What Tim Skipper Said After UCLA's 17-14 Loss to Northwestern

On the feeling in the locker room after that game

“Yeah, a lot of competitors in that locker room. It stings. It really does sting. But like I told those guys, you’ve got to keep your heads up – I mean we are going to be in a fight every single game. It is all conference games now. This is a really good conference. No one is going to feel sorry for you. So keep your heads up, and it is going to be a tough flight home. But once we land back home, we got to get ready to go for the next one.”

On if he considered going for it on fourth down, on UCLA’s second-to-final drive

“Yeah, so we had three timeouts. We punted that thing knowing that if we got the stop, we’d get the ball back. I did not feel comfortable backed up in the distance that it was. So we were going to go ahead and punt it, trust the defense, they were playing really good, lights out in the second half. We got the stop. I mean, we work two-minute all the time – there was plenty of time. Time wasn’t the issue. We just didn’t make the plays. You can’t get sacked inside two minutes without timeouts, and that is what happened and the clock kept ticking away.”

On UCLA’s struggles in the run game

“Nico was the emphasis for this week. We saw in some of their previous games, quarterback runs gave them problems. He was a big emphasis. We rotated a lot of guys in there. I thought the touchdown drive, we started to run it a little bit better, especially with our pistol runs. But obviously, every week will be a little different. We have to see who we are playing against to know what we are going to do.”

On what he saw with UCLA’s defense

“We did a lot of different things. This was a completely different scheme, right? I’m proud of the guys for how they fought. In the first half, we acted like it was a new scheme. We were thinking, we didn’t wrap up and tackle and things like that. But in the second half, we settled down and we started playing ball. I like the fact that we were rotating a lot of guys, a lot of different people and played well in the second half. So we have something to build off of.”

On whether coach Kevin Coyle was calling the defensive plays

“Yes, that’s very accurate, he was calling the defense.”

On assessing coach Kevin Coyle and that being his first game with UCLA

“It was good. We didn’t have any communication issues or those sorts of things. Like I said, it just comes down to making plays. The first half and second half were two different halves. The first half, we were thinking too much and things like that and didn’t make the plays. In the second half, we started making the plays and things looked better.”

On how he rallies the players heading into the next week

“No doubt, no doubt. I’m telling you, there are a lot of competitors in that room. They have to lock in. We feel bad right now, but there is a lot of ball left. We have only played four games. There is a ton of football left, no matter whether if it’s gone good or bad, you know that you have to play a full season. We will have to bounce back. Nobody is feeling sorry for us, and we’ve got to go.”

On preparations for this game after a bye week and if he’d do anything different

“I would actually do exactly what we did. I thought the guys fought. In the first half, we were just a little hesitant, a step slow, but we picked it up in the second half. I think that we’re building in the right direction. I liked how we fought until the end – we just have to keep going, have to keep going. There is no reason to question anything, or anything like that, we are going to keep moving forward. We’ll be fine.”

On any attempts to get more running backs involved

“Like I said before, we are game-planning off what the defenses are giving us. They have kind of struggled a little bit with QB runs. We thought that would be a good thing for this week. Every single week is going to be a little different. Definitely [we] have a lot of good backs, a lot of guys rotating in there, so we have just got to get it jump started.”

On Nico Iamaleava being a competitor and any worry with him taking multiple hits

“There is always a worry, right, with your quarterback? You never want him to take a lot, but he actually enjoys the contact. He is one of those guys. He likes to lower down and go run, so we will use him as much as we can. We obviously know that we need to protect him, also. So it’s going to go how the games go, and we’ll keep on rolling.”