QUOTES: Arizona State 31, UCLA 28

Arizona State head coach Herm Edwards
 
On the win today:
“Players can’t help but look at records and I think as a coach you never get caught up in the record of an opponent. It’s always about the opponent and what they are trying to do. Chip Kelly is one of the better college football coaches, especially offensively, and they put some numbers up on us as you can see. I thought our offense for the most part did a nice job as well. When we needed them to move the ball, especially at the end there when it got sticky, they went on a nice long drive and really closed the game out. When you get them back like we had them, and then the crowd started roaring -  it was unbelievable. They had two false-starts. That’s 22 seconds off the clock just on false-starts, and that was all from the fans.”
 
On preparing for close games:
“I think we really look at that. We talk about that all week. We actually practice it. There are always situations when it comes to situation football. I wish we had really closed the game out with the offense taking a knee, that was my vision for all of that but that wasn’t quite the deal. Then I’m sitting over there like ‘Oh now here we go.’ I called up to the box and said ‘Hey man, if we go to overtime we don’t want the ball, correct?’ And they go ‘Yeah we don’t want the ball.’ I said, ‘Now Danny [Gonzales], can we please stop these guys just this last time?’ And they did, and that’s great for the defense and great for the kids. I’m happy for them more than anything. They have come a long way since the beginning of the season and to find themselves in this position where they are eligible for a bowl, it’s fantastic.”
 
On UCLA’s offense:
“They did a nice job. The tight-end - we still haven’t covered him, he is still running free somewhere. He’s a good player, but I mean we got to stop him. We did everything to try to try to stop that guy and he just kept catching the ball and good for him because he’s a good player.”
 
On the significance of this being the senior’s last home game:
“I mentioned that all week and talked to the team before we went out. I told them ‘We need to do this for these guys.’ I talked about it in the meeting last night. If they have aspirations to play at the next level some of them will have opportunities, but as you mentioned most of them will not. I told all the other guys ‘Look at them and watch them when they walk out of here when they get introduced. That’s going to be you one day.’ This happens. This is part of football.”
 
On the freshmen playing:
“That’s great coaching by Danny [Gonzales] and his group. We played even more freshmen. I tell you their eyes were so big on that sideline. They all said they wanted to play and then they have to go in. It’s fun when you go in for mop-up duty, when you know you’re two or three scores up and they have about five minutes left. This one was a game that you have to make a play. It’s a part of maturity. The more times you get in this situation the uncomfortable becomes normal, and that’s what these guys have to learn. The uncomfortableness of competing has to become normal to you so you can play within your skill level.”
 
On the importance of these wins for the program:
“I think we’re playing for a lot of things. Don’t lose sight of this: we’re playing because we’re trying to build something. Everytime you play a game you learn a little bit more about your team and they learn a little bit more about their head coach and I learn a lot more about my coaches as well. It’s a process and the good thing is that we’re doing it in a way that we think we’re headed in the right direction. There’s still a lot of work to be done but I can’t thank my coaches and players enough for their effort thus far.”


Arizona State DL #41 Tyler Johnson
 
On how he feels:
“I feel good. It was a great team win. You couldn’t be prouder of all the seniors. I just got done telling them I love them and even though it was our last home game together, I told them they all made me play better from the o-line to trash talking in practice. It’s great to come off the last home game with a win.”
 
On whether he was motivated by LB Merlin Robertson’s ejection:
“Yeah, because we know how valuable he is on the defensive side. Coach always tells us the next person is up when something happens. He got ejected. You Have to be ready to come in.”
 
On UCLA’s final drive:
“I just had to keep going. The previous play before that, I wasn’t in the right spot where I should’ve been. Next play, coach made the next call and I just kept going and going and then came free.”
 
On what the game plan was defensively:
“We just had to shut down the middle and make them run side-to-side. That was our main goal. We had some breakout plays and we learned from mistakes. We just had to keep going and stick to the game plan.”
 
On the holes he saw today:
“Knowing it’s our last game and we need what we had to get done, you know we had to get that win. With the defensive we have and the offense we have, we want to be dominant on both sides and everyone understands that. That’s the message were trying to put out there and make that image clear. We’re going to keep going, keep fighting. We need to get it done and we got it done today.”
 

Arizona State QB #5 Manny Wilkins
 
On how he’s feeling:
“Life could take you so many different ways, and you just trust God’s plans. Just stay the course. Good things happen. I’m ecstatic, though. I’m blessed to be a part of this football team. It means the world to me.”
 
On the eight-minute ASU drive:
“Just drive the football down the field. Should’ve hit me with the easy question first. Just stayed the course. No matter what the play was, I mean, they knew what we were gonna run, we knew what they were gonna run. It’s just all about who wants it more. I think you can see it’s the look in our eyes right now, and we damn sure wanted it. We want it. We got two left. It’s time to move one, enjoy this one. It’s time to take care of business next week.”
 
On thanking Sun Devil Nation:
“For me, it’s just thank you. There were a lot of opportunities for people to turn on me especially. To continue to stick with me and ride with me and all my teammates with the BS I had to go through all these years, they always had my back and to them I’m forever grateful. This place will be forever special to me. I’m not going to just go. I will be back here because this place is special to me. I grew up here from a boy to a man and it’s bigger than football.”
 
On if the goal to be first in the Pac-12 South:
“Week-by-week-by-week. We know what’s at the end we would be foolish if we didn’t think about it, but we have a tough game next week that we have to take care of. We all know what comes after that so business each week.”
 
On his emotions before the game:
“I told myself to let myself to soak this moment up. I knew I was going to be very emotional. That’s just who I am. I’m a very emotional person. I knew I was going to cry, so I told myself I wasn’t going to but still cried. I knew when it was time to flip the switch after I hugged my family, took some pictures, but the second we said it was time to walk out for the coin toss that was all out the door and I had my moment.”
 
On playing with WR N’Keal Harry:
“Man, he’s been such a special person to me. I love him like a brother. I’ve seen him grow up so much. I’ve been a part of it and it’s been so special to be a part of it. To be around somebody who loves this game so much, to be around somebody who knows the importance of this game for him and his family, you see a different look in those guy’s eyes. He is just out there playing football and he’s just out there doing something he loves to do and he’s doing it at 100 miles per hour with a passion. When you have a guy like that out there, it doesn’t matter if it’s a dropped pass or a caught pass. It doesn’t matter. I got his back no matter what because he’s family and I’m forever grateful for him. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
 

Arizona State OL #73 Cohl Cabral
 
On the eight-minute ASU drive:
“I didn’t even know how long the drive was until I looked up after we scored, but that was our mindset that drive. It doesn’t matter how long the drive was, just drive. Keep going, keep our offense on the field. Just take the ball out of their hands.”
 

Arizona State RB #3 Eno Benjamin
 
On if the game intensified at the end:
“I think we knew it was the last home game here for the seniors. I don’t think on the field we were thinking about that. It was just we need to win this game to get to where we want to get to. I think the defense helped us out a little bit. We came out a little sluggish. The receivers helped us a lot in the run game. We came out a little bit flat. It was the senior’s last game. We did what we had to do.”
 
On what was clicking during the game:
“You have to ask that to Cohl [Cabral] because I go as they route, but I think in the first half they were slow playing a lot and so we couldn’t get up to those backers. When I hit the hole, those linebackers were there. We just changed up our game plan and back to what we do best and I think that’s either a straight zone or in our depth schemes. Coach [Dave] Christensen was preaching it in the locker room. I think we need to go to the zone and this is what he is seeing and just trusting it, trusting our coaches. Like I’ve always said, they’ve always put us in a really good position to be successful on the field.”


UCLA head coach Chip Kelly
 
On what made Eno Benjamin so effective:
“We didn't tackle him. Too many times the contact was 6 or 7 yards down the field and we have to do a better job.”
 
On how they handled N’Keal Harry throughout the game:
“I thought we did a decent job with him. He had that one big catch, other than that the speed sweep they pitched to him we had to do a better job tackling but, for the most part we did a good job.”
 

UCLA quarterback Wilton Speight
 
On how fans made it a tough environment to play in:
“Credit to the fans of Arizona State for making it a hostile environment, especially on that last drive.”
 
On Herm Edwards similar tendencies to his time in the NFL:  
“With Herm Edwards being their head coach and if you look at his background - he was in Tampa Bay when Monte Kiffin was the defensive coordinator and kind of invented that Tampa 2. You saw it on film. You saw a lot of those tendencies and a lot Tampa 2.”