WMU vs. NIU Post-Game Quotes

Western Michigan Head Coach Bill Cubit

Thoughts on the game-

"That's the way I thought it would go down, I really did. I thought it would go down to the wire. Unfortunately we didn't take care of business in the last six minutes. We almost came up with a fumble on the kick off, and then gave up a couple big plays. We were down by seven when we went down there, and I thought we did a heck of a job getting down there.  We held the ball just a little bit long, the protection call for guys to cut, and all of a sudden we let the ball just wiggle off. The kids gave great effort, they worked, it's kind of what I thought would happen.  We knew they would come out in the second half, and they have really just taken games over in the third quarter.  We didn't allow them to do that and we didn't allow them to do it in the fourth quarter. We've got a short turn around, and tomorrow we'll go back to work."

On the running game-

"That's what you have to do to stop them, sometimes when you do it, it puts guys out on islands. You hope he misfires at times, or drops passes which kind of happened a few times.  It's always challenging, I'm sure they're sitting over there saying they gave up 360 yards passing.  It was 424 to 404. It played out to what we all thought it would. The issue was they got a couple key plays in that last drive."

On the wind-

"I thought that it was really windy. If you're looking at it, I thought we would have to score some points. You look at it, and if you kick the field goal, which is not always perfect, you're down there and there's wind. We didn't get it, and all of a sudden you're in the middle of wind, we didn't get it, but we still had them down there. The other one, we just threw it a little bit wide, but again that's field positioning. If you keep them down there, they have to go 90 yards. You can say what you want, if you kick two field goals, the field positioning changes and you're still down by one.  The wind played a big part of a lot of things going on down there."

On the last play-

"We were eating them up with the trips look three by one, I was hitting Ansel on those dig routes. They were giving us openings and it was going how I wanted to until that last play.

Thoughts on the game-

"Obviously it wasn't enough. Unfortunately we didn't win. I don't even think about my day. I could care less how many catches and yards I have because we just lost. That's going to be the story for most of the guys on this team. If Juan has 500 yards and I have zero, it doesn't matter as long as we win. That's why all of these guys are playing. My day's kind of irrelevant right now as far as the outcome."

On the rushing game-

"It wasn't a big surprise, their rushing game was the main focus of this game. Everyone knows they have some talented backs that can make us miss. The passing game, it was something we had to also be on top of, once we stopped the runs.  That's just the type of day they had."

Northern Illinois Head Coach Jerry Kill:

On the overall effort:

"We played a good football team. If you were a fan, it was a great game to watch. From the stats, everything was well-balanced. We were just able to make a play or two at the end to win the game and that's what it came down to."

On the defense forcing the INT to ice the game:

"We brought a blitzer and we were able to hit the quarterback right before he threw the ball and the ball popped up. We made a fantastic play and we also did a great job executing the play. Western's quarterback [Alex Carder] is going to be a great player in this conference and he played tremendously the entire game. Overall, it was great football and we just made a few good plays."

On what he learned about his team in a close game:

"Not just this game, but I thought we've handled adversity well all year. I think we learned today that our quarterback [Chandler Harnish] is a tremendous football player. He did a great job and continues to grow each week. He took us downfield and got us ahead. Primarily, we judge quarterbacks on wins and not their stats. We just judge him on wins and moving the chains and he did a great job today on doing that."