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SAN DIEGO COUNTY CREDIT UNION HOLIDAY BOWL: IOWA VS USCDecember 27, 2019Clay HeltonJohn Houston Jr.Michael Pittman Jr.San Diego, California Iowa 49, USC 24 THE MODERATOR: Coach, if you could make an opening comment, then we'll take questions. CLAY HELTON: Thank you to the Holiday Bowl, to all the redcoats, the city of San Diego for putting on a tremendous bowl game. The experience that we had... Very well-played game by Iowa tonight. They played better than us, that was a simple fact. When we look at it, we'll look back at this tape, it will be a first half story of them being really good on third down efficiency, us not really getting off the field. Then the second half, having some critical errors as far as turnovers in the red zone, and the special teams touchdown. That created separation. Credit to Coach Ferentz and his staff and his team. They came and played a great game. Again, thank you to our Trojan family and the Iowa Hawkeye family. I thought it was an unbelievably well attended game. The electricity you could feel from the field was awesome. We're thankful to our fan base as well as Iowa's fan base. It made for a very, very exciting atmosphere for our student-athletes. So thank you. With that, we'll take any questions that you have. Q. Give us an injury update on Slovis? CLAY HELTON: He suffered an elbow injury. We'll see a little bit more. We'll get an MRI. It is an elbow injury right now, possible sprain hopefully. That's what we're hoping. Q. Talk about the performance of Isaac. CLAY HELTON: ITS has been on unbelievable contribution to our team all the way through. This young secondary that you saw out today was challenged, they grew all the way through. ITS is such a huge part of that. Such a bright future. Suffered a knee injury in that fourth quarter that we hope it's not severe. We'll get an MRI and see where that's at. He's had such a terrific season, has such a bright future ahead of him. Q. Coach, you seemed to have a lot of momentum after on the on-side kick. How much did the Slovis injury deflate the team? CLAY HELTON: I'll be honest with you, I thought we put ourselves right in that position after the on-side kick. It was exciting. It was really neat to see our fans when Matty took the field, the support that was around him, around the guys. We just didn't get it done. We've been in that situation with him before. He has absolutely excelled. Tonight just wasn't our night. Q. You have a lot of local guys on your team. Is there a reason why some of them didn't get as much playing time tonight? CLAY HELTON: I believe we had each one in. I thought (indiscernible) came in and did a nice job, suffered a head injury later in the fourth quarter that pulled him out. ITS was also in the game tonight. Each one got to play. We're so thankful to have both of them on our team, and the San Diego products that come out of here. For two freshmen, they've got really bright futures ahead of them. Q. Clay, Iowa hadn't scored 30 points in September. How do you explain of defensive struggles tonight? CLAY HELTON: It's one of those games we talk about. They're a start-fast football team. We put ourselves in some third-and-long situations, which we wanted. They caught us. They beat us in man coverage a couple of times that ended up creating first downs and keeping drives alive. I think they were perfect in the first half. That limited us to only four possessions in the first half, which we scored three out of the four times. That's their MO. If you are not successful with them on third down, it can be long drives. There were some 15-, 14-play drives that really took the wind out of our sails. Q. Do you anticipate any staff changes after this game? CLAY HELTON: Like I said before, the other day, our total focus has been on this game, this game only. I've been tasked with looking at the program as a whole, making any changes if necessary that I feel. Right now I'm going to go back and evaluate. Our players come back on January 13th, and I'm going to evaluate everything, not only personnel, staffing. I've been very thankful to Mike and Dr. Carol Folt that they've given me the resources, the tools, the support that is needed to take this from good to great. That's my job. I'll be looking at it. I'll alert everybody if and when those happen. Q. The Big Ten and Iowa in particular, there's always been a reputation, whether it's true or not, about their speed. Were you surprised at all tonight at their speed? CLAY HELTON: I tell you, we saw especially with a veteran quarterback like they've had, I thought he played excellent tonight, he gave his play-makers a chance. We were in some man-on-man situations, and they won those situations tonight. Credit to them. We saw on tape that they were good players with an experienced quarterback. Tonight they made more plays than we did. Q. You don't see very often a Big Ten team. Do they present a problem the way they play? CLAY HELTON: I thought the biggest thing tonight that they did a tremendous job of is keeping drives alive, really taking time off the clock. We haven't felt four possessions in a half in a long time. That's one of the reasons that I chose to do a surprise on-side in the second half, knowing that we were two scores down, actually told the kids at halftime, We're going to take this opening drive down, score, then be alert for it because we need to steal a possession here, try to get this thing to one score, steal a possession, try to get up. Too bad, we got it, had an injury, didn't finish that drive. I thought that could have been a turning point in the game. Q. Clay, this is the 12th loss over the past two years. What do you think has to change for the program to get back to that Rose Bowl, Pac-12 title? CLAY HELTON: We're 8-5 now. We were ranked 22 coming in. We're in a situation I said earlier, we got to go from good to great. That's a big step against some teams like this we're going to face next year. I feel we'll face six top-25 teams next year, talking about Alabama, Notre Dame, nine conference opponents. A pretty challenging schedule. The biggest thing is these type of experiences for our freshmen and sophomore group I think are important for them to dive into and understand that you can't make the critical error, you can't make the critical error on the minus side of the field, that when you get your opportunity after getting a surprise on-side, hopefully finishing those drives. Those lessons will be invaluable as we move forward. Every experience, whether it's a success or failure, will help this young team. I'm banking on them. I think they can be really special. I've been a part here for 10 years and felt some teams that are right on the cusp of being great. I think this is one of them. Q. Mike, this being your last game as a Trojan, what is your emotion right now? During the game, from your perspective, what changed when Kedon went out? MICHAEL PITTMAN JR.: I feel like that's a tough question. I mean, nothing really changed. It's just we kind of got shocked because our starting quarterback had gotten out, then it kind of deflected our, like, flow. Just one thing led to another. That's what happened. Q. Any thoughts on the last game? MICHAEL PITTMAN JR.: I mean, no, not really. Q. John, Iowa is known to control their offense, be out there a lot. What was that like for the defense? What did you try to change, to adjust? JOHN HOUSTON JR.: We just tried to focus on getting off the field, which we pretty much didn't do all game. Bad on getting off on third down. They kept drives going, kept the ball going. We just had a bad game pretty much. Q. Clay, how did you kind of see Smith-Marsette with his versatility scoring in three different ways? How prepared did you feel you were for his versatility? CLAY HELTON: We knew we were facing a good football team. There's a reason they're ranked 16th in the country. You look at their three losses were by very close margins. We knew we were facing a good team with some dynamic athletes. He's one of them. We got to see it firsthand tonight. We know probably game-changing as far as the kickoff return goes. All of a sudden you blink your eyes, you're right back down seven. They have some special athletes. I thought they played an extremely good game from start to end. Q. Clay, the expectations here are extremely high. How would you judge the season? A success? CLAY HELTON: We believe in championships here. The expectations are high and I love them. Our players love it. That's why we all came to USC. We're challenged by them. We will always be continued to be challenged by them. Just as a fan base might be frustrated, a coaching staff and players are frustrated because we know what we're about. I'm so appreciative to this senior group because when a lot of injuries happened, it could have gone one way. I really thought they finished extremely strong. I credit the 14 seniors in that room, the seven scholarship seniors that are in that room. They got us here, put us here. Men like this right here, they laid a foundation for what is going to be next year. They've set a culture, they've set an attitude amongst some young players, they've showed them how to be pros. I'm very appreciative of that. We're going to be a very good team next year because of these men and their leadership this year. That was the thing that I take away, a foundation was laid by a bunch of good seniors. We'll make sure we have success in the future. Bright days are ahead. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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