Arizona State Head Coach Herm Edwards
On what they worked on at halftime...
“We needed to convert some third downs. We were really poor in the first half. We were 1-for-7. We kicked the field goal and then from there, I said we get another possession and we can put some points on the board and get our running game going. That came to fruition for us. The running game paid big dividends for us down the stretch and the defense did a nice job of taking it all away and producing points off takeaways."
On what the win meant to the seniors...
“It means a lot to them, our fans base and our football team. I told the team before we went out that this game is all about our seniors. A lot of these guys will never play football in this stadium again and you want to send them out winners. I thank the team for going that. We have 17 seniors that leave this class and mean a lot to this football team, so it was good for them to leave with a win."
On their mistakes tonight...
“Our problem was we were 1-for-7 on third downs. We could never get any drives started. It was good that our defense held them, kept holding them and got turnovers. Turnovers were big for us. They were down in our territory and missed a couple of field goals and that was big as well. We get out of here again with a win against these guys. There were a lot of missed opportunities by them while we took advantage of our opportunities."
On the offensive effort tonight...
“If you think about it, we were behind the chains. In our first series, we went punt, punt and from there we were no good on the 4th-and-12. We finally scored three points, but then we punted again on back-to-back drives. We were very lethargic offensively early but got things going in the second half.
On what worked for them tonight...
“Eno (Benajmin) found some creases in their defense. They were nervous about our receivers, no doubt about that. We dropped a couple of balls too, and that didn't help us either. There was a couple that if we caught, we could have scored some points early in the first half. That was not the case."
On Jayden Daniels' performance vs. Khalil Tate...
“He's not as dynamic as Khalil Tate. Tate's a little bit bigger, but Jayden ran the ball. He had some rushes there because he had 12 rushes for 77 yards. That's big. Tate had 11 rushes for 80 yards. Jayden's ability to run and make the chains move was important. He ran this time a lot in the sense that he didn't slide so much. He slid when he needed to."
On their time management toward the end...
“We talked about that when we got to about seven minutes left in the quarter. I said we had to start bleeding the clock down. We were able to get a lot of time off the clock which helped us in the end because we had almost 35 minutes of possession time."
On what their message was...
“Our coaching staff did a nice job of keeping their very message simple of just doing the little things right. I challenged our players after the Oregon State game because I was tired of losing. We lost four in a row. We got off to a very fast start, 5-1. We didn't handle success well. We fell into this dome of almost winning games and it was not the key. We beat Oregon and it was a tough one. We knew Arizona was going to be a tough game, and it didn't matter what we did last week because the win wouldn't have mattered if we lost this one. You have to put a string of games together and we've done that now. The guys are excited about playing in a bowl game, and that'll be a lot of fun."
Arizona State RB Eno Benjamin
On his mindset to win in today’s game…
“I just understand what this game is about. There are a lot of young guys on our team and I just wanted to fuel that passion and help them understand what this rivalry means. This was just a great team win.”
On what this game means to this team…
“I think our younger players understand it now. Being out there on the field, everyone is getting trash-talked and I think we all understand that hate.”
On the second-half game plan that included 40 second-half rush attempts…
“(At halftime) I was actually thinking ‘are we going to run the ball some more?’ I think we did a good job. We had a game plan. Like Jayden said, in the first half they were dropping everyone trying to take away the big plays. We just wanted to keep it simple and keep the ball on the ground. The offensive line did a good job of imposing their will on them.”
On eclipsing the 1000-yard rushing mark on the season;
"I couldn’t have done it without the seniors. That offensive line group and I got really close. Building chemistry, staying after hours and working just on little stuff that would help us perform better. Like I said, I am really close to those guys, and the fact that they are gone and playing for them in their last game was an amazing feeling.”
Arizona State QB Jayden Daniels
On the effectiveness of the run game in Saturday’s win…
“They came out dropping a lot of people back to take away our big plays in the passing game so it was just a great game plan and Eno (Benjamin) ran the ball hard. Whatever we had working, we just wanted to roll with it. It didn’t really matter that we didn’t throw the ball. We had chances to make some throws, but they played pretty good coverage. Like I said, Eno ran hard and the offensive line played well and kept their blocks and allowed us to execute those run plays.”
On what he learned about the rivalry in his first Territorial Cup game…
“As Eno said, there is a lot of trash talking. With all of the past history, a lot of this is all about us versus them and I will take us every time. What I learned today was that emotions run high in this game. There is a lot of hatred between these two teams and it means a lot to everybody in Arizona.”
Arizona State DB Kobe Williams
On winning his final game as a senior at Sun Devil Stadium…
“I have never lost to them. I know this game means so much to the fans and to come out here and be 3 and 0 against them is all I talked about to my team. I just wanted to go out there and give it my all. This is a big rivalry game, and we have been on top for a while now.”
On the team’s game plan against Arizona QB Khalil Tate…
“The main thing was just stopping the run. We knew they would come in here and try to run the ball a lot. We didn’t know who would start, we just knew we wanted whoever was there to throw the ball and try to beat us in the passing game. We just wanted to focus on playing a great game in the secondary and make plays on the ball when we could. We just let our line and linebackers take care of the run, and we just focused on making plays when we could.”
Arizona State DL Jermayne Lole
On the defense’s success against the Arizona run game…
“The coaches gave us a good game plan and prepared us well. Coach Edwards told us every day what type of game this was going to be and I just felt like they prepared us very well and put us in the right spot to make plays.”
Arizona State DB Evan Fields
On the importance of Saturday’s win…
“It is a great feeling to be able to send the seniors out the right way. Them (the seniors) winning their last territorial cup game is a great feeling, and this is all for the seniors.”
Arizona Head Coach Kevin Sumlin
On the decision to start Khalil Tate against ASU...
“He had a good week of practice and it is no different than how we were making decisions before that. The game flow was probably different than the last two games because of the tight game and he was using his legs to make offense happen and that’s why we went with him.”
On working with Kahlil Tate the past two years…
“The thing I’m sad about is the seniors and the way things have played out. There’s a lot of work that goes into what these guys do, more than people see in the three hours on Saturday. Nobody is happy right now about where we are, and what’s been happening in these past few weeks. There’s a lot of people in that room that care deeply about this football program; coaches and players. To summarize and talk about one guy wouldn’t be fair.”
On the defense’s play…
“I think they came out and ran the ball. They got to the edge a bunch right off the bat in the second half. We helped their defense in the first half because I thought they weren’t playing as many snaps. We turned the ball over and they played more snaps in the second half than they did in the first half. We made some big plays like tackles with loss of yards, but we didn’t really do that in the first half.”
On the message to Arizona fans who are frustrated…
“There are people, including myself, who care very deeply about this program and there’s a lot of work that is involved. The way you get better is through recruiting and player development. That’s where we are right now. From my standpoint, things are frustrating, but we have to trust the process. We have a process in place that I believe in and a lot of our players believe in. Because of that attitude, after watching all these games this season these kids don’t give up and they play hard. We need to keep developing players and keep working hard. It’s my job to fix this, I know the fans are frustrated, but believe me, we are frustrated too.”
Arizona QB Kahlil Tate
On summarizing his career…
“My experience was definitely different, there’s been a lot going on since the time I arrived here with my sophomore year being pretty successful, junior year battling an injury and this year going through a lot of adversity. I think that it has been a learning experience for me and for anybody who followed my story, they understand you can be up and you can be down.”
On how badly Tate wanted the win…
“Everybody wants to win in everything that they do, if you are driving your car you want to make the green light, you don’t want to be stuck at the red light. I think whenever you play a game or do anything that you want to win, you want to succeed at it and you never want to lose. When you do lose you can use it as a learning lesson or you can let it affect you in a major way.”
On how the defense played...
“The defense played well tonight, I think it doesn’t help when the offense isn’t as efficient as we can be to keep them off the field for a long enough period. They played well, but we have to do better on offense.”
Arizona DT Finton Connolly
On what happened to the defense in the second half against ASU…
“ASU came out in the second half ready to go, the defensive line could’ve done a better job at holding our gaps and containing them to make sure he doesn’t get up the field. Eno Benjamin had a pretty good game.”