Upcoming Event: Football versus Nebraska on December 31, 2025 at 1:30 p.m.
Football
vs Nebraska
.png&width=31&height=31&type=webp)
The University of Utah Athletics
Utah vs. Arizona Postgame Quotes
10/9/2016 1:03 AM | Football
Postgame quotes vs. Arizona
Utah Head Coach Kyle Whittingham
Â
Opening statement
"It's good to get back on track after the disappointment last week and get a win. I'm proud of our guys. We're a pretty decent football team and if we can stop the self-inflicted stuff … We like to create tough situations for ourselves and we need to get that fixed.
Â
"Things that need to get cleaned up, penalties, we had a lot of false starts. A lot of those were caused by {Arizona} barking out commands on the defensive line. Disconcerting signals, that's what it's called, and they were not calling it so we have to handle that. If we can get them cleaned up, we have a pretty good team, but we'll see.
Â
"Defensively, we played well. We got a lot of takeaways, three interceptions. We allowed too many big plays over the top. It was evident tonight that we need to do a better job against the deep ball. They connected on far too many of those.
Â
"Offensively, we had good balance, passing and rushing for over 200 yards. We need to have a higher completion percentage but in the second half our offense got into a rhythm which we need to see happen.
Â
"I thought we won the special teams battle. That's who we are and we had not been doing that the last couple weeks so it was good to be back on track. Mitch Wishnowsky did a great job punting and Andy Phillips did a nice job kicking. Our kickoff return game got going, something we haven't really seen this year, so it was nice to get good field position there
Â
"Overall, it's a nice win. We're probably tied with two or three teams in the Pac-12 South. I don't know what happened tonight but I know we are at least tied for first."
Â
On Armand Shyne
"Armand doesn't look good and that's a huge issue for us right now. Troy McCormick was out, Zack Moss was out and now Armand is out. It could be season-ending but we'll know more in the next 24-48 hours, so that's a big blow for us."
Â
On halftime adjustments
"We didn't make any more major adjustments defensively. The start of the game was awful giving up a 75-yard bomb. The defense was actually playing pretty well. We talked about changing the snap count to combat the move call. That fixed things but we still had a couple in the second half show up. We had better execution and Cory Butler-Byrd is a big-time playmaker. We need to do that start to finish rather than the second half."
Â
On the safety
"It was a huge momentum-changing play and we had to burn the timeout because no one asked if we would take a penalty. Who would accept a one-yard penalty? It's great to have Lowell Lotulelei back and Pasoni Tasini at the level he's playing at."
Â
On Troy Williams running at the end of the game
"You have to do whatever you can do to win the game. No concern in him running the ball. He's a good runner and we don't run him enough and need to get him more involved in the run game."
Â
On win No. 100
"I've had the opportunity to have a lot of good players and a lot of good teams. I appreciate them all and I've been here as the head coach for 12 years and it just means we've had a lot of good players come through this program."
Â
Defensive Back Chase Hansen
Â
On the targeting penalty that got waved off
"I was mad because when he went to throw it, I thought I had a good enough bead on it to pick it. Then when I saw him catch it, I tried to dislodge it. Then I went to the chest because Coach Scalley works a lot on making sure we target below the head so we don't get penalties.
When I watched the replay though I knew they would overturn it."
Â
On the safety
"It was huge because everything was a mess. It was such a mess that it pumped us up. The crowd booing and everyone being mad … Pasoni Tasini made the play. In the first half, we missed a lot of tackles, myself included. They had a lot of great players making good moves but that was the big play that jumpstarted the whole team."
Â
On what the defense tried to fix
"We wanted to continue to fly to the ball, play together, play team defense. Once everyone tries to do it on his own, that's when we get in trouble. Coach Scalley is always preaching to stay aggressive and that helped in the second half."
Â
Defensive Back Marcus Williams
Â
On the interception
"I got this guy (Chase Hansen} on the other side of me making a big hit. I saw the ball up in the air and I took it off his back."
Â
On the big plays for Arizona
"We had a few big plays made on us but we bounced back. Whenever they happened, we never put our heads down and kept grinding to get the win. We are looking forward to playing better next week."
Â
On Arizona switching quarterbacks
"We watched film on different quarterbacks. We were not dialed in on just one quarterback because we knew they had a lot of injuries coming into the game. We make sure we watch every individual quarterback as they play and find their tendencies. We are not worried about who's coming in because we know we can stop anyone at any time."
Â
Quarterback Troy Williams
Â
On Armand Shyne's injury
"I started praying when he first went down. It looked bad when he went down but it seems like a sprain. Now it's just the "next man up" mentality that Coach Whittingham preaches every day. We will be fine."
Â
On running at the end of the game
"I have no problem running the ball. I'm a pass-first guy but when I need to, I have no problem pulling it down and getting yards."
Â
On the false starts
"Arizona's defensive line was calling out our cadence. That was a big issue and there were some "move" calls that got us a few times. Them calling out our cadence was the main problem."
Â
On Coach Whittingham's 100th win
"It means a lot. I didn't know until we gave him his jersey in the locker room. It's a great accomplishment for him and I'm happy for him. I'm glad we could get that win for him."
Â
Arizona Head Coach Rich Rodriguez
Â
On keeping Utah off-balance in the first half
"We made a couple of big plays in the passing game. Our defense was active and fresh. I don't know if we got tired in the second half or worn down a little bit. We're undersized—woefully undersized—defensively, but they're trying hard. In the first half we were pretty active. In the second half, I've got to watch the film to see if we were less active or what the deal was."
Â
Were you encouraged by your first-half start
"I was encouraged that we hit a couple of plays that were there. There's probably going to be a few that we would love to have back after watching the film. But the effort was good and the guys are trying hard. We've just got to clean a few things up. We've got to get some turnovers, certainly, and we can't have them on offense—we had three that were pretty tough. And the field position was not good for us. You've got to give their kicker and their punter a lot of credit. They were phenomenal, and we weren't as sharp as we need to be on our kicks."
Â
On what you tell the team to keep them going after 0-3 conference start
"What do you want me to do, quit? You want me to quit? What are you asking? We'll probably just going to go down here and, you know, maybe try to hitchhike home and maybe feel sorry for ourselves; and probably just, you know, cancel the season. That's what I think we ought to do is just cancel the season. We lost a couple of games. We had a couple of tough ones against some pretty good teams.
Â
Nobody is sounding the alarm?
"Is that what you want? Is that what you expect? You want those players and coaches in there to quit because we lose a game or two? Come on. These guys are going to fight. We're not used to doing it and nobody's going to be happy. We ain't going to be like 'oh, woe is us.' We're going to get back to work and try to win the next one."
Â
Opening statement
"It's good to get back on track after the disappointment last week and get a win. I'm proud of our guys. We're a pretty decent football team and if we can stop the self-inflicted stuff … We like to create tough situations for ourselves and we need to get that fixed.
Â
"Things that need to get cleaned up, penalties, we had a lot of false starts. A lot of those were caused by {Arizona} barking out commands on the defensive line. Disconcerting signals, that's what it's called, and they were not calling it so we have to handle that. If we can get them cleaned up, we have a pretty good team, but we'll see.
Â
"Defensively, we played well. We got a lot of takeaways, three interceptions. We allowed too many big plays over the top. It was evident tonight that we need to do a better job against the deep ball. They connected on far too many of those.
Â
"Offensively, we had good balance, passing and rushing for over 200 yards. We need to have a higher completion percentage but in the second half our offense got into a rhythm which we need to see happen.
Â
"I thought we won the special teams battle. That's who we are and we had not been doing that the last couple weeks so it was good to be back on track. Mitch Wishnowsky did a great job punting and Andy Phillips did a nice job kicking. Our kickoff return game got going, something we haven't really seen this year, so it was nice to get good field position there
Â
"Overall, it's a nice win. We're probably tied with two or three teams in the Pac-12 South. I don't know what happened tonight but I know we are at least tied for first."
Â
On Armand Shyne
"Armand doesn't look good and that's a huge issue for us right now. Troy McCormick was out, Zack Moss was out and now Armand is out. It could be season-ending but we'll know more in the next 24-48 hours, so that's a big blow for us."
Â
On halftime adjustments
"We didn't make any more major adjustments defensively. The start of the game was awful giving up a 75-yard bomb. The defense was actually playing pretty well. We talked about changing the snap count to combat the move call. That fixed things but we still had a couple in the second half show up. We had better execution and Cory Butler-Byrd is a big-time playmaker. We need to do that start to finish rather than the second half."
Â
On the safety
"It was a huge momentum-changing play and we had to burn the timeout because no one asked if we would take a penalty. Who would accept a one-yard penalty? It's great to have Lowell Lotulelei back and Pasoni Tasini at the level he's playing at."
Â
On Troy Williams running at the end of the game
"You have to do whatever you can do to win the game. No concern in him running the ball. He's a good runner and we don't run him enough and need to get him more involved in the run game."
Â
On win No. 100
"I've had the opportunity to have a lot of good players and a lot of good teams. I appreciate them all and I've been here as the head coach for 12 years and it just means we've had a lot of good players come through this program."
Â
Defensive Back Chase Hansen
Â
On the targeting penalty that got waved off
"I was mad because when he went to throw it, I thought I had a good enough bead on it to pick it. Then when I saw him catch it, I tried to dislodge it. Then I went to the chest because Coach Scalley works a lot on making sure we target below the head so we don't get penalties.
When I watched the replay though I knew they would overturn it."
Â
On the safety
"It was huge because everything was a mess. It was such a mess that it pumped us up. The crowd booing and everyone being mad … Pasoni Tasini made the play. In the first half, we missed a lot of tackles, myself included. They had a lot of great players making good moves but that was the big play that jumpstarted the whole team."
Â
On what the defense tried to fix
"We wanted to continue to fly to the ball, play together, play team defense. Once everyone tries to do it on his own, that's when we get in trouble. Coach Scalley is always preaching to stay aggressive and that helped in the second half."
Â
Defensive Back Marcus Williams
Â
On the interception
"I got this guy (Chase Hansen} on the other side of me making a big hit. I saw the ball up in the air and I took it off his back."
Â
On the big plays for Arizona
"We had a few big plays made on us but we bounced back. Whenever they happened, we never put our heads down and kept grinding to get the win. We are looking forward to playing better next week."
Â
On Arizona switching quarterbacks
"We watched film on different quarterbacks. We were not dialed in on just one quarterback because we knew they had a lot of injuries coming into the game. We make sure we watch every individual quarterback as they play and find their tendencies. We are not worried about who's coming in because we know we can stop anyone at any time."
Â
Quarterback Troy Williams
Â
On Armand Shyne's injury
"I started praying when he first went down. It looked bad when he went down but it seems like a sprain. Now it's just the "next man up" mentality that Coach Whittingham preaches every day. We will be fine."
Â
On running at the end of the game
"I have no problem running the ball. I'm a pass-first guy but when I need to, I have no problem pulling it down and getting yards."
Â
On the false starts
"Arizona's defensive line was calling out our cadence. That was a big issue and there were some "move" calls that got us a few times. Them calling out our cadence was the main problem."
Â
On Coach Whittingham's 100th win
"It means a lot. I didn't know until we gave him his jersey in the locker room. It's a great accomplishment for him and I'm happy for him. I'm glad we could get that win for him."
Â
Arizona Head Coach Rich Rodriguez
Â
On keeping Utah off-balance in the first half
"We made a couple of big plays in the passing game. Our defense was active and fresh. I don't know if we got tired in the second half or worn down a little bit. We're undersized—woefully undersized—defensively, but they're trying hard. In the first half we were pretty active. In the second half, I've got to watch the film to see if we were less active or what the deal was."
Â
Were you encouraged by your first-half start
"I was encouraged that we hit a couple of plays that were there. There's probably going to be a few that we would love to have back after watching the film. But the effort was good and the guys are trying hard. We've just got to clean a few things up. We've got to get some turnovers, certainly, and we can't have them on offense—we had three that were pretty tough. And the field position was not good for us. You've got to give their kicker and their punter a lot of credit. They were phenomenal, and we weren't as sharp as we need to be on our kicks."
Â
On what you tell the team to keep them going after 0-3 conference start
"What do you want me to do, quit? You want me to quit? What are you asking? We'll probably just going to go down here and, you know, maybe try to hitchhike home and maybe feel sorry for ourselves; and probably just, you know, cancel the season. That's what I think we ought to do is just cancel the season. We lost a couple of games. We had a couple of tough ones against some pretty good teams.
Â
Nobody is sounding the alarm?
"Is that what you want? Is that what you expect? You want those players and coaches in there to quit because we lose a game or two? Come on. These guys are going to fight. We're not used to doing it and nobody's going to be happy. We ain't going to be like 'oh, woe is us.' We're going to get back to work and try to win the next one."
Players Mentioned
WR
/ Football
DB
/ Football
DT
/ Football
RB
/ Football
K
/ Football
RB
/ Football
DT
/ Football
DB
/ Football
QB
/ Football
P
/ FootballFormer Utah Football Head Coach Urban Meyer inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
Wednesday, December 10
Crimson Corner with Bill Riley - Kyle Bonagura
Wednesday, December 03
Crimson Corner with Bill Riley - Yogi Roth
Tuesday, December 02
NSD26: Dylan Waters
Tuesday, December 02