USC Post Game Press Conference
The Huskers dropped a close game against USC on the first ever Blackout at Memorial Stadium, extending Nebraska’s streak against Top 25 opponents and the November slide. It started out promising, our defense was good enough to win tonight, but the injury to QB Dylan Raiola did the Huskers no favors. After the game Head Coach Matt Rhule held his usual press conference, here is a rundown of what he had to say:
– Dylan Raiola wanted to come back in and play after the injury, but the training staff said he can’t run and Rhule felt it irresponsible to put a player out there who can’t run
– TJ Lateef gets opportunities to run plays with the first team in practice but doesn’t get as much time as he needs
– Rhule felt that if Lateef has to play next week that he will be ready to go
– Rhule is not happy with the defense giving up over 200 yards rushing, but noted that they held USC to 21 points which doesn’t happen often
– On the play where Raiola was hurt Rhule said he needs to watch the tape to see what exactly happend
– Nebraska knows USC scores a lot of points and that went into his decision to attempt a field goal late in the third quarter that was missed
– They made a couple of attempts to flip the field with Lateef and came up short
– The defense knew that the USC QB was going to be running tonight, but had a difficult time slowing him up
– USC will run the QB when you chase the counters
– Rhule knew this was going to be a battle and that we would have a chance to win the game at the end
– The crowd was amazing the atmosphere was special tonight
– Despite the rough breaks the team continued to battle
– The offense had a good plan to run the football tonight
– Emmett Johnson played at an elite level tonight, noting that the offensive line blocked well in the run game and pass game
– After Pritchett’s injury Rhule knew he wasn’t going to be able to play the rest of the night
The Head Coach understandably kept his press conference much briefer than usual tonight. It was an incredibly tough loss for the Huskers tonight, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see them bounce back strong against UCLA next weekend.