WMU at No. 24 Illinois Post-Game Quotes
#24/RV Illinois 23, Western Michigan 20
Memorial Stadium // Sept. 24, 2011 // 43,684
Illinois Head Coach Ron Zook Quotes
Opening statement:
"I walked in the locker room and it was very somber. A lot of people may
not agree with this, but sometimes you have to go through games like
that. There are a lot of times that teams would have lost that game. I
think if you go back and look at the 2007 year (when) we went to the
Rose Bowl, you remember that Ohio State did exactly the same thing to
us. We learn from it. We told them all week long that this is a good
football team, and it is a good football team. Everyone saw that it is a
good football team. Offensively, even though we did not score a lot of
points, we took care of the football and kept the defense off the field
(in the second half). It was hard for them to score when they did not
have the football."
On the thought process of not going for the field goal on the last possession:
"A field goal really would not have done us any good. It puts you up
six, but then they have to score a touchdown and they can still go down
there and beat you. If you take time off the clock and if you punt the
football, it maybe gives you 10 yards. It depends on where the punt
goes. First of all, I felt like we had a pretty good chance of getting
the first down and then the game would have been over. We made a
decision and it worked out."
On the running backs:
"You've heard me say this a thousand times. You can't have too many running backs. (Entering this week), I was excited for Josh Ferguson.
He tweaked his hamstring a little bit. It probably is not bad, but we
did not want to take a chance (by playing him today). You need them all.
I can't say enough about Troy Pollard.
There is a guy who has just done a great job. He keeps his mouth shut.
He does what he is supposed to do. Of course, Donovonn (Young) comes in
and gets his first 100-yard game as an Illinois football player. We need
them all. We have to get better, obviously. We are going to get better.
Once again, we learned a lot. As I told them at halftime, we were going
to find out if we were contenders or pretenders. It was going to be
important that we go out there and battle. A lot of times, people think
that it's just the MAC, but there is a lot of priority in this game and
it is a good football team. They will do a good job."
Illinois Player Quotes
QB Nathan Scheelhaase
On trap games:
"Coach (Paul) Petrino and Coach (Ron) Zook said at halftime, you're
going to have one of those every year. Some things didn't go your way in
the first half and you have to find a way to scrap out a win, and
that's kind of what it felt like. Obviously, in the first half we would
have liked to change, to play a whole let better. Then it happened and
we had to scrap out a win in the second half. They say every great team
who has a great season, at the end you look back at a game where they
had one of those and they found a way to win. It was good to do that."
On sharing time with freshman Riley O'Toole:
"It was part of the gameplan this week. Obviously, Riley got a few more
reps when my shoulder was sore this week. He went in there and executed,
and when I was in there, I did my best to execute as well. It's not a
threatening thing at all, just a change-of-pace thing. There's just some
things he does really well and it helps our offense out."
RB Troy Pollard
On preparation for this game:
"We don't take anybody lightly and Western Michigan was a great
opponent. They came out and did some great things; they played hard and
played well. It was pretty tough."
On the running game:
"I think I was just at the right place at the right time. Coach
(Petrino) had a great feeling about who was running and what was going
on. He felt like I could make the best contribution to the team, so I
just did my job."
DE Whitney Mercilus
On the team's confidence level heading into Big Ten play:
"We have a lot more improvement to do. Confidence-wise, it's up a little
bit. We can't get big-headed about anything. All we have to do is
buckle down and play week after week."
On the quickness of Western Michigan's passing game:
"They were coming off a little quick. Coach (Vic Koenning) told us to just keep going and he'll be there, he'll have the one too many times and eventually we got there."
On the first quarter:
"There were some mistakes here and there that we shouldn't have made.
The thing is, it doesn't matter, there's going to be mistakes made. We
just have to learn to face adversity from time to time."
Western Michigan Head Coach Bill Cubit Quotes
Opening statement:
"We're all disappointed because as much talk as they had about Illinois
coming into this game, we stayed toe-to-toe the whole time and we left
ten points out there. We had a guy open in the end zone and
unfortunately we over shot him, and we missed two field goals and maybe
that made the difference there at the end. You never know. You can
talk all you want, but our kids fought, played hard. Did they
out-physical us at the end? Probably. But during the game I thought our
kids did a pretty good job. I thought our defense really played well
and held up. On offense, we made a couple mistakes, but we hung in
there at the same time. It goes down to the wire, 23-20. If we had one
more time out left, we get a chance to kick another field goal, we get
another play, which probably would have happened. But it didn't. We
have to regroup. We've got some banged up guys. We lost our right guard
on a line that's really beat up. Another guy, Jon Hoffing, we got him
back Tuesday and he played today and played all the snaps after Deon got
hurt in the first quarter. Watching those kids play hard like that --
I'll take that team."
On the defense carrying the team at times:
"We really thought that was going to happen. Illinois has a lot of good
players running around there. I thought that was probably how it was
going to play out. The goal line stand was really huge down there. Our
kids had good stops. When you look at it, they had two scoring drives
in the second half that we had them stopped. We wound up offsides and
they called a late hit penalty. So you take those two away, that's two
scoring drives right there. Sometime we're our own worst enemy on
defense, but they played well and there are a lot of young kids running
around out there. I thought we did some really nice things, and that
goal line stand was nice to see. You're matching up against one of the
most physical teams in the Big Ten and we stayed toe-to-toe with them."
On the play of the offense:
"I saw their coordinator afterwards and he said he was running out of
coverages. We saw more coverages today than we've seen in the past
three weeks combined. For the most part, I thought (quarterback) Alex
(Carder) really did a heck of a job. I think the receivers, we have our
menus and we know how to attack it, and a lot of it has to do with
Jordan. But when you look there, Ravenell had a nice game, Robert had a
nice game, I thought Eric Monette got involved with four catches, he
gave us some nice reps there too. We couldn't run the ball. You try to
give things breathers. With John in there, the guy hasn't even
practiced. Last week, I think he probably had 18 total reps in practice
and now he's out there facing a defense who's probably one of the top
defenses in the country. It probably was good what we were doing with
our passing to give us a chance to be successful."
Western Michigan Player Quotes
QB Alex Carder
On the Loss:
"It's gut-wrenching. Everybody is just sitting in disbelief that it
happened the way it did. We just have to go back to the drawing board
and go back to work next week."
On the offensive struggles:
"In the first half, we were clicking, but after that we had turnovers,
miscues and penalties and it kind of threw us out of our rhythm and we
weren't able to find it like we normally are able to."
On anything they didn't expect:
"We were pretty much prepared for anything they were bringing. They have
a solid d-line and I'll tip my hat off to that, but other than that
there was nothing we hadn't faced before."
WR Jordan White
On the last play of the game:
"When I caught the ball at the end I thought I might be able to get out
of bounds. I didn't know the down, I thought it might've been third
down, but I caught the ball and I could see the clock in the background.
It said one second when I caught it so I knew there wasn't any chance
of getting out of bounds with the ball. So I tried to turn up-field and
if someone is there get rid of the ball and by the time I turned up
field there was a man right there."
On Illinois' coverage:
"It was just man, we knew going into the game they play a lot of
defensive backs and they have a talented front four. They played a lot
of man coverage with safeties back there. It was pretty consistent from
the first quarter to the last so we were ready for it."
DT Drew Nowak
On the Western Michigan defensive effort:
"I think our effort was amazing out there, but we missed a couple of
assignments and that's what eventually hurt us in the end."
