Postgame Quotes - Wake Forest at Indiana
9/24/2016 8:06:00 PM | Football
Wake Forest at Indiana
Postgame Quotes
Indiana Head Coach Kevin Wilson
Disappointing to lose but got beat by a team that played very, very well today. So give a lot of credit to Wake. They came in playing good team ball, and they played better team ball than us today. Coached them better, had them prepared.
We lose the turnover battle and some scoring opportunities, had a kicking blunder, field goal blocking -- a lot of things that led to us being short on the stick.
Had a good week of practice coming out of last week, had a good go with a lot of good things today, but too many errors, minus 5 turnover ratio. I think we were second in the country going into today at plus 5 in turnover ratio. So that didn't happen.
Didn't run the ball as well. Credit to those guys, forcing us to throw it a lot. But we got to finish drives, and we got to play a little cleaner. Disappointed to lose. Got a great challenge coming up with Michigan State in the Big Ten schedule, but we're just disappointed not to have won. Congratulations to Wake. They played very, very well.
Q. On injured players
COACH WILSON: He has an injury, back thing. I don't know. He's there. He was with us, was just limited. Brandon Knight came in and played well. Jacob Robinson, fifth year guy, was playing. So we didn't run the ball because those two guys weren't there. We didn't run the ball because we didn't block well. The guys were playing good.
We had a fifth year player, very, very talented player. Brandon Knight. Good defense, good rushing defense. But we did have 611 yards, which is kind of a lot. So we kind of did what we had to. We just didn't take care of the ball and didn't finish drives. That's a credit to them. Bad football by me and our guys.
Q. Can you talk about Richard's picks?
COACH WILSON: Yeah, which couple of times we put him in some tough situations. The first two plays were batted balls and batted in the perimeter. We're down ready to score, maybe go up 14-0 or 10-0 early. Batted ball in the perimeter, little rub-rub concept we're doing.
The second one, I think we kind of forced one into traffic. It got batted up on the pick six.
I think his third pick was a play action where actually he kind of came out wrong, got out of whack, got hit, and the ball came up short.
I don't remember the fourth one. Fourth one was a dig he tried to throw on third and long. They were yelling out the route, and they were all over it. He tried to Superman and throw the ball through a person, which is impossible. Should have checked it down.
And then the last one we tried to wrinkle up a play. We were doing a formation a lot and thought we could get something on them. It's something we do but didn't practice a lot. He actually tried to make a nice adjustment, and we just didn't clean it. So a couple of them were on us.
So made a lot of throws, made a lot of plays. We've got to calm him down. We had a 15-yard penalty on him that cost us a drive. It caused us to punt with about eight minutes. I think it was the four-minute mark, give or take, we had a hold on fourth and one that took points off the board.
I think the drive before, when they scored their touchdown, we had 45 yards of penalties in that drive. If that drive gets held to three points or gets out of there, at the end where it's fourth and one, we're probably kicking a field goal because you're not in a 12-point game, you're in a 9-point game. So we just had way too many errors.
Making nine penalties, a lot of them were critical. First half, we picked up a blitz nice. Flipped to Mitchell on a crossing route, got down first and goal on the 2 yard line, had a holding penalty. After the holding penalty, we get a blocked field goal.
So there's a lot of good football, hold them to 350. Didn't get any turnovers. Turned it over. They were 2 for 2 in the red zone, and we were 0 for 2 as far as scoring opportunities. Just a game where we missed our opportunities. We've got to clean it up.
Q. On Richard Lagow and his emotions during the game:
COACH WILSON: Well, our problem was the referee told us before like you need to calm 21 down. Just a little calmer. My deal was like they came over and said, hey, just he needs to calm down. He's getting a little too vocal. And he was frustrated after the play when he scrambled around and threw it away, and he said something. I don't think it was personally directed at the referee, but because he had been a little, I guess, loose with his mouth, it burned him.
That's the first time I've seen it. When people said earlier what do you like about him, I like he's been pretty steady Eddie, pretty calm. So in the heat of the moment, and he needs to learn and grow from that. We need to work hard to do that.
Q. On Lagow having five interceptions and if he considered bringing in another quarterback:
COACH WILSON: No. He's making plays. A couple of them were real nice. Two were bad. He was forced to dig. One came out the wrong way, and then the last one is kind of on us. He had one bad throw, the one that we tried to throw to Westbrook that the linebacker picked. That was the only one.
If you go through the rest of them -- years ago, Coach Dukes would say, he'd always talk about turnovers, but being a DB, didn't complain a ton about it. We had too many. There's no excuse for that.
So we'll look at why a couple of those balls were bad because maybe was our spacing right or was the window too tight and shouldn't have went there? But (indiscernible) never had that thought at all.
Q. On Redding's streak of games with 100 yards rushing coming to an end:
COACH WILSON: Well, again, not playing with the velocity we needed to. But they continued to load the box, and that's why we continued to throw it. We're not trying to be 50-50. We never tried. If I had a streak of 100 yards, it's more about the line blocking than Devine. Brought in streaks. Everybody looks at that. Where's Jones at?
If we've got other assets, the plays that Westbrook called would have worked. Got to keep our guys in check. It would have been nice to run. We've got to find the run.
You can't be a one-dimensional team. We were too one-dimensional because you are going to get some third and longs if you can't run the ball more than you'd like.
Q. On Mitchell Paige and his contributions today:
COACH WILSON: It was good because he had the hot hand. When you're a senior, fifth year guy, I just appreciate his team spirit and just -- like I actually last night said, you know, a couple of Westbrook's touchdowns, if you're on the other hash, the ball is coming your way. I don't know if you can make the touchdown, but the ball is coming your way.
We play those guys left and right. It's fast. We don't play X and Z. One guy plays on the left side, one guy plays on the right side, and it helps us play faster. Sometimes it's just the coverage. I appreciate him having a good game today. He's had some good ones in the past, but it wasn't enough.
Q. On getting the field goal blocked:
COACH WILSON: Yeah, you know what, he came off too fast. The timing was a little bit slow. We worked very hard on punt and field goal protection here through the opening.
Again, we had some good practices. So, again, I didn't walk out today like I don't like our team or anything about it. We've got to play better. We've got to play smarter. We have a lot of self growing up and group side OD kicking going up.
We'll look at -- because it was about one-tenth -- when you field goal, the widest guy you're beating with time. It was late enough to give that guy a factor.
But also we need to look at, again, the personnel on the spacing because we make it too easy. It was a little slow, but it's worked for us 2 in 3 games.
Michigan State on a hot streak where they block five kicks. They've got a lot of people coming after kicks. We have a punt block less team. I think it's a trend in the kicking game right now that a lot of teams are emphasizing, but we had four or five blocked PATs ourselves last year, where we got them. So I think we've just got to clean it up.
Q. On Dan Feeney not being available due to concussion:
COACH WILSON: You know, he did some activity last week. In our world, it's very -- it's all concussion protocol. When I talked to him, because I didn't know Friday coming off the field, is he en route? No, he's doing some light work and lifting and all that. I saw him walk out of the building. I said, what's going on with you? He told me, I'm getting some recurrence.
I said, let me tell you something. You've got enough banked reps as a good player. Make sure you're healthy. I think some of the recurring problems is guys come back and the primary muscle -- one of the primary muscles of your body, the brain, isn't fully healed. Bottom line, we have a protocol we put them through of pushing them. Sometimes they think they have a setback, and you've just got to calm them down.
If he could have played, he would have played. In the time line, can he play next -- I don't know. Again, we're going to do everything we can to take care of our people, and at the same time, we'll keep playing. But we've got to take care of our people.
#8 Tegray Scales
On cleaning up penalties:
"Penalties ruin potential. We were just trying to make plays, we had the opportunities to (make plays), we just did not. We will clean those up in the next couple days, the next week and will be ready for the next game."
On what was effective:
"As a defense, I think we played well. We could have gotten a few more stops to help the offense out in certain situations. As a whole, we just have to bring it all together and play Hoosiers football."
On lack of takeaways:
"I wish I could tell you. If I knew, we would have fixed it on the field. We need to keep raking at the ball. The penalties hurt us. We left too many opportunities on the field."
#15 Nick Westbrook
Thoughts on the game:
"It hurts to give up a win like this. Offensively, I think we take the blame. We have to be better, we have to execute better when it comes down to the red zone. We cannot have those mental mistakes that shoot ourselves in the foot. We had momentum that entire game. I know it is not a game of stats, but we were going up and down the field offensively. We have to capitalize on the competitive plays. We need to not have mental mistakes.
"Personally, I feel like I need to make that competitive play that gave up the pick-six. I take that on myself, I have to make that play to keep the drive going."
On frustrations with the turnovers:
"It is super frustrating. We have worked so hard at this, and we were doing well, and there was just something that drew us back. We keep getting closer and closer to that goal, but there is something drawing us back. It hurts, it is frustrating, but we will clean those things up for next week."
On Lagow:
"I just told him that I trust him. I still have complete faith in him. Two of those [interceptions] were tipped balls that were competitive plays we could have made. There is no faith lost in him whatsoever. I still have complete confidence in him and how he can lead our offense."
#9 Jonathan Crawford
On the defensive performance:
"I think we played hard. We gave up too many points and we had too many mistakes. In the end, we just have to come through."
On 45 yards of penalties:
"That just comes down to the little details. We wanted it bad, things were getting physical, but we just made some bad plays."
On lack of takeaways:
"It shows that we cannot win without takeaways. We need takeaways to come out on top. We had turnovers, but we have to do our part."
#87 Mitchell Paige
On the lack of run game:
"They had a really good plan, I'm not an offensive lineman so I wasn't really sure what was going on. I know earlier in the week and through the week, we were told it was going to be tough to run the ball. They were going to insert extra guys into the box and it was one-on-one plays, so we're talking about the outside lanes a lot. We need to improve in the run game."
When asked about leadership expectations…
"I thought the younger guys played really well. I didn't think there was anything wrong with what they were doing, they were fighting for us. If you went in there right now, they are probably beating themselves up about it because they are young. But I don't think they let us down. Whoever is out there, I'm 100 percent confident in, with me being a fifth-year player, we are running out of time, but those younger guys are going to help us get the job done."
#4 Ricky Jones
On the offense being too one-dimensional:
"We just have to do a lot of passing, it's not always good to be one-dimensional. We feed off of our run game and then we go to the pass, so they got us out of our element this game. We give Wake credit for that."
When asked about the absence of Feeney and Camiel:
"Overall we knew that guys were going to have to step up and make the play, that's what we had to do this game."
On what enabled him to make the play he needed to:
"When my team needed me and the play was called my way I needed to make the play. I had to put more on my plate because of the absence of Feeney and Camiel."
Wake Forest Head Coach Dave Clawson
Opening statement…
"I am really proud of our players. Indiana is a really good football team. They are very explosive on offense. It was one of those games, which we knew we were going to have to play for four quarters. We knew they were going to make plays, we may fall behind, we may get ahead, but the game is never going to be over. Again, Indiana is a good football team, they are explosive, but it seems like so many times today we responded. Obviously the five turnovers today were huge. I also loved the way our offense responded when they had too. I thought every time Indiana made it a one-score game, our offense responded with a big play and made it a two-score game. We gave up a lot of yards in the passing game, but limited their rushing yards."
On how Wake Forest measured up physically to Indiana…
"I though we measured up well. I would not say that we dominated the line of scrimmage, but we certainly held our own. We ran the ball when we needed to and we were able to stop their rushing game. I certainly think if you look at it from where we were a year ago, we made progress in that area (physicality). That was a mismatch a year ago and it was not a mismatch this year. I think we won that battle, but it was certainly a stalemate, if not maybe a little better."
On Wake Forest's receivers making plays…
"They had to make plays. I mean that was the one thing that had not happened this year. I think we have run the ball better, but the play Tabari (Hines) made on the sidelines, or the play Chucky (Chuck Wade) made before the half. We made big plays in the passing game, and we had to do that. That was a concern going into this game. In practice we have been making these plays, and I was anxious for it to happen in a game. Well, it happened in a game, and I hope it gives those guys confidence that this is a point they can really take off from."
Postgame Quotes
Indiana Head Coach Kevin Wilson
Disappointing to lose but got beat by a team that played very, very well today. So give a lot of credit to Wake. They came in playing good team ball, and they played better team ball than us today. Coached them better, had them prepared.
We lose the turnover battle and some scoring opportunities, had a kicking blunder, field goal blocking -- a lot of things that led to us being short on the stick.
Had a good week of practice coming out of last week, had a good go with a lot of good things today, but too many errors, minus 5 turnover ratio. I think we were second in the country going into today at plus 5 in turnover ratio. So that didn't happen.
Didn't run the ball as well. Credit to those guys, forcing us to throw it a lot. But we got to finish drives, and we got to play a little cleaner. Disappointed to lose. Got a great challenge coming up with Michigan State in the Big Ten schedule, but we're just disappointed not to have won. Congratulations to Wake. They played very, very well.
Q. On injured players
COACH WILSON: He has an injury, back thing. I don't know. He's there. He was with us, was just limited. Brandon Knight came in and played well. Jacob Robinson, fifth year guy, was playing. So we didn't run the ball because those two guys weren't there. We didn't run the ball because we didn't block well. The guys were playing good.
We had a fifth year player, very, very talented player. Brandon Knight. Good defense, good rushing defense. But we did have 611 yards, which is kind of a lot. So we kind of did what we had to. We just didn't take care of the ball and didn't finish drives. That's a credit to them. Bad football by me and our guys.
Q. Can you talk about Richard's picks?
COACH WILSON: Yeah, which couple of times we put him in some tough situations. The first two plays were batted balls and batted in the perimeter. We're down ready to score, maybe go up 14-0 or 10-0 early. Batted ball in the perimeter, little rub-rub concept we're doing.
The second one, I think we kind of forced one into traffic. It got batted up on the pick six.
I think his third pick was a play action where actually he kind of came out wrong, got out of whack, got hit, and the ball came up short.
I don't remember the fourth one. Fourth one was a dig he tried to throw on third and long. They were yelling out the route, and they were all over it. He tried to Superman and throw the ball through a person, which is impossible. Should have checked it down.
And then the last one we tried to wrinkle up a play. We were doing a formation a lot and thought we could get something on them. It's something we do but didn't practice a lot. He actually tried to make a nice adjustment, and we just didn't clean it. So a couple of them were on us.
So made a lot of throws, made a lot of plays. We've got to calm him down. We had a 15-yard penalty on him that cost us a drive. It caused us to punt with about eight minutes. I think it was the four-minute mark, give or take, we had a hold on fourth and one that took points off the board.
I think the drive before, when they scored their touchdown, we had 45 yards of penalties in that drive. If that drive gets held to three points or gets out of there, at the end where it's fourth and one, we're probably kicking a field goal because you're not in a 12-point game, you're in a 9-point game. So we just had way too many errors.
Making nine penalties, a lot of them were critical. First half, we picked up a blitz nice. Flipped to Mitchell on a crossing route, got down first and goal on the 2 yard line, had a holding penalty. After the holding penalty, we get a blocked field goal.
So there's a lot of good football, hold them to 350. Didn't get any turnovers. Turned it over. They were 2 for 2 in the red zone, and we were 0 for 2 as far as scoring opportunities. Just a game where we missed our opportunities. We've got to clean it up.
Q. On Richard Lagow and his emotions during the game:
COACH WILSON: Well, our problem was the referee told us before like you need to calm 21 down. Just a little calmer. My deal was like they came over and said, hey, just he needs to calm down. He's getting a little too vocal. And he was frustrated after the play when he scrambled around and threw it away, and he said something. I don't think it was personally directed at the referee, but because he had been a little, I guess, loose with his mouth, it burned him.
That's the first time I've seen it. When people said earlier what do you like about him, I like he's been pretty steady Eddie, pretty calm. So in the heat of the moment, and he needs to learn and grow from that. We need to work hard to do that.
Q. On Lagow having five interceptions and if he considered bringing in another quarterback:
COACH WILSON: No. He's making plays. A couple of them were real nice. Two were bad. He was forced to dig. One came out the wrong way, and then the last one is kind of on us. He had one bad throw, the one that we tried to throw to Westbrook that the linebacker picked. That was the only one.
If you go through the rest of them -- years ago, Coach Dukes would say, he'd always talk about turnovers, but being a DB, didn't complain a ton about it. We had too many. There's no excuse for that.
So we'll look at why a couple of those balls were bad because maybe was our spacing right or was the window too tight and shouldn't have went there? But (indiscernible) never had that thought at all.
Q. On Redding's streak of games with 100 yards rushing coming to an end:
COACH WILSON: Well, again, not playing with the velocity we needed to. But they continued to load the box, and that's why we continued to throw it. We're not trying to be 50-50. We never tried. If I had a streak of 100 yards, it's more about the line blocking than Devine. Brought in streaks. Everybody looks at that. Where's Jones at?
If we've got other assets, the plays that Westbrook called would have worked. Got to keep our guys in check. It would have been nice to run. We've got to find the run.
You can't be a one-dimensional team. We were too one-dimensional because you are going to get some third and longs if you can't run the ball more than you'd like.
Q. On Mitchell Paige and his contributions today:
COACH WILSON: It was good because he had the hot hand. When you're a senior, fifth year guy, I just appreciate his team spirit and just -- like I actually last night said, you know, a couple of Westbrook's touchdowns, if you're on the other hash, the ball is coming your way. I don't know if you can make the touchdown, but the ball is coming your way.
We play those guys left and right. It's fast. We don't play X and Z. One guy plays on the left side, one guy plays on the right side, and it helps us play faster. Sometimes it's just the coverage. I appreciate him having a good game today. He's had some good ones in the past, but it wasn't enough.
Q. On getting the field goal blocked:
COACH WILSON: Yeah, you know what, he came off too fast. The timing was a little bit slow. We worked very hard on punt and field goal protection here through the opening.
Again, we had some good practices. So, again, I didn't walk out today like I don't like our team or anything about it. We've got to play better. We've got to play smarter. We have a lot of self growing up and group side OD kicking going up.
We'll look at -- because it was about one-tenth -- when you field goal, the widest guy you're beating with time. It was late enough to give that guy a factor.
But also we need to look at, again, the personnel on the spacing because we make it too easy. It was a little slow, but it's worked for us 2 in 3 games.
Michigan State on a hot streak where they block five kicks. They've got a lot of people coming after kicks. We have a punt block less team. I think it's a trend in the kicking game right now that a lot of teams are emphasizing, but we had four or five blocked PATs ourselves last year, where we got them. So I think we've just got to clean it up.
Q. On Dan Feeney not being available due to concussion:
COACH WILSON: You know, he did some activity last week. In our world, it's very -- it's all concussion protocol. When I talked to him, because I didn't know Friday coming off the field, is he en route? No, he's doing some light work and lifting and all that. I saw him walk out of the building. I said, what's going on with you? He told me, I'm getting some recurrence.
I said, let me tell you something. You've got enough banked reps as a good player. Make sure you're healthy. I think some of the recurring problems is guys come back and the primary muscle -- one of the primary muscles of your body, the brain, isn't fully healed. Bottom line, we have a protocol we put them through of pushing them. Sometimes they think they have a setback, and you've just got to calm them down.
If he could have played, he would have played. In the time line, can he play next -- I don't know. Again, we're going to do everything we can to take care of our people, and at the same time, we'll keep playing. But we've got to take care of our people.
#8 Tegray Scales
On cleaning up penalties:
"Penalties ruin potential. We were just trying to make plays, we had the opportunities to (make plays), we just did not. We will clean those up in the next couple days, the next week and will be ready for the next game."
On what was effective:
"As a defense, I think we played well. We could have gotten a few more stops to help the offense out in certain situations. As a whole, we just have to bring it all together and play Hoosiers football."
On lack of takeaways:
"I wish I could tell you. If I knew, we would have fixed it on the field. We need to keep raking at the ball. The penalties hurt us. We left too many opportunities on the field."
#15 Nick Westbrook
Thoughts on the game:
"It hurts to give up a win like this. Offensively, I think we take the blame. We have to be better, we have to execute better when it comes down to the red zone. We cannot have those mental mistakes that shoot ourselves in the foot. We had momentum that entire game. I know it is not a game of stats, but we were going up and down the field offensively. We have to capitalize on the competitive plays. We need to not have mental mistakes.
"Personally, I feel like I need to make that competitive play that gave up the pick-six. I take that on myself, I have to make that play to keep the drive going."
On frustrations with the turnovers:
"It is super frustrating. We have worked so hard at this, and we were doing well, and there was just something that drew us back. We keep getting closer and closer to that goal, but there is something drawing us back. It hurts, it is frustrating, but we will clean those things up for next week."
On Lagow:
"I just told him that I trust him. I still have complete faith in him. Two of those [interceptions] were tipped balls that were competitive plays we could have made. There is no faith lost in him whatsoever. I still have complete confidence in him and how he can lead our offense."
#9 Jonathan Crawford
On the defensive performance:
"I think we played hard. We gave up too many points and we had too many mistakes. In the end, we just have to come through."
On 45 yards of penalties:
"That just comes down to the little details. We wanted it bad, things were getting physical, but we just made some bad plays."
On lack of takeaways:
"It shows that we cannot win without takeaways. We need takeaways to come out on top. We had turnovers, but we have to do our part."
#87 Mitchell Paige
On the lack of run game:
"They had a really good plan, I'm not an offensive lineman so I wasn't really sure what was going on. I know earlier in the week and through the week, we were told it was going to be tough to run the ball. They were going to insert extra guys into the box and it was one-on-one plays, so we're talking about the outside lanes a lot. We need to improve in the run game."
When asked about leadership expectations…
"I thought the younger guys played really well. I didn't think there was anything wrong with what they were doing, they were fighting for us. If you went in there right now, they are probably beating themselves up about it because they are young. But I don't think they let us down. Whoever is out there, I'm 100 percent confident in, with me being a fifth-year player, we are running out of time, but those younger guys are going to help us get the job done."
#4 Ricky Jones
On the offense being too one-dimensional:
"We just have to do a lot of passing, it's not always good to be one-dimensional. We feed off of our run game and then we go to the pass, so they got us out of our element this game. We give Wake credit for that."
When asked about the absence of Feeney and Camiel:
"Overall we knew that guys were going to have to step up and make the play, that's what we had to do this game."
On what enabled him to make the play he needed to:
"When my team needed me and the play was called my way I needed to make the play. I had to put more on my plate because of the absence of Feeney and Camiel."
Wake Forest Head Coach Dave Clawson
Opening statement…
"I am really proud of our players. Indiana is a really good football team. They are very explosive on offense. It was one of those games, which we knew we were going to have to play for four quarters. We knew they were going to make plays, we may fall behind, we may get ahead, but the game is never going to be over. Again, Indiana is a good football team, they are explosive, but it seems like so many times today we responded. Obviously the five turnovers today were huge. I also loved the way our offense responded when they had too. I thought every time Indiana made it a one-score game, our offense responded with a big play and made it a two-score game. We gave up a lot of yards in the passing game, but limited their rushing yards."
On how Wake Forest measured up physically to Indiana…
"I though we measured up well. I would not say that we dominated the line of scrimmage, but we certainly held our own. We ran the ball when we needed to and we were able to stop their rushing game. I certainly think if you look at it from where we were a year ago, we made progress in that area (physicality). That was a mismatch a year ago and it was not a mismatch this year. I think we won that battle, but it was certainly a stalemate, if not maybe a little better."
On Wake Forest's receivers making plays…
"They had to make plays. I mean that was the one thing that had not happened this year. I think we have run the ball better, but the play Tabari (Hines) made on the sidelines, or the play Chucky (Chuck Wade) made before the half. We made big plays in the passing game, and we had to do that. That was a concern going into this game. In practice we have been making these plays, and I was anxious for it to happen in a game. Well, it happened in a game, and I hope it gives those guys confidence that this is a point they can really take off from."
Players Mentioned
DB
/ Football
OL
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QB
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DL
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LB
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WR
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