Spaulding Report: UCLA Football Week Three Media Interviews
As you wait for today's game to kickoff, we've gathered all of this week's UCLA Football interviews for you in one place.
Let’s take a quick peek at what’s been getting said at this week’s UCLA football press conferences. I’m just going to share these here all in the same place to make it easy for our readers to watch them if you haven’t already. The videos in this article are courtesy of UCLA Athletics on YouTube unless noted otherwise.
We’ll begin with Chip Kelly’s two interviews. First, we have his Monday morning interview. Kelly started off his interview talking about the goal line stand against San Diego State which ended on the interception by Darius Muasau. Kelly said:
One of the biggest things was our our resiliency as a team. You talk about getting put in adverse situations and, for our defense to go on the field with the ball on the half yard line, and not only prevent points, but come up with a turnover….The good part about it is…the result is, the offense went on the field scored and taking advantage of the turnover that our defense created in a great situation was…that stretch right there was really good football for us.
Kelly also spoke about the significance of how playing a “money game” can help an FCS program like Alabama State who UCLA played last season or North Carolina Central who the Bruins face today.
On Wednesday, Chip started off by answering a series of questions from Ben Bolch of the LA Times about the quarterback rotation. Kelly deflected the question by saying, as he’s said the past two weeks, the coaches determined the rotations on Friday. Bolch persisted in an attempt to see if Kelly would come out and name a starting QB, but Chip amusingly replied by saying, “Hypothetically if we had Aaron Rodgers here, we’d say he was the starting quarterback, but then, he got hurt four plays in and then you got to scrap that plan and you’ve got to move on. Yeah, that's why hypotheticals don't work.”
He also explained a little about the conundrum of coaching from the field versus coaching from the press box. He spoke about how he was conflicted when he was an offensive coordinator. He wrapped up that portion of the interview by indicating that the defensive staff decided how they decided to approach it with defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn on the field.
Moving on to the players, Josiah Norwood and Garret DiGiorgio spoke to the media on Monday. Norwood spoke about the Bruin quarterback, especially Dante Moore, along with his touchdown reception. He also spoke about the camaraderie of the Bruin receiver corps. DiGiorgio was asked about the team going up tempo. He replied, “Well, I weigh 300 pounds. So, I do get tired, but tempo is good for us. It gets other team tired and it allows us to do what we want to do against them and impose our will against them.” Look for the Bruins to use tempo to do that today against the Eagles.
Tuesday saw DBs D.J. Justice and Kamari Ramsey meet with the media. Justice spoke about his transition from the receivers room to playing defensive back. Justice also answered questions about his favorite home run his dad former Yankee and Brave David Justice hit and whether he’s more of a Braves fan or Yankees fan. Meanwhile, Ramsey talked about how he’s been able to make an impact. “I just know what I'm doing and what everybody else is doing and communicating well and just not so much of thinking just read and react when you play like that you play faster.”
Finally this week, we have Jalen Woods and Will Powers from Wednesday. One of the things Woods spoke about was linebacker coach Ken Norton who he said is always trying to keep the guys loose because they play better when they are. Last, but not least is Bruins’ punter Will Powers. He spoke about how he didn’t get to play much against Coastal Carolina along with how he likes being back home after going to boarding school on the East Coast followed by Princeton.
That wraps up this week’s media interviews. UCLA’s game hosts the North Carolina Central Eagles this afternoon at 2:00 pm PT at the Rose Bowl.
Go Bruins!!!
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