Nov. 3, 2007
Recap | Box Score | Notes | Photo Gallery 1 
| Photo Gallery 2
Coach Kirk Ferentz
Opening Statement…
“Obviously we are thrilled to get the win. I was teasing the team saying, ‘I think we’ll probably be the most well-rested team in the Big Ten next week because we’ve played about 60 minutes in two weeks.’ We knew coming up here this would be a very tough football game. Northwestern has been playing really hard, playing very well, and they did that in the first half. Unfortunately, we didn’t match their tempo. They were working us pretty good, but we’re not the prettiest group, we’ve got a lot of moving parts, but our guys have really battled hard and competed, and gave themselves a chance to win. It certainly didn’t come easy and I don’t think it’s going to come easy for us this year. It’s just kind of the way we are built. We’ve had great leadership out of our seniors-can’t say enough about them-and the younger guys really jumped in that second half, too. Our older guys have really been working hard. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them. When you’ve got a guy like [Mike] Humpal, who I thought had no chance to play today, sprained his ankle Wednesday, and he’s out there gutting it up. I can go right down the list, but it all starts with that our seniors are doing a great job for us.
On what turned the game around…
“I don’t know, I wish I could tell you both weeks. Really, outside of Ryan Donahue and maybe a couple other guys, I don’t know who was playing well in the first half. It seemed like at half time that we were feeling sorry for ourselves, and that wasn’t a good thing. The guys turned it around, we came out and competed a little bit harder, and in this conference, you got to compete week after week, and you play Northwestern, you better compete, because they’ve been doing that real well for a long time.”
On the difference in Jake Christensen’s play in the first and second half…
“I just wish I could tell you. One thing I would say, last week we had an off day of practice, and you could almost see that carry over into Saturday. This week, I thought we practiced better, I thought we had three good days, but again, you’d never know it. We almost looked like pacifists, and that’s not good in this sport. That’s fine in the world, but not good in football. We let them drive down uncontested that first series. They completed some passes, I don’t think we tackled well, we weren’t taking on blocks that we have to. [We just needed] the fundamentals that you have to execute to be a decent football team. Offensively, the same thing. We had three straight make able third down opportunities, and came up 0-3. You do those kind of things, and it makes it tough to expect to win a game.”
On his level of anger at halftime…
“[It was the worst it has been] this year, for sure. Last week, there wasn’t much to say, but this week I thought we needed to be reminded of a few things. We just kind of talked about the ‘ABC’s’, I guess, and that’s really what it came down to.”
On why the team came out late after halftime…
“I’m struggling with these clocks, really. Maybe that’s why we stunk in the first half, we got out there too early, and I’m not sure it mattered too much in the second half.”
On the momentum gained at the end of the first hal/…
“The way we were playing, for us to be down 14-7 at half time was a miracle, it really was. To come up with a big play [at the end of the half], because we really hadn’t done anything offensively, and certainly the blocked field goal, was real big. We’re at the point, the way we are and where we are in the season, playing in the Big Ten, every point is big. It did give us a little spark, perhaps. We still need to do more.”
Iowa Player Quotes
QB Jake Christensen
On his performance…
“[In the first half] I was aiming instead of throwing, and bad things happen when you do that. As the game went on, just like last week, we fell into our groove and really started getting comfortable with each other. It would have been easy to give into [the deficit], but we pushed through it and we came out on top.”
On the halftime locker room talk…
“[Ferentz] was pretty angry at halftime. He wasn’t happy at all. He told us we were lucky to be down [14-7] at halftime, which we obviously were very lucky.”
On next week’s game plan…
“Now we’re really focused on Minnesota. We’re going to watch the film tomorrow. We have to prepare the best we have all year. We know it’s a huge game at home and falling behind 14-0 again is not in the plan.”
Northwestern Head Football Coach Pat Fitzgerald
Opening statement…
“Well, we’re going to look back on this one tomorrow and we’re going to see opportunities we left out there on the field. I give Iowa a lot of credit; they kept battling and fighting. It was a great Big Ten football game. At the end of the day, we need to do a much better job making sure our guys play consistently and with more discipline to give us an opportunity to win. I take that squarely on my shoulders. We’re going to get right back to work. It’s Senior Day next Saturday. We have 17 great seniors that have invested tremendously and had nothing but the greatest attitude in the world for four or five years. We’re going to get right back to work and honor those guys the right way on Saturday. We’ve got a lot to play for, and we’re going to have to be our most disciplined and most focused to give us an opportunity to win.”
On Bacher’s performance…
“It looked like for the majority of the game he played really well. Our receiving core played well, we had good protection and then midway through the fourth quarter it looked like we had some individual breakdowns. When that happens, it always gets put on the quarterback’s shoulders. At the end of the day, we have to do a great job of respecting the ball. We can’t turn the ball over. We made some rushed decisions. I give Iowa credit. They had good pressure. They did a nice job.”
On Sutton’s consistency…
“Tyrell is a warrior. It’s been a long five weeks for him to get back to a place where he can compete to make our team as solid as it possibly can. He does everything he can to make our football program successful. He plays with everything in him, and I’m very proud of the way he’s battled back.”
On the play of the offense…
“I think that we just didn’t finish. That’s what we talked about last week and we didn’t do it this week. We left some points out there with the missed field goals. One would have been a career long for Amado (Villarreal). I thought he struck it well and it just fell short. When you leave six points out there, you know six points would have been really key. You just have to make plays in the second half to win games. You play sixty minutes for a reason. In back-to-back weeks now we have played about fifty minutes and that’s not going to get the job done in a Big Ten football game.”
On missed opportunities…
“You need to score points. When you have a turnover given up by your offense, if you hold them to three points or less, then it’s considered a successful defensive series. When you get a turnover, as the offense, you need to score points. You need to get points on the board. You can’t go in reverse and you can’t stall out. When you do that you’re not picking each other up. We need to pick each other up in the fourth quarter.”
On the differences between the first and second half…
“I didn’t see anything change. I didn’t see them change at all schematically throughout the whole game and I know we didn’t change at all.”
On the play of the defense…
“You guys didn’t believe me when I told you sacks came in bunches did you? We got a bunch today. We’ve got talented young men, and they work diligently. We’ve been a step away for most of the year. Today I thought we had our best pass rush of the year.”
Northwestern Player Quotes
QB C.J. Bachér
On learning from this game…
“We’re going to get in tomorrow and Monday to watch the film, learn from the film and then you flush it. Indiana is a new game and that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to forget it and get on to the next opponent.”
On the difference between the first half and the second half…
“It’s really strange when you feel like you’re executing very well, you’re moving the ball and putting points on the board. Then all of a sudden, it stops and we’re doing the same things and running the same plays, but it’s just not working out. If one guy makes a mental error, that can screw up the whole play. We’ve just got to have better focus and execution.”
RB Tyrell Sutton
On whether Northwestern has lost its swagger in the fourth quarter…
“I’m not too sure. I guess you could say that. This is the second game in a row that we haven’t scored any points in the fourth quarter. We just need to find it somewhere. If it’s lost, we’ve got to find it. We talk about it every single day and then we come out and didn’t score any points in the fourth quarter. It’s frustrating. This is one of the pillars of our program and we’re not standing on it right now.”
On not getting as many carries in the fourth quarter…
“When you’re down in the fourth quarter, you can’t expect to get the ball. In the fourth quarter when you’re down, you’ve just got to move the ball. When you’re down four or 11 points, you have to pass the ball. That’s the quickest way to get down the field. I’m not a guy that’s going to stand up and say, ‘We need to run the ball’ because I’m perfectly fine with protecting. This is a spread offense. If it calls on me blocking or chopping, I don’t care as long as I’m contributing to the team in the best way possible. It’s all about the win. It’s not about the carries or the yards. It’s all about the win. At the end of the day, that’s the only stat that counts.”
WR Eric Peterman
On the consistency of the offense…
“That’s always a concern when you don’t have consistency on your team. Being consistent with our play is something that we tried to focus on this week. We tried to flush out those times when we look really good and then look really bad, really putting four quarters of football together in one game. It’s tough when you’re inconsistent like that. We just need to focus on playing our style of football for four quarters and finishing the whole game.”
On taking direct snaps…
“That’s something we put in a couple of weeks ago. We have a package like that which we like to go to in order to give me the ball. Hopefully we can expand on that package and keep utilizing it because it worked fairly well today. That’s something that we’ve had for a couple of weeks and something that I feel comfortable doing and something that coach McGee feels comfortable doing so hopefully we can continue with that.”