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BRIDGEPOINT EDUCATION HOLIDAY BOWL: WASHINGTON v NEBRASKADecember 30, 2010Mason FosterJake LockerChris PolkSteve SarkisianSAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA Washington 19 COACH SARKISIAN: Really, really, really proud of our kids and our coaches. We put together a plan for this ballgame that we thought could be a formula for success. The guys executed it beautifully. You know, we knew this was going to be a physical football game. And our ability to eliminate their big plays and stop the run, our ability to try to control the game by running the football, whether it was with Chris or with Jake, we knew it w0ould be imperative. We knew the football would be imperative. Not turning the ball over, creating some turnovers I thought played a big factor in the game. Through it all, our defense was fantastic, really responded to the challenge. Great plan by Nick and the guys. Just proud of our offensive line and our running game to create some movement and control the football game. All in all, it was a fantastic effort. THE MODERATOR: Questions for coach. Q. Can you talk about the turnover at the start of the game, how that kind of set the tone for the game. COACH SARKISIAN: Well, I think obviously coming into a game when you're underdogs, I didn't waiver on the fact of our sense of belief in that we could go do this. When you get a turnover like that, you can create some momentum, punch it in, get seven points right off the bat, I think the belief gets stronger at that point. It helped everybody involved. The defense to create the turnover and the offense, their ability to run and punch that thing in. Just got the belief of everybody in the stadium that, okay, we're here, we got a great shot. Q. What did you do defensively? Last time they pretty much man-handled you. They're so much bigger. COACH SARKISIAN: I think the first thing is, one, we were physical at the point of attack, which had been a big emphasis for us in practice. As you guys know that watch us practice, we go a lot of one-on-one versus each other. We thought if we could continue to establish ourselves at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball, that could set the stage for out backers and our secondary to make their plays. We've been playing really good run defense for the last three or four ballgames. Our guys didn't try too hard. They were physical at the point of attack. They held their gaps extremely well. Then we tackled. I thought that was the biggest difference from last game. We tackled guys every opportunity we had to eliminate big plays. Q. You said at the end of the game, We're on our way. Where is that? Secondly, what does it mean to your program this season to win this Holiday Bowl game? COACH SARKISIAN: Well, it's fantastic. I can't wait to get into this locker room, remind these guys they're champions this year. We're Holiday Bowl champions. We've come a long way in a short amount of time. Third place in the PAC-10, Holiday Bowl champs. Exactly where we're going, that's for us. We don't have to tell everybody our map. They'll beat us to the treasure before we get there. But we're moving in the right direction. I'm proud for Husky Nation. We've got proud fans. We've got the best fans in America. They've seen a lot of great football in their day. Obviously we hit a little bit of a lull. But we're on our way back to the brand of football that the Huskies are accustomed to playing. Q. How much of Jake running the offensive game plan helped? COACH SARKISIAN: I think it was twofold. We knew coming into this game we were going to run the ball with a variety of runs, whether it would be handing the ball to Chris, whether it would be designed runs directly for Jake, or read option stuff where Jake and Chris are going to work their deal like they know how to do so well. All of those facets put together created a run game we thought could be effective. I have the utmost respect for Coach Pelini and his staff. They're an excellently coached football team, especially on defense. We knew it would be hard. We didn't think it would be easy. We could not be one-dimensional in this game. We had to have a lot of variety, especially in the run game, because they're good at making their adjustments. I thought our offensive line was great at the point of attack and I thought Chris and Jake ran extremely hard. Q. Having seen Jake for three years, being around him the last two, what does it mean to send him out on this note? COACH SARKISIAN: I think so much of what was made of why he came back was for a Heisman or this or that. The reality of it was he came back for this moment. For him to experience this moment is why we coach. To see the look in these guys' eyes when they make their great plays, they have their special moments is why we do what we do. Sure we want to win. At the end of the day, I've got 110 sons. They're not all perfect, like none of our sons are. To watch them grow and achieve things whether it's on or off the field is why we do what we do. Q. What do you think it was the turning point of the game? The two delay of games or was there another point? COACH SARKISIAN: I thought there was a lot of pivotal points. I don't know. The first turnover I think set a tone for the game. But, man, there was a lot of swings back and forth. There were swings in their direction, too. We don't score from the one yard line. Then for us to turn around and get that safety was a pivotal play as well. There was a lot of them in the game. I thought a key drive in the game was the first drive of the second half, to come out and bang, bang, bang, Jake makes a nice throw to DiAndre, then the touchdown run from 25 yards out really kept our team alive, kept our fans alive, was a momentum builder in the second half. Q. (No microphone.) COACH SARKISIAN: Well, it was fantastic. Without seeing the film, I've got to imagine that Alameda Ta'amu had a fantastic game, Everrette Thompson. But a lot of guys chipped in. De'Shon Matthews, Hau'oli Jamora, Kalani Aldrich, we used Mason some at defensive end to do his things. A lot of guys did their things on the defensive line that created, again, our ability for out backers and our secondary to make their plays to stay true to their fits and not have to try too hard or fight off blocks that were in their lap. They were able to fit their gaps and make their plays. Q. When do you start to think about the rubber match in Lincoln? COACH SARKISIAN: Dude, you're way off. I'm going to enjoy this one (laughter). Q. Was this a typical Chris Polk game or better than what you've seen? COACH SARKISIAN: For the last month it's been typical. He's been a war daddy for us. Chris has a very physical brand of running the football. He's a guy that almost excels with contact as the game goes. He did it again tonight. In a sense, it was somewhat typical that way. You know, happened to be against a very good defense. So it was a great effort by him. Q. Mason, did you almost take a playoff attitude having to win the final three games? Did you bring that into tonight? MASON FOSTER: Yeah, definitely we did. Like coach said, it was playoffs for the last three games. This is like the championship game, playoffs. We had all the confidence coming in the world coming into this game. We got better throughout the season. We believed in each other. That's what it comes down to. We had all the confidence. Offense was moving the ball. We knew we had to stop them and we was gonna win. That's what it came down to. Q. Jake, capping off your career at Washington, what does this do? JAKE LOCKER: Kind of like coach touched on earlier. This is the experience I came back for. There's a lot of other things that you probably could come up with why I did. He hit it right on the head. It's been some frustrating years. But to go out this way, to see this program off this way, I'm going to be their biggest fan from here on out. Every Saturday I'll be tuning in to watch the Huskies play. You can count on that. I'm proud to be a part of this program, part of this football team, something I'll be able to carry with me the rest of my life. Q. Chris, to have this kind of a night, this kind of a game, to get the team's first Bowl win in almost a decade, considering where you were a few years ago, can you expand on that? CHRIS POLK: I can't believe that like two years ago we were an 0-12 team. I'm grateful I was able to have an impact to see these seniors out after all they've been through. This is exactly what I came to college for. Q. Jake, can you talk about what you saw in the Nebraska defense that allowed you to get so many yards tonight? JAKE LOCKER: Nebraska, they do really well in pass coverage. They can really take advantage of you by trying to outnumber you, trying to get more defenders than you have receivers on each side. Watching film, coach kind of said, Hey, you know, with them playing like that, it works really well in the pass stuff, but there's not anybody accountable for the quarterback. If you don't love what you see, pull it down and run. He told me to play like I know how to play. I think that we kind of went into the game with that attitude, with that thought process. We were able to convert on some third downs and move the ball when things weren't there in the passing game because of it. Q. Given what they did to you last time, how did you have so much confidence? JAKE LOCKER: I think it didn't happen this week. I think it happened three weeks ago when we came into this four-game stretch. It was a mindset. If you go back and watch all four of these games, they're not perfect, but you see a team that believes in each other, that believes in what we're doing, the calls being made, playing really hard and really fast. I think when you're doing that, you're minimizing your mistakes. Seemed like the ball bounced our way more when we were playing that way than maybe sometimes earlier in the season when we weren't. Q. How are you going to celebrate after this? CHRIS POLK: Going to Disneyland. Q. What are you going to do? COACH SARKISIAN: We can't tell you that. Start school on Monday (laughter). We're going to enjoy this, for sure. These guys deserve it. It has not been pretty, as Jake said. But we've been an extremely resilient group. We are understanding how to deal with adversity. Through it all, it's a real tribute, especially to seniors. When we were 3-6, it didn't look great. To their credit, to the kids' credit, they believed in what we were doing. They didn't waiver. We took it one game at a time truly. None of them were perfect. They were all different. They all came down to fourth-quarter plays, our ability to finish, to do things right. Through it all we're going to enjoy this. This is why we do what we do: to get into Bowl season to win games like this. We'll enjoy it just like anything and get on a plane tomorrow, head back to Seattle, start all over again. Q. Jake, what happened to you when you went down? Coach, what was the first thing that went through your head? JAKE LOCKER: Well, it wasn't as bad as it looked. My helmet came down, hit me on my nose. The front of my face was kind of numb. My helmet was covering my eyes so I couldn't open my eyes up. They were asking me what's wrong. I'm saying, I can't see anything. I can't see. I couldn't feel my helmet down over my eyes. What's wrong? I can't see, everything is black. They go, I think it's your helmet. I go, No, I just can't see. Then they pulled my helmet up, I was able to pull my helmet up. I'm good, I'm all right. It looked worse than it was. I was fine, I just couldn't tell my helmet was down over my eyes (laughter). COACH SARKISIAN: My reaction obviously was I was very concerned initially. Felt like by the time I walked out there, I looked back and Jake's dad was there. We got to get him off the field. Then I went back and I saw they got his helmet up. I saw the look in his eye. He was fine. Our doctors and the medical people did all the precautionary work to make sure. I asked him right then and he answered clearly and quickly. I felt fine. He was okay. Q. (No microphone.) CHRIS POLK: Traded it with a fan for my gloves (laughter). Q. Steve, where do you go from here? COACH SARKISIAN: You know, we'll assess it all. That's the first thing. We have to look at ourselves, where we're at, what we did, how we did it. The easy thing is to say the number of wins and all of that. Ultimately every year we go into a season, our goal is to win what was the PAC-10 and is now the PAC-12 conference. At that point when you can set that goal, then you look at it game by game by game. We just want to play really good, hard football. We want our opponents to respect us after the ballgame is done. If that's good enough to win, it is. If it isn't, it isn't. As we move forward, we'd like to think that more wins will come. But that's why the football is shaped the way it is. Sometimes it bounces your way, sometimes it doesn't. Hopefully if you're playing with good effort, you prepare extremely well, when the opportunity is there, it bounces your way. Q. If you look back to your preparation for this game, is there something unique about your mindset because you were playing Nebraska? Mason, can you think of a time watching the tape you were inspired by the rematch? MASON FOSTER: I felt like we had definitely got better throughout the season. It wasn't anything about what they did to us. We knew we had to be more physical in the run game, we'd be all right. I felt like tonight everybody played extremely hard, offense, defense, special teams, young guys, everybody. We just wanted to win this game really bad. We had great schemes, great practices throughout the whole December. Felt like forever, but we were practicing hard every single day and it paid off. CHRIS POLK: I think like coach said earlier in the season, one game doesn't define us. We knew the team that showed up really wasn't us. We went in there and really assessed the things we did well. We had confidence. Confidence was key. We knew if we ran and did exactly what coaches told us to do, we couldn't help but be successful. JAKE LOCKER: We were able to look at the game film from last time. When you look at it, it wasn't as bad as the score says it was. We were in it in the middle of the third quarter and they started to pull away. We had some missed opportunities early on. We weren't executing as well as we wanted to, especially offensively. I think when we looked at it from that perspective, I think in our locker room we understood as a football team it wasn't as out of hand as everybody wanted to make it seem. We were talented enough to play with that football team, we had to be sound mentally and physically and the outcome could be different like it was. Q. Steve, could you look ahead, what you expect out of Jake? COACH SARKISIAN: I think his future's very bright. He's a great young man. He has tremendous leadership qualities. He's extremely humble. He'll do fine. He'll move on to the next level. He's got obviously the physical tools. He's got the mindset, the willingness to go to work every day to get better. I actually think he'll probably be a better pro because he's got a real pro mentality than maybe he was a college player, if that makes sense. I just think he's got the work ethic and the drive to make that happen. So somebody's going to get a special guy here in a few months. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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