Coaches Review The Battle…..

Notre Dame Head Coach Lou Holtz
“The Boston College players can really be proud of theireffort and resolve. They played an excellent game for about 50minutes. It was the type of game that I thought it would be.This is a tough place to play with the crowd noise. We gavethem some help with our penalties and turnovers, but theyprotected the passer well and (Omari) Walker was outstanding onthe ground.”

“I really liked the way that we competed. We hung in thereand did what we had to do. We ran the ball well and we didn’tpass too much, but we got some continuity going. I thought thatour backs did a good job of running both inside and outside.”

“It was a costly victory because we lost Marc Edwards withthe knee injury.”

Boston College Head Coach Dan Henning
“As far as the game is concerned, I thought that at a pointthere when we got it to 21 and we had them backed up, that wehad a shot. That long run kind of broke our back a little bit.Some of our better players did not play as well as they have inthe past.”

“I think the players that lined up out there tonight puttogether the best they could put together and during the courseof the game on a couple of occasions, rose up and made plays andput themselves in a position where they thought they could win.”

“I liked the way the team responded. I didn’t like some ofthe things that happened in the game….What I told them in thedressing room after the game is that, ‘Some of you played realwell. Some of you made some big plays, but if you add up acouple of errors by you and a couple of errors by you, that’swhere it happens.’ ”

“One of the best plays of the night was Shalom Tollfree’stackle at the end of the first half to save the touchdown. Thatmay be one of the best tackles I’ve ever seen. It’s very rarethat you just make a flat out seven-point tackle.”

On the week
“I’ve faced some opponents that have been pretty tough. Butthe emotions that ran the gamut, the feelings for the players,both those that were on the field and those that weren’t,watching the emotions, the up and down that the players wentthrough during the week was difficult at best. So I would haveto say this week was rather difficult.”

“We went at it as quickly and as fast as we could get at it. I think that the right people were pulled into it to take careof it, to investigate it…I don’t think that there’s any schoolin the country that could, that would, stand up to the scrutinythat we’ve had to stand up to this week. That was theobjective. That’s what the players wanted. When we talked tothe people in charge here that’s what they wanted. That’s whatwas done.”

“Before the game I told the players that I thought they wentthrough a tough week. They did something, they stepped up tothe plate in my mind, and determined that they wanted to beeither cleared or cleansed. Knowing what it was going to meanand maybe in later life, in times that come in the futurethey’ll be able to say that. And maybe others will step up anddo the same thing in all walks of life, maybe because of whatthey did.

“It wasn’t easy. Those players knew that some oftheir friends would be there. But when it was determined whatthey thought, they wanted to be a team. They didn’t want tohave, or be thought of, the way people think of when you havewrongdoing on your team of the nature that we had. If you have amurder in your neighborhood you tell somebody about it. Don’tyou? The problem is we don’t. It’s happening in our city rightnow…These are young people, learning, I’m not sure that theyreally understood in the beginning everything that they we’regoing to have to deal with this week. One thing they didunderstand was what they wanted to do was right. And they stoodup for what was right. I congratulated them for that.”