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Football Postgame Quotes vs. #22/23 UCLA

#22/23 UCLA 37, Houston 6


 

  
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Sept. 16, 2012

Recap |  Final Stats |  Notes |  Photo Gallery 1  |  Photo Gallery 2 

HOUSTON HEAD COACH Tony Levine
Opening Statement
"I thought we had good effort tonight. I thought there were some things that we did poorly last week that we improved on, specifically tackling defensively against a great UCLA offense. When you create that many turnovers defensively it gives you a chance to win the football game. Unfortunately we turned it over more offensively.

Going into the bye week now, it really becomes a nine-game season for us and we've got to get some guys off the injury report and back healthy as soon as we can. From my vantage point, I thought Bryce Redman and DeAnthony Sims did a good job coming in and starting for us on the offensive line. I think not having Charles Sims tonight affected our rhythm offensively and Ryan Jackson went down with a leg injury early and was out for the game. We went into the game with three of our eight receivers injured and not playing and then we lost Ronnie Williams early to a leg injury as well.

Things kind of compounded tonight when it came to our guys staying healthy and we need to get those guys back as quickly as we can in the next week. I give UCLA a lot of credit. That's a great football team we played tonight. They played incredibly well on all three sides of the ball, offensively, defensively and special teams. It's a talented team and they've got it going very well right now."

on what UCLA did defensively to give their offense problems
"They played well which gave our offense trouble. You don't want to lose two of your top three running backs. When one doesn't play and the other goes out extremely early it really limits what you can do. They've got a tremendous pass rush and they showed it in their first two games. I thought the guys competed for 60 minutes, but we didn't do enough to win the football game."

on how the defense played compared to the first two games
"I thought they played very well compared to the first two games. We weren't perfect, but I thought the tackling improved tremendously and we created turnovers. What we have to do as a team is put it all together. We have to play well offensively, defensively and in the kicking game. All three in the same night and then we'll have a good football team."

UCLA HEAD COACH JIM MORA
Opening statement
It was a good win. It's interesting. I think we had 567 yards of total offense, and we had a heck of a game, but we don't feel satisfied. I think that's a good thing. I'm glad our team feels that way, because we realize what our potential is. Tonight we had too many penalties offensively and turned the ball over too many times. But on the flip side, our defense was outstanding, really, really outstanding. If not for that last play when we put a bunch of young guys in there, we blew the defense a little bit, it would have been one of the finer defensive efforts I've seen against team that put up about 700 yards last week. We're still searching and trying to put it all together as a football team. But we'll take a win anytime we can get it. You go back and look at film, and our players and coaches will be critical of themselves, and we'll get better. But it's a win and we're 3-0 going into conference play, so that's a real positive.

On UCLA's new standards
"Every week we're going to try to raise them higher. I don't think you should ever be satisfied until the end when you're a champion. I think our players feel like that. They are happy that they won, but I don't think they are satisfied with the overall performance of our team. We can't let it drag us down. We can't feel bad about it. We have to realize we have a lot of work to do."

On UCLA's defense
"We have been playing quite a bit of zone. Tonight we played a lot more man-to-man than we had all year. We went into the game thinking of starting off playing some man and then shift into some zone. I don't want this to sound negative at all, but they were open some and were having trouble catching it, so we stuck with that. We took away some things and made some plays on the ball."

On offensive line with Jeff Baca out
"We have work to do up front. We are so young on the offensive line and Jeff is kind of that glue guy. He's the leader. He brings a lot of energy, a lot of maturity and a lot of experience to that group. Him not being there might have affected us, but we can't use that as an excuse. We just have to play better and we will. It's great when you can win a game and have a lot of lessons to learn."

On Brett Hundley's play
"He was feeling OK. I didn't see him running around a lot out there. He played through a little discomfort and pain. Because he played so well last week, our expectations have gone through the roof.

There is going to be some inconsistency in his game sometimes because he's a young player and it's only his third game of college football ever. There's just a lot of great learning for him once he looks at that tape tomorrow.

UCLA SOPHOMORE SAFETY TEVIN McDONALD
"Coach emphasized all week putting together complete games. In our two games, we had two great second halves, but we had to put together a complete game. That was our plan, and I'm proud we executed it as a team. I'm just happy for us. This is what we set out to do. We put in all this hard work in the summer at San Bernardino and in the spring to be in the situation we're in after 3 games. I'm just proud of us."
 

 

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