Recap?|? Final Stats?|? Notes

Notre Dame Head Coach Tyrone Willingham Quotes

On Notre Dame’s first loss of the season
“Clearly, Boston College did some very good things this afternoon, and put themselves in the situation to win. In some cases, we did not execute as a football team like we should of to be victorious. Now, we have to challenge ourselves to put this behind us and move on to the next game.”

On quarterback Carlyle Holiday
“I feel that he performed well after he went back in. He was a little woozy so we decided to hold him out for a period of time to get himself together.”

On Notre Dame wearing the green jersey
“We have been talking about the sea of green all season, and I wanted to get our team involved in it. The sea of green is important, because it talks about attitude. It talks about the Notre Dame family and football team coming together as one. I thought it was a good time for our team to become a part of that oneness, the single mindedness and the pursuit of victory.”

On Notre Dame’s turnovers
“We do not need to change our focus. We work on not turning the ball over everyday, and we work on creating turnovers everyday. I think the plan we have in place has served us well this year. Now, we just have to get back to executing it the way we know we can.”

Notre Dame Player Quotes

Senior C Jeff Faine:
On approaching the rest of the season
“We have to keep up the momentum. We are going to learn from our mistakes, and we are going to make some adjustments to get it done.”

On how turnovers affected the team
“We kept trying to find a way to get the ball in the endzone. We just ran out of time trying to do it.”

Senior SS Gerome Sapp:
On how the loss affected the team
“We need to play football the way it should be played. [We need] to fix a lot of mistakes that were made today. [There is] no way our heads will be down tonight or tomorrow. [We] just have to rebound from that.”

On the rest of the season
“Whatever is supposed to happen will happen. Our run is not over yet. [We] are just looking to win the rest of our games.”

Senior ILB Courtney Watson
On the defense
“The ball wasn’t on the ground enough for the defense. We didn’t create enough turnovers. We only had one. We didn’t set up a score or anything like that. That’s a big part of playing football here.”

Sophomore QB Pat Dillingham
On the loss
“This is a pretty low moment right now. We had such high expectations for ourselves throughout this whole season that any loss just brings us down. But we can’t let this hold us back.”

On his interception that was returned for a touchdown
“[Intended receiver] Ryan [Grant] lost his footing, and I didn’t want to take the sack. So I just tried to pass the ball to get it out of my hand.”

Junior WR Omar Jenkins
On the offense
“Today it seemed like we executed until we got within the red zone. Of course, turnovers were what killed us.”

On the emotions felt after the contested touchdown
“It is a good emotional thing if it’s called a touchdown. When it doesn’t get called, we just feel we have to go out there and score on the next play.”

Boston College Head Coach Tom O’Brien Quotes

On his team
“Well obviously we have a very excited locker room coming off a very hard loss this week. It’s a great day for Boston College.”

On Notre Dame
“We only scored off of one turnover. They [Notre Dame] have a tremendous defense.”

On the goals of Boston College team
“We did a solid job of trying to stop the run. Having turned the job over since the Virginia Tech game. We need the turnovers in order to win.”

On the green jerseys
“The kids were excited when we saw the green jerseys. They took the green jerseys as a sign of great respect, as if we were something to be reckoned with.”

On the ’93 Notre Dame defeat
“These kids were 11 and 12 years old. Ninety-three had nothing to do with this game. I don’t think that Boston College had beaten Notre Dame before 1993. It will continue to be a big game for our school.”

On Junior Linebacker Josh Ott
“He has gotten better and better for us. He has stepped up as the leader of our defense this year.”

Boston College Player Quotes

Senior QB Brian St. Pierre:
On offensive schemes
“The game plan was to try to grind it out on them. We thought we could run the ball on them. They are a really good pass defense team that makes a lot of plays. The offensive line played great. Between the tackles, we thought we could run the ball on them. We knew it was going to be a choppy game, but if we had the ball at the end, it would be all right and that’s what happened.”

Junior OLB Josh Ott:
On second-quarter 71-yard interception return for TD’s
“You don’t know when everything is going to come to you, but the trick is to always be around the ball and eventually something is going to happen. While I was running, I just kept thinking OEdon’t trip, don’t trip.’ It was a lucky situation and I’m glad the Lord blessed me with that situation to take advantage of it.”

On defense’s ability to respond to injuries on the defensive line
“A wounded dog is most dangerous. We have people that can back everyone up. It was a team effort.”

Junior TB Derrick Knight:
On significance of his role in team’s final offensive possession “What we hadn’t done so far was finish a team off. To be able to get those first downs and run the clock out was the biggest part of the game.”

On his impression of team’s plays
“It is definitely good to come out here and play a sound football game with no turnovers, to control the clock, control the ball, score when we needed to score, and hold them off when we needed to. It was a great effort on everyone’s part.”

Freshman DE Mathias Kiwanuka:
On play of junior OLB Josh Ott
“He scores more than any player I’ve ever seen in practice. It just showed out there today — his dedication in practice. He’s all over everything.”

On potential of game’s impact on remainder of season
“We’ll try to use this as a catalyst to prepare us to win the rest of the games of the season. It hasn’t gone exactly the way we wanted it to go, but we’ll just have to build on this game and take it one day at a time. I kind of felt the energy of the team was leading us in the right direction today.”

Sophomore TE Sean Ryan:
On response to Notre Dame green jerseys
“I felt OEWow’, we really are playing Notre Dame. They really respected us. They really thought that we were a challenge for them and that meant a lot to me and a lot to our teammates, too.”

Senior C Dan Koppen:
On play of junior TB Derrick Knight’s
“When there isn’t a hole, he just finds it. When you have a guy like that to count on in the backfield, it makes out jobs that much easier.”

On emotions after games
“Coming into this stadium is so historic. I am still in shock. I don’t have the words to describe what I’m feeling seeing my teammates in there. It is everything and more and I’m sure I’ll realize it tomorrow.”