Head Coach Scott Downing
"Obviously, we're excited to get the win. It's a huge win
for us, our first Big Sky road win and our first Big Sky win this
year after two very close losses the last two weeks. It's something
our kids have worked very, very hard for. I've told everyone all
along they're very, very resilient and they keep coming back and
keep preparing. We knew it wouldn't be easy coming into Idaho
State, and our hats off to them, they played well but we're very
happy tonight."
"I thought our defense played very well, thought they responded when we put them in tough situations. I was also pleased with the offense, we finished up the first half with a touchdown drive and started the second half with a touchdown drive and that was huge to the confidence of our offense. I think Bryan Waggener played a heck of a game. I thought Andre Harris ran very, very hard and I think Alex Thompson and Patrick Walker had very good games. I felt like every time I was looking on the field they were catching the ball and running up field."
"You win games and you win in this league by having a solid defense and I think our defense came up and played very, very well today to hold a team like that to seven points. I thought it was very, very good."
On First Road Win In Big Sky
"You go from Saturday to Saturday. I told the kids today we want to
be 1-0 this Saturday. I suppose in the long term it will give us
more confidence on the road, lets us know that we can travel in,
prepare on Friday night and play a good team on Saturday. It wasn't
something on the team that we addressed. We didn't handle things
differently because we're on the road. We didn't try different
things, we did the same things. We call it pounding the rock. We
just kept pounding the rock and trying to make the road as much
like home as we can and I think they have."
"It's big to us because it's a Big Sky win. To us, that's the most important thing that we want to get is consistently a winning team in the Big Sky."
Key Defensively
"I thought our front played really well. I thought they kept
collapsing the pocket and getting pressure on the quarterbacks,
whoever was in there. Again, I would say that our secondary and
linebackers have covered very well all year long and we didn't give
up that big crippling pass, something that goes for 45 or 50 yards.
I'd probably say they all played pretty well but I was particularly
impressed up front early in the game. We were getting an awful lot
of pressure. To win in this league you have to be a physical
football team and have to play physically and that's what we've
been striving for all along."
I know we've been very good in pass defense, but probably if you look at it there are probably holes and if you look at it schematically they (Idaho State) probably saw something. They were running a lot of screens, a lot of bubble screens and things like that. For me, for where I'm coming from, when we ran a bubble screen when I was at Purdue and Wyoming, that was just a way of running a toss pitch out there, just a way to get a guy on the edge. That might have been their plan today to see if they could get our secondary and linebackers out of position."
Senior Quarterback Bryan Waggener
Did you expect it to be a 3-4 score game?
"That's what we came out to do. We wanted to exploit some
things they do on defense. We struggled a little bit but we put
enough points on the board to win the game so that's all that
really matters."
On going airborne to score the first touchdown:
"It's one of those things, driving down and getting that
close. We've struggled in the redzone this year , and I didn't want
to let that happen again. I felt like that would be a huge thing if
we could get a score right there and that was the only way I was
getting in so I just tried to jump."
On long scoring drives:
"Those are big, especially that last drive, it was 80 yards or
so. To go in and score after halftime like that is huge. The
biggest thing for us was coming out and starting fast in the third
quarter. That's something we've struggled with a lot this year. It
helped a lot going with the no huddle and doing things like that.
Coming out and scoring after the half was huge for us."
"Hopefully this puts us over the top. We haven't been able to find a win in other weeks and this game we did so hopefully its one of those things that pushes us over the top for the rest of the season."
On adjustments at halftime:
"That last drive of the second quarter we went a lot of no huddle
and moved the ball real well so that's one of those things we
wanted to emphasize coming out in the third quarter. It was
working, and obviously it worked in the third quarter on those
drives."
Junior cornerback Korey Askew
On first road win:
"It's big. Like Bryan said, to get any win is huge for us and we'll
savor it and go to work on Monday."
"We're gaining a lot of confidence in ourselves and trust in one another and that's huge. When we click like we did today we're a force to be reckoned with there's no doubt about that."
"They're a pass heavy team and we respected that. That was nothing new for us. The film showed us they swing a lot and they did."
"We just played to the best of our abilities. Our coaches made great calls and we executed more times than they did."