every week's going to be a challenge. It's not just Manny, it's that little speed demon on the outside. We've watched a couple of crossover games and seen their offense against other defenses. It's Crooks, right? Yeah, Crooks. He's so fast and so explosive. The big quarterback gets the ball down the field to him. They're an extremely dangerous team. Coach Riley since he's taken over play calling, gets back to mixing it up. The ball goes everywhere. They can still get spread around in runs, passes, and screens, and all those things, fly sweeps. So the thing is it's partially schemed. We have to make sure our scheme is sound. But they have great players. We have to make sure they're contained. Q. How impressed were you with Tyler Gaffney and the offensive line and the ability to chew clock? How much is that going to help you when you face a team like Oregon when you're trying to keep them off the field? COACH SHAW: It's huge. It's huge. I alluded to it last week. It goes back to third downs. If we can stay on the clock and run the ball with efficiency, we have a chance to do what we want to do, which is run the ball between the tackles. Gaffney at 220 pounds, we tried to spill them with three other running backs, and he looked at me in the fourth quarter, he said coach I ain't tired. I said we're not taking you out anymore. We left him in there to finish the game. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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