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UW head football coach, Gary Andersen, spoke to the media Monday afternoon. Here is what he had to say on a variety of topics posed to him by local members of the media.
Speaking on the game against Iowa: “Okay, it was a great game. It was a Big 10 football game as best of what I know of it, and what I envisioned of it. It was a great crowd, a great place to play. Our kids were unbelievable. They faced a lot of adversity prior to the game, they faced a lot of adversity during the game, and they kept on battling, and fighting and found a way to get the victory at the end, so I’m very proud of them.”
Talking offense, James White: “James White, I believe, had a very impressive game. Everybody wants to look at yards per carry and everything that was there, but it was tough sledding against a very good defense, and he kept pounding away the whole football game and was very, very consistent and broke the runs at the end of the game to seal the deal for us. In my mind, he’s for sure the offensive player of the game for his toughness and his want to, and being able to make the plays when they came late in that game.”
Talking defense: “Defensively, we played very well. Without Chris (Borland) being in there, Marcus (Trotter) came in and did a good job. Tyler (Dippel) wasn’t with us, so that upped the reps of Pat (Muldoon) and Ethan (Hemer) and those other defensive end type kids and they played very well.”
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About coming home: “Very excited about the opportunity to come back and be in camp Randall again. It seems like forever since we’ve been here. Hope everybody comes out and supports these kids. We’ve got three more opportunities left this month and forever for this team to come and play in camp Randall. So they’re excited about that opportunity. I promise you, I hope you’re as excited as we are as a football team to come back and fill that place up like always and make it a very intimidating place to play.”
Facing BYU: “We’re playing a very good team in BYU. They’re on a role. They’ve gotten progressively better. They’ve beaten very good teams this year, and it’s an opponent that a lot of people on this staff know fairly well. The kids not necessarily on the team haven’t played them. But this is a good team we are playing.”
Speaking about BYU Quarterback Taysom Hill: “(BYU is very) quarterback driven on the offensive side of the ball without question. He (Hill) has continually gotten better and better as the year goes on and from a year ago. He had an injury, but he’s come back and played well.”
Speaking on BYU linebacker Kyle Van Noy: “They have good weapons defensively. The Van Noy kid is a good linebacker. He’s one of the top linebackers in the country. So we all know where the top linebacker in the country plays football, that is right here in our own backyard. But he’s very talented, and you have to account for him every snap.”
On coming from Utah State and playing BYU again: “Having BYU on the schedule was probably one of the most shocking things that I looked at when I took this job. It’s amazing. They follow me all the way here. It’s a great challenge to play them. They’ll take their best players and put them in position to make plays. That’s absolutely no surprise. The way they play, the physicality they bring to the game, the love of football, you’ll see it, they love playing the game and a lot of things I stand for in coaching and a lot of the kids play that way.”
On BYU’s style of play: “They’ve been very balanced over the last few years. Back a few years ago they ran speed option, and load option, and it’s a credit to their program how they’ve evolved. Now they have an athletic quarterback who can do a lot of things for them, and he’s tough to deal with and tough to tackle. They’re going to focus on him and highlight on him on the offensive side of the ball. It’s always been a program that’s based on the good fundamentals of football and use your best kids. I don’t know when the departure was from the throw, the complete throw to be in balance. But they seem to always be good. They get players and they’re tough-minded young men.”