Sept. 20, 2003

Recap?|? Final Stats?|? Notes

Illinois Head Coach Ron Turner

On what to take from this game:
"The game is not about making good comebacks or being close. I'm tired of being close. Hopefully, this whole football team is tired of being close. We've got to play better. We have to coach better and play better to win these games. It really doesn't matter what I think; it's a matter of what we do."

On the offensive drought after the first drive:
"We didn't change our play-calling at all. To be honest with you, late in the half we were conservative. We weren't making plays."

On the final drive of the game:
"That was not executed very well. We could have killed the ball - we talked about it at times, which we feel we can get done in one to two seconds. But we practice that all the time and at practice we get the ball snapped in two to three seconds at the very most and we wasted seven or eight seconds there. So Jon's got to speed up. I'm not putting the blame on him, but he's got to speed up. We could have spiked the ball; we probably should have looking back on it. We didn't get it done."

On the team's effort: "We've got to find a way to go out and play. I like this team, they're great kids, they're giving us everything they've got; we can't complain about that. Work ethic, preparation, they're focused; they've done everything they can. The bottom line is, when you have an opportunity to make the play, you've got to make it."

Illinois QB Jon Beutjer

On the game's last play:
"The 'Will' linebacker sat like he wasn't going to come, then he came, and I was looking downfield. I had four receivers out there. They were sitting in a cover 2 (defense), and my outside two guys were eliminated, so I looked to the inside routes."

On the game plan: "I thought we had a great game plan. We started on our first drive and we went down the whole field and scored, both running and passing the ball. So it wasn't about not passing the ball enough. It was just about us not executing. We showed the potential to run the ball on that first drive, then we got into a slump for a little while."

On wasting time late in the game: "A lot of the guys were tired and we can't be tired in those situations. A couple guys weren't looking at me when I tried to signal the play to them, so it was hard to tell them the play. I was trying to get their attention, and it just took too much time."

On what the team can do: "Just keep working hard, believing in each other and continue to stay together. Keep improving. Remember what this feels like during the week when everyone is tired in practice and they want to loaf or take a play off, or if they don't want to come in and watch film one night. Remember what this feels like and hopefully it'll change the outcome of the game next Saturday."

Illinois WR Mark Kornfeld

On offensive inconsistency: "Early on in the game, it seemed like out of 11 guys, 10 people were doing their responsibilities. Coach was saying we were like popcorn in the first half because a couple plays everybody would execute and a couple plays we'd have one guy mess up. In a football game, if somebody messes up and (the defense) brings that guy, it's not going to be good."

On Beutjer's performance:
"We've come to expect that from him. As long as he's given time, he's going to find the open guy. At the beginning of the game, we had a couple plays where we had something open downfield and we just weren't able to protect him."

On the team's confidence: "If we go out and the 11 guys on the field take care of their responsibilities, we don't feel like there's a team in the country that can stop us."

On the team's approach: "We just have to try to block the preseason out and go into the Big Ten like we're 0-0. The thing that's starting to annoy us is we feel like we're so close every game. We keep saying we're better than we're showing, and the fact of the matter is we're not getting it done. It's just going to come down to us coming out every Saturday and playing like we know we're capable of."

Illinois LB Winston Taylor

On what went wrong defensively: "We're the only people who can beat us, and that's what we're doing right now. Everybody's giving all they have, but we just weren't making the right blocks, we weren't making the tackles on defense. We just weren't doing what we were supposed to do to stop them. The coaches were making the right calls, the players just weren't executing like we should. The little things matter. We're not paying attention to the little details, and that's what's killing us."

California Head Coach Jeff Tedford:

On the defense and the on-side kick in the fourth quarter:
"If we were going to get the ball back again, then we'd have to kill it. They did a nice job executing the on-side kick, and we didn't, and we could have killed the clock from there. But we put the defense in a bad situation giving them the ball back in that case, in that situation, but we did a nice job--we're playing with the young puppies out there."

"You look out in the corners and see Daymeion Hughes out there in a game like that. Up there, in press coverage, and just fighting his butt off. You know the defense played very, very hard. We didn't have the ball much in the fourth quarter. But I thought that they fought hard, and they believed and it's nice to get one in the last minute after the last two weeks."

On what this win does for their team after a couple of rough games: "It was a game we needed to win, because we've had some difficult defeats and you know sometimes it's almost easier to get blown out if you're going to lose then to lose tough games like we've lost in the last two weeks. It would have hurt bad to have a third one. And so this really will give our guys a boost. And now we go into conference play against USC, and I think it will help us believe."

On Illinois and their season:
"I've been searching my soul for the last two weeks, and it's not an easy thing when your team plays so hard and comes so close. While I'm happy we won, I know what Coach [Ron] Turner's feeling."

"They have a good football team, and they hang in there and they're gonna win their share of games because they are a good football team. But it's tough when you lose close games and he's had a couple back-to-back now, so I know what he's feeling."

California WR/PR Vincent Strang

On his punt return for a touchdown: "Coach said if we don't get a piece of it, you're going to have late help to the right. They got the kick off and when I got the ball I was initially looking to the right and there was nothing there. I was able to make a guy miss and got around the end on the left and there was just a caravan of blockers and I rode it all the way into the endzone. It was just absolutely amazing. Going into the half and being able to pick everybody up like that, it is a big momentum builder and looking at the score it helped out in the end."

California P/PK Tyler Fredrickson

On his improved punting today:
"It has been frustrating the last two weeks. I've had a couple misses and they were frustrating misses because they were so close, but, of course, close isn't quite going to cut it. So, for the last two weeks I have been trying to refine my kicking just to be more consistent and just put it right down the middle. Coach put his faith in me again this week and I started a little slow in the first half but then I got it going."

DT Lorenzo Alexander

On getting a win today: "This is probably the first week we finished off a team in the 4th quarter. Even though we made it closer than it should have been we still won a close one. It matured us a lot. You saw Brandon Sanders making big plays at corner today and he got his first pick. Brandon Pavio on the defensive line was able to get a sack. It just seems like we are coming into our own and we are starting to make the plays that we should be making."

On playing Illinois: "Illinois being a Big Ten team, they like to run the ball a lot and power it so we were expecting that. They still caught us off guard because they drove pretty well and came out really strong. Then we made some adjustments of our own and started stopping the run and they had to go to the pass which I think got them out of their game a little bit."