Quotes: ASU 41, Colorado 30
ASU Head Coach Todd Graham
Opening Statement
“First and foremost, I want to thank the families of our fallen soldiers. I got to meet with them. I don’t cry before games very often, and getting to talk to the daughters and wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and brothers of the men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice was something I know I’ll never forget. We wanted to honor them with how we played. It’s not just winning, it’s how we win: With class and character. I talked to our kids all week that freedom is not free. It really was a special night for us and I’m proud of how our guys represented them and honored them tonight.”
On the offense
“Billy [Napier] did a good job of being patient. I, everybody was kind of frustrated with how we played in the first half. We just physically took over the game. 381 yards rushing. Demario Richard is a warrior. I mean, wow. He’s impressive. Eno Benjamin ain’t bad for a young man, is he? I’m just really proud of our guys, proud of the effort and proud of our defense. I thought Coach [Phil] Bennett did a great job in the second half. They played 49-50 snaps in the first half, and he did a great job. I’m just really proud of our guys. 381 yards rushing and one penalty. No turnovers. 100% ball security. Pretty disciplined football. Five sacks and six [tackles-for-loss]. That ain’t bad.”
On Demario Richard’s dominance
“Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. We just need to keep getting him reps and it’s hard because you’ve got two great backs with Demario [Richard] and Kalen [Ballage]. You have to – as much as you can – try and get him in there and get his touches. He’s been very patient. He did a great job tonight.”
On refocusing after the USC lost
“Our guys, they came out and they were very focused. We were not happy with how we performed last week. I just love this team. These guys are such a joy to coach. To go into the locker room and listen to our players stand up and tell each other they love each other, and they love the school and love the brotherhood. Tonight was all about the brotherhood. It was a pretty special night.”
On Salute to Service night
“I ran a slideshow of the young men that were associated with Arizona State that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. I ran it a couple of days and then I said, ‘Tell me the names of those people.’ Everybody got a little…and I said yeah, that’s someone’s brother, son, daughter, or dad. In one case, it’s someone’s granddad. That’s so important. I say this all the time: There are so few who pay the price for so many. Guys are going over and doing two, three tours over there. A lot of them are career guys doing that. I am just very grateful that we have people like that that make the sacrifice for us to be free. I don’t think we talk about it enough. When I looked into the eyes of the moms and wives tonight, and I see a just a little glimpse of the cost of freedom. We should respect that.”
On the end of the game
“At the end of the game, I was there standing and shouting instructions at them. They said, ‘Coach, chill out. We got it.’ So, I like that.”
On coming back in the second half
“It was frustrating in the first half. They did a good job. They had a good plan. We stayed true and came back. This was a special night to come from behind and win.”
On Colorado
“Colorado's tempo is relentless. They’re one of the fastest teams in our league. The fastest I’ve ever played against. Obviously, [Phillip Lindsay] is a great back and we did a tremendous job of keeping him in check.”
ASU Redshirt Junior Quarterback Manny Wilkins
On coming out of the slow offensive start in the first half
“Our mindset is always to take what the defense gives us; you keep picking away. Eventually they give you the game. In that second half, and especially the fourth quarter, we just simply ran the ball with a different attitude and it was a statement for us. Our mindset was to just execute what our game plan was. We knew adversity was going to strike and we just have to stay poised in all those situations and I think that’s what this team did a really good job of. When we got down 10-0 there was nobody panicking. There was a little frustration but that’s just because people hate losing. At the end of the day, if you just keep maintaining, throwing jabs and connecting, eventually when you fake a jab and throw a hay-maker it’s going to knock them down and that’s what we did.”
On the crowd’s energy at the end of the game
“It is what it is. We love the passion that they bring but at the end of the day we’re here to do one thing and that’s win football games so regardless of what the stands look like, regardless if it’s full or empty, we just have to do what we do and the rest will take care of itself.”
On getting a win after last week’s loss
“All week at practice we just preached: ‘Win in November.’ We just came out. We had to be hungry, we knew this was a good football team, a well-coached football team. Coach (Mike MacIntyre) is an amazing coach. The things that he runs his program off of are the same things that we kind of base our program off of so I have a great deal of respect for him and how he handles his business. But we just had to come out, go to work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, have a good Friday and come out and execute the game plan. We told ourselves, like I said earlier, adversity’s going to strike and when it strikes we have to be poised in all those situations and just keep sticking to the regimen.”
On what goes in his head while being down two scores
“[It’s a] four quarter football games. It’s not who scores first wins for a reason. We just got to continue to stay grounded and stay poised when adversity strikes. I know it sounds corny and cheesy but it’s simple: The good teams are going to bounce back from adversity when its strikes. When they hit us and they got up on us, they can be all high. We just have to continue and maintain being level and I think that’s what this team did a really good job of doing, staying grounded and level in all these situations that occurred tonight.”
On Eno Benjamin being ready
“I think he is a hell of a running back. I think he’s young and I think he still has a lot to learn. He brings a different element to our team. I think for him this is huge because it’s a big confidence booster for him. Just to have that feeling of getting into the end zone at Sun Devil Stadium and everybody cheering for you, it’s a great feeling. I was very proud of him to have that moment. It’s cool to see guys get those moments and be so joyful because we are very blessed to be in the shoes that we are in. I think that he is somebody that comes to practice every day and if he makes mistakes he gets down on himself but he’s somebody who works hard and it pays off.”
ASU Senior Running Back Demario Richard
On the offensive line setting up him up for big runs
“It’s the offensive line 110 percent. We worked hard all week in practice, and they’re starting to build their confidence when we play great games at home. I’m proud of them and we’re going to keep working like champions in November.”
On getting stronger/more confident as the game goes on
“That’s 100 percent true. My dad always told me to keep my head up, praise God, and just keep working. When I have a guy like (Manny Wilkins) on the side of me keep telling me to be patient and run the route, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m a young guy, fresh legs, and I just have to keep working. In the fourth quarter I already know what time it is when the game’s close, my team needs to depend on me in the fourth quarter and that’s why I work my tail off at practice to just keep being great.”
On coming out of the slow offensive start in the first half
“We just worked the cut. That’s our model, to work the cut. We take everything like it’s boxing. You see a guy keep getting jabbed in the left side of his eye until eventually he gets a cut, so you know, just keep working the cut and they’re going to get tired.”
On his 63-yard run in the fourth quarter
“I was just thinking: ‘It’s my time, I have to seal the deal.’ I know the offensive line is 110 percent confident. We come on the field and we tell them it’s the mindset every time. I’ve been playing with a busted ankle all week so honestly I think if my ankle wasn’t busted it was 80 yards to the house.”
On Eno Benjamin
“I told him he has been in my tool box. He doesn’t have a choice but to watch two, well I think, of the greatest that have ever come through here. He has big shoes to fill once we leave. Like I said he has been in my tool box, he watches me practice every day. I watch him, I correct him, just like I correct myself. He’s his biggest critic, I’m his biggest critic. We put in work in that running back room. Coach [John] Simon isn’t going to let us be mediocre. He tells us that we have to work and come to practice like pros.”
ASU Redshirt Senior Defensive Lineman A.J. Latu
On the mindset of the defense after giving up a few big plays
“We just hung in there. Like when Kobe [Williams] gave up that long pass we just came back to the sideline and we just let the offense do what they needed to do and then we went back out there and did what we did as a defense. I think we performed well when the time was needed.”
On Phillip Lindsay
“At practice we emphasized stopping the run, stopping Phillip [Lindsay]. He’s a great runner, he’s a hard runner. I felt like we did a pretty good job containing him and stopping him.”
Colorado Head Coach Mike MacIntyre
Opening Statement
“Arizona State played really well. Especially about the last ten minutes of the game. They played better than we did and made more plays than we did. Hats off to Todd Graham and those guys. They did a heck of job. Those powerful running backs did some damage to use in the last part there. We didn’t do a good enough job of stopping them. They got more points than us at the end.”
On ASU dominating fourth quarter after Colorado played well the first three quarters
“We dropped balls that our senior receivers should have caught and they will catch next week. We just got to go back to work. We make those plays and it’s a different game but we didn’t. It gave them a ton of momentum to have a fight. It’s always hard to win on the road in the Pac-12. You’ve got to make plays when you have the opportunities to make them. Especially touchdown plays in the Pac-12 if you’re going to win and we didn’t make enough of them. We were concerned it might get us in the end and it did so we have got to make a better job than that.”
On if ASU offense was wearing down Colorado’s defense
“They definitely wore us down. There’s no doubt about it. We didn’t go down and keep the ball moving. We should have got first downs there and that hurt us. It let them come back out there. It’s tough. We should have had a little bit better lead. Might have been a different story. They wouldn’t have been able to run it. We got worn down. There’s no doubt.”
On blown assignments leading to ASU’s 380 rushing yards
“I’ll just have to look at it on film and see. I saw a lot of missed tackles, I know that. I could see that out there. The kids work on tackling low and they didn’t tackle low. They didn’t do like we ask them to do. Some of them are new to those pressure situations and they got to do exactly like we tell them to do or we’ll have this result again. So hopefully they will.”
On momentum swing from blocked punt
“It was a huge momentum swing. You hardly ever win a game with a blocked punt, statistics prove that, especially on your end of the field. It gives them short yards and short range to score a touchdown and that’s what they did. That was a big turning point of the game and that was a huge mistake by us.”
On how tough it is to lose them game after leading most of the way
“That’s part of sports. We just got to go back and work again. We got two more goal games left and we need to get them. That’s our main focus. This one is over. We’ll learn from some corrections. We just need to keep finding ways to make plays.”
Colorado Sophomore Quarterback Steven Montez
On opportunities to win and this being a difficult loss to accept
“Yeah, it caught up to us. It definitely caught up to us. We missed throws, dropped balls and missed assignments. All mistakes we made in the first half caught up to us.”
On contagiousness of missed assignment
“Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not.”
On still having a chance in the fourth quarter
“Yeah definitely. I thought we had a chance all the way till the end.”
On if this loss is a more frustrating than others
“All the losses we’ve had this year have just stung. We’ve had a few blowouts, but most of the games we’ve lost we’ve been in it all the way until the end. And even the games that the score got out of hand, even those games we were in it. We had a chance.”
On how to get over loss
“We’ll go back to work on Monday and prepare for USC because they are going to be coming to Boulder to kick our ass too. We’ve got to be ready for them.”
On how difficult it is to say that after these losses
“It gets tough. It sucks losing games. We don’t come out here to lose games. We don’t get on the plane, spend all that money, get all this gear, get all these people working to come out and take L’s like this. So it’s tough to swallow. It sucks.”
On rough start yet still leading through most of the game
“I don’t think it matters that we were leading most of this game because of the final score. We lost. We just got to clear this and get it out of our head, watch the film, take what we did wrong, fix it and then go back on Monday and start our game plan for USC.”
On injury to Tim Lynott
“That’s above my paygrade. It’s tough. Tim is a warrior. Whatever it is I’m sure he’ll come back stronger than ever. Whatever it is we’ll look at it and I’m sure he’ll rehab like crazy. If it’s that serious, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you, but I definitely know he’ll come back stronger than he was.”
Colorado Senior Outside Linebacker Derek McCartney
On turning point where ASU took advantage of defense up the middle
“Throughout the game there were some missed assignments on defense and that cost us dearly.”
On if this is a more frustrating loss
“Since it’s the most recent it hurts the most right now. Obviously we had opportunities offensively and defensively throughout the game and we missed some, so that’s definitely frustrating.”
On something to learn from this game
“We are going to fight until the end and that’s just something you’ve seen throughout the season. That’s one thing I’m really proud of my teammates for, is that we don’t give up. Regardless of what’s going on in the game, we’re not just going to give up. We are going to keep fighting, we’re going to keep playing.”
On blocked punt and sensing a different team from ASU after
“Honestly, they were playing hard the whole game too. I didn’t really feel like there was a certain time where they just turned it up or anything. I think that we were both playing hard throughout the game, our defense just made a little more mistakes than their offense did.”
Colorado Junior Linebacker Rick Gamboa
On if the defense was worn out
“I don’t think we got worn down. I just think guys were doing a little too much. Guys were getting out of their gaps, trying to make a play when all they had to do was do their job. Against a team like this, they’re just going to keep running the ball. As long as you stay in your gaps and do your job, we should be stout up front. When someone gets out of their gaps, that’s when long runs start happening.”
On if ASU seized the momentum in the second half
“I think it was back-and-forth. I think our offense was doing a good job of keeping the momentum on our side. That blocked punt kind of hurt us a little bit. At the same time, as a defense, we can’t use that as an excuse. You still got to go out and play, make a stop, and we didn’t.”
On if ASU was fired up after blocked punt
“They definitely were. After a blocked punt you will always have momentum on your side. Again as a defense, we still got to come out, still got to play, make a stop. We always preach that.”
ASU Head Coach Todd Graham
Opening Statement
“First and foremost, I want to thank the families of our fallen soldiers. I got to meet with them. I don’t cry before games very often, and getting to talk to the daughters and wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and brothers of the men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice was something I know I’ll never forget. We wanted to honor them with how we played. It’s not just winning, it’s how we win: With class and character. I talked to our kids all week that freedom is not free. It really was a special night for us and I’m proud of how our guys represented them and honored them tonight.”
On the offense
“Billy [Napier] did a good job of being patient. I, everybody was kind of frustrated with how we played in the first half. We just physically took over the game. 381 yards rushing. Demario Richard is a warrior. I mean, wow. He’s impressive. Eno Benjamin ain’t bad for a young man, is he? I’m just really proud of our guys, proud of the effort and proud of our defense. I thought Coach [Phil] Bennett did a great job in the second half. They played 49-50 snaps in the first half, and he did a great job. I’m just really proud of our guys. 381 yards rushing and one penalty. No turnovers. 100% ball security. Pretty disciplined football. Five sacks and six [tackles-for-loss]. That ain’t bad.”
On Demario Richard’s dominance
“Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. We just need to keep getting him reps and it’s hard because you’ve got two great backs with Demario [Richard] and Kalen [Ballage]. You have to – as much as you can – try and get him in there and get his touches. He’s been very patient. He did a great job tonight.”
On refocusing after the USC lost
“Our guys, they came out and they were very focused. We were not happy with how we performed last week. I just love this team. These guys are such a joy to coach. To go into the locker room and listen to our players stand up and tell each other they love each other, and they love the school and love the brotherhood. Tonight was all about the brotherhood. It was a pretty special night.”
On Salute to Service night
“I ran a slideshow of the young men that were associated with Arizona State that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. I ran it a couple of days and then I said, ‘Tell me the names of those people.’ Everybody got a little…and I said yeah, that’s someone’s brother, son, daughter, or dad. In one case, it’s someone’s granddad. That’s so important. I say this all the time: There are so few who pay the price for so many. Guys are going over and doing two, three tours over there. A lot of them are career guys doing that. I am just very grateful that we have people like that that make the sacrifice for us to be free. I don’t think we talk about it enough. When I looked into the eyes of the moms and wives tonight, and I see a just a little glimpse of the cost of freedom. We should respect that.”
On the end of the game
“At the end of the game, I was there standing and shouting instructions at them. They said, ‘Coach, chill out. We got it.’ So, I like that.”
On coming back in the second half
“It was frustrating in the first half. They did a good job. They had a good plan. We stayed true and came back. This was a special night to come from behind and win.”
On Colorado
“Colorado's tempo is relentless. They’re one of the fastest teams in our league. The fastest I’ve ever played against. Obviously, [Phillip Lindsay] is a great back and we did a tremendous job of keeping him in check.”
ASU Redshirt Junior Quarterback Manny Wilkins
On coming out of the slow offensive start in the first half
“Our mindset is always to take what the defense gives us; you keep picking away. Eventually they give you the game. In that second half, and especially the fourth quarter, we just simply ran the ball with a different attitude and it was a statement for us. Our mindset was to just execute what our game plan was. We knew adversity was going to strike and we just have to stay poised in all those situations and I think that’s what this team did a really good job of. When we got down 10-0 there was nobody panicking. There was a little frustration but that’s just because people hate losing. At the end of the day, if you just keep maintaining, throwing jabs and connecting, eventually when you fake a jab and throw a hay-maker it’s going to knock them down and that’s what we did.”
On the crowd’s energy at the end of the game
“It is what it is. We love the passion that they bring but at the end of the day we’re here to do one thing and that’s win football games so regardless of what the stands look like, regardless if it’s full or empty, we just have to do what we do and the rest will take care of itself.”
On getting a win after last week’s loss
“All week at practice we just preached: ‘Win in November.’ We just came out. We had to be hungry, we knew this was a good football team, a well-coached football team. Coach (Mike MacIntyre) is an amazing coach. The things that he runs his program off of are the same things that we kind of base our program off of so I have a great deal of respect for him and how he handles his business. But we just had to come out, go to work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, have a good Friday and come out and execute the game plan. We told ourselves, like I said earlier, adversity’s going to strike and when it strikes we have to be poised in all those situations and just keep sticking to the regimen.”
On what goes in his head while being down two scores
“[It’s a] four quarter football games. It’s not who scores first wins for a reason. We just got to continue to stay grounded and stay poised when adversity strikes. I know it sounds corny and cheesy but it’s simple: The good teams are going to bounce back from adversity when its strikes. When they hit us and they got up on us, they can be all high. We just have to continue and maintain being level and I think that’s what this team did a really good job of doing, staying grounded and level in all these situations that occurred tonight.”
On Eno Benjamin being ready
“I think he is a hell of a running back. I think he’s young and I think he still has a lot to learn. He brings a different element to our team. I think for him this is huge because it’s a big confidence booster for him. Just to have that feeling of getting into the end zone at Sun Devil Stadium and everybody cheering for you, it’s a great feeling. I was very proud of him to have that moment. It’s cool to see guys get those moments and be so joyful because we are very blessed to be in the shoes that we are in. I think that he is somebody that comes to practice every day and if he makes mistakes he gets down on himself but he’s somebody who works hard and it pays off.”
ASU Senior Running Back Demario Richard
On the offensive line setting up him up for big runs
“It’s the offensive line 110 percent. We worked hard all week in practice, and they’re starting to build their confidence when we play great games at home. I’m proud of them and we’re going to keep working like champions in November.”
On getting stronger/more confident as the game goes on
“That’s 100 percent true. My dad always told me to keep my head up, praise God, and just keep working. When I have a guy like (Manny Wilkins) on the side of me keep telling me to be patient and run the route, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m a young guy, fresh legs, and I just have to keep working. In the fourth quarter I already know what time it is when the game’s close, my team needs to depend on me in the fourth quarter and that’s why I work my tail off at practice to just keep being great.”
On coming out of the slow offensive start in the first half
“We just worked the cut. That’s our model, to work the cut. We take everything like it’s boxing. You see a guy keep getting jabbed in the left side of his eye until eventually he gets a cut, so you know, just keep working the cut and they’re going to get tired.”
On his 63-yard run in the fourth quarter
“I was just thinking: ‘It’s my time, I have to seal the deal.’ I know the offensive line is 110 percent confident. We come on the field and we tell them it’s the mindset every time. I’ve been playing with a busted ankle all week so honestly I think if my ankle wasn’t busted it was 80 yards to the house.”
On Eno Benjamin
“I told him he has been in my tool box. He doesn’t have a choice but to watch two, well I think, of the greatest that have ever come through here. He has big shoes to fill once we leave. Like I said he has been in my tool box, he watches me practice every day. I watch him, I correct him, just like I correct myself. He’s his biggest critic, I’m his biggest critic. We put in work in that running back room. Coach [John] Simon isn’t going to let us be mediocre. He tells us that we have to work and come to practice like pros.”
ASU Redshirt Senior Defensive Lineman A.J. Latu
On the mindset of the defense after giving up a few big plays
“We just hung in there. Like when Kobe [Williams] gave up that long pass we just came back to the sideline and we just let the offense do what they needed to do and then we went back out there and did what we did as a defense. I think we performed well when the time was needed.”
On Phillip Lindsay
“At practice we emphasized stopping the run, stopping Phillip [Lindsay]. He’s a great runner, he’s a hard runner. I felt like we did a pretty good job containing him and stopping him.”
Colorado Head Coach Mike MacIntyre
Opening Statement
“Arizona State played really well. Especially about the last ten minutes of the game. They played better than we did and made more plays than we did. Hats off to Todd Graham and those guys. They did a heck of job. Those powerful running backs did some damage to use in the last part there. We didn’t do a good enough job of stopping them. They got more points than us at the end.”
On ASU dominating fourth quarter after Colorado played well the first three quarters
“We dropped balls that our senior receivers should have caught and they will catch next week. We just got to go back to work. We make those plays and it’s a different game but we didn’t. It gave them a ton of momentum to have a fight. It’s always hard to win on the road in the Pac-12. You’ve got to make plays when you have the opportunities to make them. Especially touchdown plays in the Pac-12 if you’re going to win and we didn’t make enough of them. We were concerned it might get us in the end and it did so we have got to make a better job than that.”
On if ASU offense was wearing down Colorado’s defense
“They definitely wore us down. There’s no doubt about it. We didn’t go down and keep the ball moving. We should have got first downs there and that hurt us. It let them come back out there. It’s tough. We should have had a little bit better lead. Might have been a different story. They wouldn’t have been able to run it. We got worn down. There’s no doubt.”
On blown assignments leading to ASU’s 380 rushing yards
“I’ll just have to look at it on film and see. I saw a lot of missed tackles, I know that. I could see that out there. The kids work on tackling low and they didn’t tackle low. They didn’t do like we ask them to do. Some of them are new to those pressure situations and they got to do exactly like we tell them to do or we’ll have this result again. So hopefully they will.”
On momentum swing from blocked punt
“It was a huge momentum swing. You hardly ever win a game with a blocked punt, statistics prove that, especially on your end of the field. It gives them short yards and short range to score a touchdown and that’s what they did. That was a big turning point of the game and that was a huge mistake by us.”
On how tough it is to lose them game after leading most of the way
“That’s part of sports. We just got to go back and work again. We got two more goal games left and we need to get them. That’s our main focus. This one is over. We’ll learn from some corrections. We just need to keep finding ways to make plays.”
Colorado Sophomore Quarterback Steven Montez
On opportunities to win and this being a difficult loss to accept
“Yeah, it caught up to us. It definitely caught up to us. We missed throws, dropped balls and missed assignments. All mistakes we made in the first half caught up to us.”
On contagiousness of missed assignment
“Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not.”
On still having a chance in the fourth quarter
“Yeah definitely. I thought we had a chance all the way till the end.”
On if this loss is a more frustrating than others
“All the losses we’ve had this year have just stung. We’ve had a few blowouts, but most of the games we’ve lost we’ve been in it all the way until the end. And even the games that the score got out of hand, even those games we were in it. We had a chance.”
On how to get over loss
“We’ll go back to work on Monday and prepare for USC because they are going to be coming to Boulder to kick our ass too. We’ve got to be ready for them.”
On how difficult it is to say that after these losses
“It gets tough. It sucks losing games. We don’t come out here to lose games. We don’t get on the plane, spend all that money, get all this gear, get all these people working to come out and take L’s like this. So it’s tough to swallow. It sucks.”
On rough start yet still leading through most of the game
“I don’t think it matters that we were leading most of this game because of the final score. We lost. We just got to clear this and get it out of our head, watch the film, take what we did wrong, fix it and then go back on Monday and start our game plan for USC.”
On injury to Tim Lynott
“That’s above my paygrade. It’s tough. Tim is a warrior. Whatever it is I’m sure he’ll come back stronger than ever. Whatever it is we’ll look at it and I’m sure he’ll rehab like crazy. If it’s that serious, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you, but I definitely know he’ll come back stronger than he was.”
Colorado Senior Outside Linebacker Derek McCartney
On turning point where ASU took advantage of defense up the middle
“Throughout the game there were some missed assignments on defense and that cost us dearly.”
On if this is a more frustrating loss
“Since it’s the most recent it hurts the most right now. Obviously we had opportunities offensively and defensively throughout the game and we missed some, so that’s definitely frustrating.”
On something to learn from this game
“We are going to fight until the end and that’s just something you’ve seen throughout the season. That’s one thing I’m really proud of my teammates for, is that we don’t give up. Regardless of what’s going on in the game, we’re not just going to give up. We are going to keep fighting, we’re going to keep playing.”
On blocked punt and sensing a different team from ASU after
“Honestly, they were playing hard the whole game too. I didn’t really feel like there was a certain time where they just turned it up or anything. I think that we were both playing hard throughout the game, our defense just made a little more mistakes than their offense did.”
Colorado Junior Linebacker Rick Gamboa
On if the defense was worn out
“I don’t think we got worn down. I just think guys were doing a little too much. Guys were getting out of their gaps, trying to make a play when all they had to do was do their job. Against a team like this, they’re just going to keep running the ball. As long as you stay in your gaps and do your job, we should be stout up front. When someone gets out of their gaps, that’s when long runs start happening.”
On if ASU seized the momentum in the second half
“I think it was back-and-forth. I think our offense was doing a good job of keeping the momentum on our side. That blocked punt kind of hurt us a little bit. At the same time, as a defense, we can’t use that as an excuse. You still got to go out and play, make a stop, and we didn’t.”
On if ASU was fired up after blocked punt
“They definitely were. After a blocked punt you will always have momentum on your side. Again as a defense, we still got to come out, still got to play, make a stop. We always preach that.”