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ROSE BOWL GAME: IOWA VS STANFORD

December 28, 2015

Austin Hooper

Pasadena, California

Q. How has the experience been so far? How did you like the show yesterday?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Yeah, the show was hilarious. They had a couple of guys sitting next to us. Some guys are up on the rise. Some local fan favorites. It was a well-put-together show there. There was a lot of funny stuff I will not repeat right now, but it was very enjoyable.

Q. And how about looking forward to the Lawry's Beef Bowl later?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Oh, yeah. It's incredible. Trying to put away a couple of hundred dollars of food tonight. We'll see how it goes for me.

Q. Any report on whether Josh is going to be allowed to go for the record or not?
AUSTIN HOOPER: My sophomore year, the year after he set the record, yeah, they cut him off early.

Q. They cut him off or Coach Shaw cut him off?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I don't know. Some higher level stopped him from competing. But yeah, I'm not really too sure. I mean, I think his record is still intact.

Q. So this is your second Rose Bowl?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Uh-huh.

Q. You haven't actually won one before?
AUSTIN HOOPER: No.

Q. What do the guys tell you about how different it feels to win one versus losing one?
AUSTIN HOOPER: It's really hard to describe. It's just euphoria. You work all year for this one game, your bowl game, and based on how it goes, you go into the offseason with a smile or a big chip on your shoulder. It dictates a lot of the training we'll be doing the offseason. And like a culmination of all the work, how do you want to finish it, how do you want to end the season? Do you want to end it the right way, send the seniors off the right way or do you want to look back for another 12 months and shoulda, coulda, woulda. That's not how you want to do things. We are just trying to prepare to get the best results.

Q. So there's definitely a palpable difference between Rose Bowl two years ago and the Foster Farms Bowl?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Oh, absolutely. Just winning the venue or the opponent, just winning a bowl game, just winning it together with the guys for the last time before everyone goes their separate ways, into the corporate world or NFL or stay on campus and say, I'm done with playing football. It's the last chance for everyone to be together. So you always want to make it special.

Q. So is looking at the secondary they had, they got a lock-down corner. Do you expect to get more involved in the game plan because of that?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I think it's a little bit too early to tell. The game plan will be made out this week. They have some challenges with the defensive backs and the corners. I mean, we should do our job, just be able to get open on everybody.

Q. How do you feel about the coverage of the linebackers?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I mean, they're a solid group. They play really well together. They don't have a whole lot of different complex schemes, but the ones they do, they run as good as anybody. So I mean, it's not as much a mental game because of the lack of coverages and disguising things. It's just more execution because they're not really going to try to fool you. They'll line up in the same way every time, and it's all about timing as to who's going to win.

Q. What is it that they do well?
AUSTIN HOOPER: They play really well together. Everyone knows their assignments. Their safeties have great roles in the defense, both in coveraging and run support. Their linebackers do a good job of setting the fronts, moving the D line. The D linemen do a great job of rallying the football. They're a great team defense. It's the reason why they're in the Rose Bowl.

Q. What's it going to mean to send the group of seniors off with a big win?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Yeah. Absolutely. Guys like Kevin, Kyle Murphy, Josh Garnett, guys I've looked up to throughout my time in the program. I mean, I'm going to do everything in my power to send them off the right way. I mean, those are the guys you lift weights with in the offseason. In the offseason, Kevin Hogan on Saturdays at like 10 a.m. throws balls when no one's there. All the work you put in together, and that friendship and that brotherhood that you build, you just want to do everything in your power to send them off the right way. There's some life-lasting memories. Just like do you want to remember things sweet or a little sour? So I'll do everything in my power to make sure they have good memories.

Q. What's the best memory from Disneyland?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I like the California Screamer.

Q. Who were you with on that?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I was right by Kyle Murphy and then Dalton Schultz was riding right behind us. It was a lot of fun because we were in the back and getting all the whiplash and stuff going on. So it was wild?

Q. I heard Aziz [Shittu] and Ronnie [Harris] had a rough time with some of those roller coasters. Anybody in your group?
AUSTIN HOOPER: My group feared none. We had a good group. We just kept it moving. We had a lot of good rides in a short amount of time?

Q. For Iowa, is there a different passion they might play with?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I'm not on that team, but I mean for us we're just looking forward to the opportunity to be back here.

Q. Why don't you tell me about your team then, since you're not on that team.
AUSTIN HOOPER: We're really excited. Playing on the West Coast, play in the Pac-12, this is the bowl game you want to go to. So we're all excited. We're doing some great events, and in the meantime we gotta prepare to play in the Rose Bowl. If that doesn't get you juiced, I don't know what you're doing on the team.

Q. And then Northwestern was a long time ago.
AUSTIN HOOPER: Very long time ago.

Q. How important is it to be physical?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I mean, absolutely. I mean Iowa is a physical team. They pride themselves on being a physical football team, but so do we. We've grown a lot since our first game. Not everyone individually but we've improved.

Like Northwestern we did a great job being physical, we just didn't execute. That was our first game. And it really woke us up and we had to change our team around because of it. We were a different team and a better team because of it.

Q. How would a win send Hogan out on his career?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Absolutely. I was talking to one of the reporters earlier, he's one of the guys who took me under. I mean, he's a senior and I'm a junior. He'd pull me aside, 9 a.m. in the morning, Saturdays on the offseason, go work on timing, little things. I mean it's just been a full process and sending him off the right way is huge.

Q. Being a junior, moving forward next year as far as recruiting?
AUSTIN HOOPER: It'll be huge because every year college football never gives us respect. We just have to keep winning. We've won three of the last four Pac-12 Championships, yet we've gone in unranked and then through the season. I don't know what else we have to do. We're just all used to it. All we can do is just keep winning, and then hopefully people will wake up.

Q. Kyle was talking about how with Christian's elusiveness and his athleticism you sort of tweak things in the running game, not just powering people on every play. How have you tweaked the running game more to do what he does well this year?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I mean, yeah, we definitely have a lot more in the single-back world. A lot more running zone read, out of a shotgun formation, just stuff like that makes it a little bit easier. You just give him the ball and space and watch him go. He can do some special things with it.

Q. Did that change start to happen at the end of last season or was that the focus coming in to this year?
AUSTIN HOOPER: We started to change that after last season. We worked on it for spring ball. We started becoming a different offense throughout last spring ball. And after the Northwestern game we really changed things around a lot. I mean, I wouldn't say drastically, but we changed the speeds up a lot more to allow time for running backs to get as much touches as we can, get them in the space as much as possible.

So to answer your question, yes, we did change some things around, and it's been beneficial to our program.

Q. What's the first "wow" moment with Christian that you remember?
AUSTIN HOOPER: My first one would have to be last year at Oregon. Actually, he didn't stay in the first game. I mean literally, his first play he caught a pass for 60-something yards. His first game in college football, like the 20th, 30th play of the game. We put him in for one-play touchdown and that's kind of the way it was for his whole freshman year. We put him in against Oregon State. Catches another one out of the back field, spins out of a tackle, goes 60 yards.

It's not just something he's done this year but last year, it's like whoa, this guy can play. And once you gave him more and more carries, you got to see a lot more of those "wow" plays.

Q. One thing is this is the first year that it is totally Shaw's recruiting. Blake last year was a Harbaugh holdover. Wondering how much it meant to the program, to the guys or just the program's success as a whole to host another kind of Rose Bowl season with this group of guys?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Yeah, Coach Shaw did a great job of recruiting the right men to be here, and from there we're all just highly competitive guys who gel well together. So when we have the opportunity, every Saturday we're out there, we're putting together whatever the game plan is. We're just trying our hardest and executing. We've gotten a lot more comfortable as an offense, and that's allowed us to be one of the best in the country.

Q. Was there any negative recruiting towards Stanford?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Oh, of course.

Q. What would their tone be?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Someone would be just like, are you sure you can get in? I've heard a lot of kids don't get in, which is true. That's what makes this place special, because not everyone can do it. I mean, everywhere else you can barely graduate with a medium grade. You can go to the top institutions, but here you can get a 4.0 and still maybe not get in. So it almost makes it more of a lure for guys who want to challenge themselves. But if you do everything they ask you throughout the whole process, you should get in easy.

Q. Was there a sentiment, too, that Stanford, they can't sustain what they're doing right now?
AUSTIN HOOPER: Uh-huh. Yeah, some schools will say, we had a fluke year. They got lucky here, lucky there. But I'm a guy that likes looking at numbers and we see all the ones they've recruited. When I was a recruit I was there for a couple of years and then my senior year, they won a Rose Bowl. So all those people negative recruited, how can you negatively recruit? They just won the Rose Bowl.

Q. You went from being part of the recruiting process to being part of the program. How big of a deal was it to turn the five-loss season to a 12-win season?
AUSTIN HOOPER: I mean it's huge. You gotta admit, definitely had to look ourselves in the mirror as an offense, as a defense, as a team and individually, just like, how do we want our season to go? How do we want to write our story? We tweaked a couple of things around after Northwestern. We learned a lot because of the Northwestern game. Then from there the wins came on the scoreboard. And if you win, recruiting takes care of itself.

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