Sept. 21, 1998
(FEELINGS ABOUT THE GAME) "I joked during the week about not looking at the scoreboard, and I was joking. I knew what the score was. My interest wasn't as much about that as it was about the attitude and the health of our team. I saw a difference on what the week of practice did for us. That's what I wanted to see. The work that went in last week was the essence of Saturday night. We still made errors. Our work habits are what are going to help us, so we are going to go out and work hard."
(ON NEW PLAYERS PLAYING MORE) "The three new defensive starters played well. Erik Flowers, Junior Ioane, and Eric Fields all did some things that I think improved our defense. Christon Rance has been playing but I think he did better this game. Offensively, Scott Peters had a good game considering it was his first start. [Stephen] Baker had an outstanding game, kicking off and punting.""
(ON HIS VETERAN PLAYERS) "Kenny Mitchell, Matt Cercone, Marvel [Smith], they all had real good games. Number 21, whatever his name is, boy can he run, he's really good."
(ON THE KICKING SITUATION) "This is my thinking on what I was going to do. I don't want to lose Mike [Gauthier] because Mike is a good player. I think he lost some confidence, his rhythm or whatever. My thinking is eventually to let him do the extra points. He gets the ball off faster than Stephen [Baker] and quicker. Stephen was to kick field goals and do the punting and kicking off. It ended up we never had a field goal attempts it gave me a chance to get Mike an extra point, he got it through, it wasn't a great kick but it got through."
(ON TERRELLE SMITH) "He had 18 snaps and he played really hard. He wants to play so bad, it is really important to him. He plays special teams, he got 18 defensive snaps, he will hit you."
(ON COURTNEY PALMORE) "Courtney played very well. He got a couple of staff awards for his play. He played on a lot of different units, so he got that award. He also got the 12th man award, which is for the man who comes off the bench and plays well. He ran, he hit physically, which is what we need. We are really pleased with what he did."
(ON THE OTHER PAC-10 GAMES) "The Stanford victory was a nice victory for the conference. What Washington did was good. I think Oregon might be for real. The only conference game was the Oregon State, USC game, and that was close. I'm also impressed with the way Arizona is playing. They are off to a fast start. (ON THE DEFENSE) "We are playing with some really young players. That doesn't mean there is a problem. We need to let them grow older and mature. We tackled better this game and we were more physical this game."
(ON STEVE CAMPBELL'S BLOCK) "He was so excited about that. He was thrilled, he started jumping up and down like a little kid. He did a great job."
(HIS FEELINGS ABOUT THE FANS) "What I tell the team, and I do believe this, whatever appreciation we get we have earned. If we play well the fans will show up. We dictate how people feel about us, it's not on them, it's on us."