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Illinois Postgame Notes
Louisiana Tech 35, Illinois 18
Cotton Bowl Stadium // Dec. 26, 2014 // Attendance: 31,297

COACH BECKMAN: Well, you know, it's disappointing, I guess, is the first word. You want the seniors to leave with a W, and that didn't occur today for the Fighting Illini. As we said, I can't thank these seniors enough. They played extremely hard, the seniors did, we just didn't capitalize on the things we needed to capitalize on, you know, scoring points and doing the things we need to do to be successful. But these seventeen seniors that we've had, I can't say enough about them, as I mentioned.

We have got a battle for cry that we use for each senior class, and this year we used OSIGEKEE, and it stood for our success is going to equal the knowledge, effort, and energy of the football team. Well, that's never going to change now. We will keep that because of what this senior class did for this football team in starting a drive to get us better and better each and every week, and I definitely saw it as we progressed throughout the football season.

We are going to take it. We owe it to these seniors to move this program forward. Of course disappointed, but we'll be back at it on January 19th.

THE MODERATOR: A little comment about your season average of 19 yards, good?

COACH BECKMAN: Yeah, I thought offensively, definitely made plays. I thought Reilly was throwing the ball, I thought Josh and DY ran the ball. You know, just to mark what Jeremiah Allison probably had of his best games as a back, so I thought they played well and I thought our defense, other than two plays, played extremely good too for most of the football game. But you know, again, points are all that matters. They had more points than we did, so our football team realizes what we have to do to make sure that next year, when we're in a bowl game, that we're victorious.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, was that your plan, to have Reilly handle the ball, he was three quarters of your plays today, rushing and passing?

COACH BECKMAN: There's no question about that, I mean, Reilly, since he's taken over as our quarterback here the last half of the football season, you just think about what he's done for this football team. I mean, he really was the starter for three out of the last, you know, six victories and, you know, he did a great job with us getting on track with his running skills and his throwing skills. And so, you know, he had a big he has a lot to do with our success here lately.

THE MODERATOR: Reilly, can you make a comment about your play today and just playing in the bowl?

REILLY O'TOOLE: It was a lot of fun. The whole week is just a fun time to spend with your teammates, some of your teammates 24/7. It's a great experience and obviously you want to come out to win but, at the same time, we weren't here last year so we can have our heads held high, knowing that we improved so much from last year. And, obviously, like I said, you want to get the win, but hopefully we can build on this for future seasons and future Illini seasons to get the seven, eight, nine wins and win the bowl game. It's been a great experience, and I wouldn't change it except for the win, but all week has been fun and thanks for having us.

THE MODERATOR: You went up against a former teammate and got the MVP, Houston Bates. Just, Reilly, your comments on Houston's play today?

REILLY O'TOOLE: He hit me hard a couple times, but it was fun going against a friendly foe. But I mean, obviously, we wish we could have made a few more plays. But congrats to him, he is a great kid. We had a lot of fun when he was in Illinois, so I'm sure the guys on his team are loving his presence on their team. So Congratulations to him, he deserves it. Just a little bittersweet.

THE MODERATOR: Coach Beckman on Houston?

COACH BECKMAN: I won't take any of the credit. He did play for us for two years. You know, I was proud of Houston. Houston's always been that type of player. He plays 110% every snap. He's got great football intelligence. And I'm proud of him. I mean, what else can you say? No, I'm sorry he was on the other team, but, you know, he had a great career for us and had the opportunity, graduated in four years, one of our top student athletes, and now decided he wanted to go to medical school and move closer to his mother.

So, how can you ever say no to a young man that wants those types of things? I'm not going to punish a young man for that. He had a heck of a game and we knew he was going to be a factor in this football game.

THE MODERATOR: Okay. Questions from the floor. And if you will identify yourself in the outlet here, right here, Drew?

Q: Demario Davis Coach Beckman, could you explain, moving forward in the future, just losing, you know, three seniors on the offense, three starters on defense?

COACH BECKMAN: Yeah. That's what we're going to have over I don't know the exact number, but we're going to have over 350 starts back when we take the field against Western Illinois, "starts" meaning that a lot of guys have played a lot of football as freshmen and sophomores. So we have to take this football program and we will watch this film, realize the things we could have done.

I'm a positive guy, I'm not going to dwell on negatives. We know what the negatives are. We have got to fix those negatives to get better. But we're going to dwell on some of the positives. And, as I said, you know, they'll be back on January nineteenth and we will get started on January twentieth. And it's going to get started for us to get better and keep this program moving forward.

THE MODERATOR: Question over there?

Q: Reilly, it became evident fairly early on that you weren't going to slide on any of those runs. Was that a "this is my last game" you know, was that a conscious thing on your part?

REILLY O'TOOLE: Yeah, it was. I mean, you have to be relatively smart, but Nate texted me yesterday and reminded me it's my last game ever. He did the same thing in his last game his senior year, so, I mean, why not leave it all on the field? So, yeah, that was my mind set, my last game ever, so I'm not going to shy away from contact.

Q: You were staggering around out there.

REILLY O'TOOLE: I mean, just the usual bumps and bruises. Had a couple scares there, got rolled up on, but no different than last few games.

THE MODERATOR: Question here.

Q: Coach, talk about the impact and the emotions around the double fumble play and Tech gets that big score right after that?

COACH BECKMAN: Well, again, it was misfortunate. Again, when you rush and pass and create the fumble. J had picks the ball and had a excellent second half of the season. There's no question, he's still like a freshman to us being a junior college transfer. Hand runs down the field and fumbles that football and, you know, I think our kids believe there were opportunities and we didn't make that play when we tried to save the clock as much as we could after that, of course, but we had an MA on a a missed assignment on the touchdown they had or not touchdown, but the long catch so really ended up, you know, taking the wind out of the sails.

THE MODERATOR: Question here.

Q: Just your thoughts real quick, Coach, on Mike Dudek, and his future thoughts going forward. I mean, he's only a freshman and he had a pretty good game today?

COACH BECKMAN: Well, to be honest with you, I think all three wide receivers, now, if you

think about it Geronimo Allison is a first year football player, and some of those catches that Malik Turner, were making at the end, he's another freshman I think all three of those young men, I'll start with Mikey, have great futures in front of them. And they're really excited. They're work a holics, they work extremely hard to make themselves better. Reilly was getting the ball to them to make them successful. And we're excited about those three joining us again, you know, we've got three more years with two of them and another year with G Mo, so we're excited that they're back.

Q: Coach, the amount of penalties especially in the first half, did it take you by surprise? And what do you think the reason was, given the time for bowl preparation at that moment?

COACH BECKMAN: Wow, it's hard to comment on some of those penalties so I will keep it at that. I'm glad that group's doing the Sugar Bowl with Coach Meyer.

Q: I won't ask you about that I was going to ask you about the Mike Dudek possible hold?

COACH BECKMAN: What's that?

Q: It looked like a possible hold on Mike?

COACH BECKMAN: Yeah. I mean, again I'm probably the one that gets out of hand more than anybody else, and that's not what I need to be doing as a football coach. So I'm learning also, because I get kind of irate at times, and I don't want it to affect our players. So there's nothing we can do about it if it isn't called or not. I mean, that's college football. You know, you hope everything's called, but sometimes they're not so you have to play the next play.

Q: On that interception what did you see on that play, Reilly? And then also, just emotion wise, what's going on in your head right now?

REILLY O'TOOLE: I think I know the play that you were referring to, but it was a timing route and they leave the safety way far back, so really just trying to get one on one with that guy, and there was a time we were outside, I threw it a little early and lofted it up a little bit to the guy and so it didn't go.

Q: Coach, on a positive note, your guys held them to 114 yards rushing. Talk about the strategy behind that and tell me if you guys gave up a lot of yards on the ground, but now have you a good job against Kenneth and crew?

COACH BECKMAN: I think we have improved in the second half of the season, and it's a credit to our defensive staff. I think the maturity of our players as they continue to grow from DJ Smoot to Jihad Ward to to TJ Neal's first big year of starting. All those guys really progressed, and I think we had a great team for it. They had a great running back. But I think if you look at our last didn't quite play as good as we wanted to against Ohio State or Iowa, but, as a whole, I think our defense got better in the second half of the season stopping the run.

Q: Louisiana Tech as, all season, they've kind of relied on big plays and turnovers, we saw that with the 80 yard touchdown and 70-yard pass play interception, the pick six, what type of impact did those have on the outcome of the game?

COACH BECKMAN: That's the game of football to me, you know, and we'll all talk about what a good game until the very end but, bottom line is, the score is the score. I think they've been very, very opportunistic in what they've done this year. I think that's the mark of a pretty darn good football team. I know that I've been, you know, involved in some defenses where we were very, very aggressive and made plays like they did. We need to become that better on our defense. And, you, know they hit us with some long opportunistic plays, getting the ball to the two guys they wanted to get the ball to and, you know, we just got to be able to stop those better. So, no question, those were big huge plays in this football game.

Q: Coach, could you talk about Josh Furgeson and his performance, having twelve touches as a rusher and receiver and on 112 yards.

COACH BECKMAN: He did a great job. Again, he was a little bit dinged coming into the second half, you know. But, again, I thought, you know, I think Josh has all the capabilities to be as good as there is. I really believe that. And, you know, he has really progressed in these last two football games against Northwestern and, of course, this La Tech game. So I look forward to seeing how he progresses in the future. We have got him for another year. And I think his game is in front of him, and that's what so unique about it as a head football coach, you know he's going to be better and better as he progresses throughout college football.

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