Postgame Quotes -- UCLA vs. Colorado

POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 44, Colorado 20
Pasadena, Calif. (Rose Bowl)
November 13, 2021

UCLA head coach Chip Kelly
on the slow start
“We had a couple calls go against us. A long touchdown run that got called back and a touchdown to Kam (Brown) that got called back, so it’s just getting on the right page. We felt confident when we were in at halftime. There weren’t a lot of adjustments. We just had to play our game and I think all three phases really played their game in the second half.”

on being bowl eligible
“I was just happy for our players. They love each other and we love them. It’s a really close-knit group. And we get to play, and we’re not done at the end of the season, we get to play one more game. We’ll talk about it a little bit on Monday when we get back with these guys. They had their own little routine after the game. It’s pretty fun.”

on what changed after halftime to score 37 unanswered points
“Like I said, we were off a little bit (in the first half). We had two big penalties that took away huge gains for us. We felt confident that we could move the ball pretty good. … Credit to our guys for responding. And the huge kick return game helped. I thought we were close on kickoff returns today. I thought (Kazmeir Allen) did some things today. And then our guys did a really good job on that punt return.”

on being bowl eligible for the seniors
“I think it’s awesome for those guys that they get to play another game. And the great part about this sport is what you earn and they earned it. I’m very proud of them in terms of what they’ve done, but we’re not done. We still have two regular season games to go and they’re really important games for us. So, our attention and focus on Monday, we’ll come back and do the same exact thing. We prepare during the week and compete on Saturdays. We’ll go back over the tape and start our preparation for our next opponent.”

on quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson
“Dorian is an awfully confident young man, and deservedly so. I mean, he’s worked so hard at it. I’ve said it before, I don’t know if I’ve been around a tougher kid than him, what he’s been through so far this year. The ball just sailed on him a little bit [on a first half interception], but that happens. Our whole mindset is ‘so what? Now what? Let’s move on to the next play’ and he really epitomized that. I thought he played outstanding today. We’ll go back over the film and help with some corrections. He was critical with his legs today, and he was critical throwing the ball.”

on halftime changes to the run defense
“We didn’t really [change] much scheme-wise, we kind of stayed the same. I thought we did better in the open, did a better job of tackling in the second half.”

on the growth displayed in the second half
“The good part for us is we put to bed anything that happened in the past, we always live in the present. There was never any talk about what happened or other things, because every day is a different day. It’s ‘what’s the next half’ and what do we have to do. This group is unbelievable, they live in the present. Sometimes it’s tough, it’s tough for them at their age. We preach that all the time but they get bombarded from the outside – social media, coverage about things that happened in the past – and you can’t do anything about things that happened in the past except learn from them. If you wanna live a happy life, live in the present. Living in the past isn’t a lot of fun, we try to stay away from that.”

on how much momentum they’ll get from this game
“Same thing about living in the present. If you think you can kick your feet up because we had a really good second half against Colorado, that’s not it’s all about. The challenge is always ahead of you, and that’s the fun part about it. We have a bunch of guys that are hungry. Their first comment [after the bye week] is they wanted to play. They were kind of pissed we had a bye, they wanted to play a game. This team loves to compete. We’re fortunate that we have a big one coming up this week, they’re excited about the next opportunity, and that’s kind of what we talk about all the time. We’ll learn from this, because there’s some things we’ll see on film and we’ll make some corrections as we get through Monday’s training session and then we have to start that preparation again. The cool part is now we don’t have two games left, now we have three. They deserve that, that’s the cool part of the process is they’ve earned it. You have to earn your opportunity to do that, and this group has.”

UCLA senior quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson
on becoming bowl eligible
“Like I said at the beginning of the week, we still have stuff left to play for, and obviously the bowl game was one of them. Now that we have that, we can check that off the list but the work’s not done. We still have to play the last two games, and we have a big one coming up next week against USC. We’ll definitely get back to the drawing board on Monday and start this thing all over again.”

on his performance
“I think It was good just to be back out there. Being away from football, you kind of miss it. Just fun to be back out there with the guys. We started out a little slow, but we definitely picked it up in the second half and I couldn’t be more proud of this group.”

on if there was any sense of urgency in the second half
“I think that goes without being said. We obviously have to get back in the game, score some points to get in the lead. It was definitely a sense of urgency coming out of the locker room. On the offensive side, our goal was to score, at least finish with points on the board every drive. That was the main goal and I think we did well with the corrections going into the second half.”

UCLA redshirt junior wide receiver Kyle Philips
on becoming bowl eligible
“Very excited, but it’s what we expected, it’s what we wanted. We don’t play games to lose, we play them to win. We want to win the rest of our games, and then whatever bowl game we get, we’re gonna play to win that one too.”

on his punt return TD
“I’ve just got to shout out my coaches and the punt return team, I wouldn’t be able to do it without them. It starts with Coach Foster and Coach Sage. Every day I get to work with Coach Foster – a legendary running back – he teaches us you have to make the first one miss, and then from there it’s just scheme. Coach Sage creates a great scheme for us, we always know what the punt team is going to do. And from there the punt return team, they executed. They led lights out for me, made a lot of blocks. Most people only see me running, but there’s a lot of huge blocks that happened there that allowed for that to happen.”

UCLA senior defensive back Stephan Blaylock
on second half improvement
“Just playing better defense. We felt in the first half we were giving them free points, free yards so we went in the lab room and made a few adjustments to come out stronger and faster and play harder. Simple as that.”

on going to a bowl game
“It’s big to us. Like you said, we’ve been here for a while so seeing one for the first time in four years it’s real big. But as you guys know we still have two games left. Big rivalry game next week and that is what our focus is on right now.”

UCLA senior safety Quentin Lake
on the second half
“We definitely had a momentum change. That was interesting to see how things passed, we were down a couple points we were kind of out of it. I think we got a different morale on this team in the sense that we’re always going to fight, we’re always going to finish. That was kind of the motto going into the second half and we clearly did a good job on that. Thirty-seven points unanswered. I’m proud of how the boys worked and how we came out in the second half so just trying to keep the momentum going into next week.”

on going to a Bowl Game
“It’s a real special moment. Especially for the seniors right, we’ve been through trials and tribulations for the last four years. It’s fun to kind of, really relish in all the work you’ve put in. I’m proud of everybody. I’m proud of the whole staff. Everybody that is a part of the Bruin nation. This one feels good. It’s a special one. I think the biggest thing for us is to live in the moment. Cherish it. Obviously we got to put in the work next week. We got a good challenge next week but it’s fun- we really have to cherish this moment. Bowl games come and go but I’m excited, I know he’s excited.

Colorado head coach Karl Dorrell
on the team’s performance
“We played a decent first half. I thought, offensively, there were definitely some positive signs. We got some run game established. We hit a few things in the passing game, but it was good to churn out some points and get some drives going. We were handling their offense fairly well from our defensive standpoint in the first half – pretty much had control of their run game, but they were making some plays in their passing game that put some scores on the board late in the second quarter. We knew that, coming into halftime, it would still be a tremendous – we tried to approach it as a 0-0 game and to come out with a blank slate to win the second half. That’s where we didn’t get the job executed the way that we thought we would. Defensively, there were three consecutive scores on three drives. That was unfortunate for us at the start of the third quarter. Offense sputtered some. Then, there was an opportunity to get a first down on a fourth down that I think the coaches and players wanted to do. My first impression was not to do it. Then, I called a timeout and we decided to do it and, unfortunately, we didn’t get that executed, which related to that third consecutive score. We just lost our rhythm from that point forward. It was really challenging to stop their offense both from a pass perspective and their run game, which was starting to churn out some yards. And then, offensively, we weren’t able to capitalize on a couple things that we did engineer in the second half. We missed a field goal in the second half. We shout ourselves in the foot. It was really, in our opinion, our fault as a team. We didn’t execute. We didn’t have the right play calls. It was one of those things where we could have been much better and it didn’t end up that way.

on adjustments that UCLA made against Colorado’s defense in the second half
“Don’t know exactly what those were, but they were things we consciously talked about at halftime because there were a couple plays that [Greg Dulcich] was making, even in the first half. The unfortunate thing is we weren’t able to have a level of coverage that was really to neutralize what he’s been doing. That was the level of our frustration. Then, I think their run game got going, which was challenging when you have the chunk passing game and the run going, it ends up being, ‘Now, it’s really starting to get difficult to defend’. They did a nice job. I take my hat off to them. They made the right adjustments at halftime. We thought we were making the right adjustments, but, of course, it didn’t work out that way.”

on if UCLA switched anything in the second half
“No, I felt they were still doing the same stuff. They were pressuring us quite a bit. We caught them on a few runs in the first half. Even if the second half, we caught some in the third quarter when we were still churning out some yards. They were still pressuring us a lot – a lot more than normal. I think, at times, Brendan [Lewis] was struggling on seeing everything. He had a couple balls batted [with] pressure that was in his face. I think it was a combination of a number of things. They still kept their game plan of continuing to pressure the quarterback. We just didn’t capitalize on some of the things that were open. Whether it was something that wasn’t seen or what have you, I’ll watch the tape on that. We just did not execute at a level that we were in the first half.”

on being back at the Rose Bowl after coaching career at UCLA
“I haven’t really put that much thought into it that way. My focus is on the football team that I’m coaching and trying to get those guys ready to play. I’m very familiar with this building; I’ve been here as the coach. It’s a great facility, always been a great facility. I love games here. But other than that, I was really focused on what our goals and expectations were.”

Colorado cornerback Christian Gonzalez
on what changed defensively for Colorado in the second half
“They went in and made adjustments and we went in and did the same thing. They made their adjustments better.”
on what adjustments he saw UCLA make
“They were just hitting (Greg Dulcich) up the middle everywhere. They did good with the players they needed to.”

on what allowed Dulcich to find room to get open
“It was everything. It was communication and having the right coverage and just holes.”

on if he sensed a momentum change after UCLA’s field goal at the end of the first half
“It was a big drive but I felt we still had momentum. We went into halftime feeling good, but they came out and did what they needed to do.”

Colorado tight end Brady Russell
on the game being so different in the second half compared to the first
“The only other game that I remember being like that was the Oregon State game a few years back. It was really unexpected, so that’s what’s most frustrating about it. I don’t think they elevated their game that much; I felt like we brought our level down after playing so well. It wasn’t that guys weren’t fighting or anything. It was weird.”

on adjustments UCLA made
“I don’t think they really changed what they were doing. They pressured pretty much every play, which is what we expected. Especially with a young guy back in the pocket I think he did a great job. We just have to do a better job protecting him.”

on 4^th down call where he received a handoff and didn’t get the first down
“I don’t know. That play made me mad. I feel like I got out-willed. I should be able to put my head down and get a yard. They filled up both A gaps, it seemed there were four players lined up right next to each other.”

on staying focused even though it’s been a rough year
“It’s all about having a neutral mindset. I don’t care if we are winning or losing, I have been a steady guy all year. When we have the highest of highs, I don’t want to be acting different than when we are all the way down here. We have to come to work every day. We have some seasons to ruin and that’s motivation moving forward.”

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Postgame Quotes -- UCLA vs. Colorado

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Postgame Quotes -- UCLA vs. Colorado