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NATIONAL FUNDING HOLIDAY BOWL: MINNESOTA VS WASHINGTON STATE

December 14, 2016

Mike Leach

San Diego, California

THE MODERATOR: Coach Leach from Washington State.

COACH LEACH: We're really excited to be in the Holiday Bowl. Was here a couple of years ago when I was coaching Texas Tech; it's one of my favorite bowls of all time and we're thrilled to death. Any questions?

Q. With what do you know about Minnesota? Will the suspensions hurt them, do you think? They lost two starter and two key reserves.
COACH LEACH: I don't know anything about the suspensions. Suspensions from my experience over the years have a funny way of no telling who you end up playing against so that's pretty much as far as I'm concerned, going in one ear and out the other.

I think they're a good, physical team. They're big, they're probably one of the biggest teams we will have played this year, so they do a great job there in the Big Ten. I think it will be a good challenge.

Q. Would you give us a rundown of the health of your squad now and your key people?
COACH LEACH: We're pretty healthy, I'm going to have you drop a bunch of pass plays to try to get some new stuff here and there. No. We are healthy! We are healthy. We've had a few practices. We're finessing finals right now.

But getting fresher and sharper as we get a little more work as it gets closer, it will accelerate for us a little bit. We're in good shape. Really excited to be in a bowl, excited to go out and keep things going, keep everybody together and keep working.

Q. How do you approach the time between games? You have a big spread of time there.
COACH LEACH: Well, the first portion is a lot like spring football. You work those young guys as much as you can and keep your older guys sharp.

Then from there as it gets closer and closer to the game, start working, you know, integrate more toward, you know, your guys -- your starters and things. As it gets even closer then of course you start implementing and working on your game plan.

So you kinda transition. I guess the quick answer would be you transition from sort of a spring football to, you know, game mode for that week.

Q. Will River Cracraft be able to play?
COACH LEACH: No.

Q. The weather in Pullman compared to weather in San Diego?
COACH LEACH: It's colder in Pullman than it is in San Diego. It's definitely different weather. Raise your hand if you guys didn't know that! (Laughter.)

When we left there it was probably, I don't know, 10 degrees and kinda snowy. It's real pretty out there, the type of thing where the air collects to the trees and all that so it is really pretty, I will say that, it's gorgeous there right now, and I would like the change as long as it doesn't last too long.

That's one great thing about Pullman, throughout the year it looks a little different, so that's exciting. It's exciting for us and all of our players to come down here and come to San Diego, and we have an awful lot of guys from Southern California, not San Diego necessarily, but we have a lot of Southern California guys and outside of Washington that's probably our biggest single demographics, so they're excited to get down here and play.

Q. I'm impressed with how fast you turned things around coming from the Big 12 to the PAC 12. Are you surprised by that?
COACH LEACH: I never think about it. I kind of try to move ahead. We won eight games, and we were upset four times, and I'm disappointed we were upset by anybody, but the way I look at it as a coach, and I guess our room, you know, I try not to put ceilings on anything, just do the best you can, make sure you are getting better every day and expect to win and expect good things to happen. Just constantly instill that and sometimes early in the week, you know, make sure you're well talked into it by Thursday or Friday and then go let it fry, let it rip after that.

We have a real good group, that's the one thing is we have a good, hard-working group. We're a young team, a young team and we're not real deep. We work real hard together and for how old we are we have quite a few snaps because we're sophomores and juniors, and we have quite a few snaps under our belt because a lot of them played early.

As we get more experience we're getting better all the time. I don't know, I guess I wasn't surprised, just kept hoping for the best, really.

Q. Can you talk about your last bowl game here. How was that experience?
COACH LEACH: It was a great bowl. It was an exciting bowl. We played a good Cal team, and nowadays if I mention the names that we played on that team it's pretty scary. Aaron Rodgers was their quarterback, Marshawn Lynch was their running back, DeSean Jackson was their receiver, and there were five or six guys on defense -- if you want to check on their work you have to look on Sunday, also, you know, just switch on the TV and you can see how those guys are doing. We were excited to be in the bowl, and we had a big day in the Holiday Bowl, proud of our team. We beat Cal that day and it was a great experience.

It's just exciting to be back here. It was kind of funny. There was a book there, kind of the previous Holiday Bowls, and you didn't want to be behind to Cal, but you looked at that book and whoever was ahead at halftime lost the Holiday Bowl, you know? So you didn't know if you wanted to be ahead or behind.

Well, we're ahead at halftime and I'm thinking that's good, and then I'm thinking, yeah but that's bad! Then we came out at the half and there's smoke everywhere from the fireworks, which according to my wife, that was a heck of a fireworks show.

So there's smoke all over, and we had a big second half and I was really proud of our guys and had a great experience here. All right, thanks so much.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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