University Southern California Trojans
Hackett, Willingham Preview Stanford Game
October 19, 1999 | Football
Oct. 19, 1999
USC Coach Paul Hackett - 10/19/99
"It's been a difficult couple of days. Obviously the Arizona loss was a difficult loss for us, but the Notre Dame loss was a real heartbreaker for us. Fortunately, it has been two days and it's time to get onto other business. I don't have any answers about what happened at Notre Dame. I've said that before. It was a tale of two teams. It was one team that played brilliantly I thought in the first half. Pretty much dominated them in every area, particularly a great job against the option, which was the thing we were really concerned about. In the second half, we were a different team. Why, I don't know. I know what happened and how it happened and those things, but you can't turn the ball over, you have to catch the ball. All the things I said after the game. Why that it happened to us, I'm not sure. For them to fumble a ball into the end zone to win a game, you know, just one of those things. It's hard to put a finger on it.
"The one thing I will say as far as the assessment of where we are halfway through the season, I will say a couple things. One, we have some young people on this team, first- and second-year players who are really making some progress. They're not necessarily playing great all of the time, but I'm really encouraged and excited about the progress I see them making. On the other hand, we have some veteran players and some senior players who, quite frankly, at this point, are playing at a level that will not allow us to be a true contender in the conference. I mean we are just not getting the type of performances out of some of the older players that we need to get. That's the thing that is most disturbing and that's the thing that needs to turn around if we're going to have the kind of year that we think we are capable of having. Once again, it's not that it's bad, it's just that it's inconsistent. For a young player to be inconsistent is one thing. But for an older player, veteran, senior-type player, their inconsistency should be far, far below the consistency of the play of the younger players. That is about the only thing that after looking at it, I can really come up with."
(re: Stanford): "The team this week is a very exciting team. When you think Stanford, you think offense and you certainly do that with receivers (Troy) Walters and (DeRonnie) Pitts. They've been sensational. They have beaten everyone they've gone against. I think the toughest thing about those guys is you can't double one of them because the other one will kill you. If you have just one receiver, then you can double one of them. But this team, they've got two. The quarterbacking has been outstanding. Todd Husak is having a heckuva year, but the most impressive thing to me was when Todd Husak got hurt, the No. 2 guy (Joe Borchard) comes in and has a brilliant game. The quarterbacking is good. The running game, which in years past was not very strong, has all of a sudden come alive. They've got a young freshman playing very well, but they rotate backs, so they don't get tired. Offensive line, they've always been good pass protectors, and that continues to be the case. The biggest change in the Stanford team is defense. I think that this is nine returning starters from last year. They know each other, they've been around each other, eight of them are seniors and what I see on the tape is a group of men playing well together. They may not be playing spectacularly, but they play well together. They're well coached. You have to earn what you get. They're very sound and play particularly well against the running game. I've been really impressed seeing them against the running game. The special teams has been sound. They've had a couple big returns. They have two great returners in both Pitts and Walters. They kick the ball well. Their punter runs for a 45-yard gain against UCLA. They've done well on field goals, they've blocked punts. It's a team that is a good, solid team and right now for us, to be playing the top team in the conference is very good. When you're where we are, what you need to do is get a victory. Just find a way to get a win and find a way to get out of the funk that we're in. And this is a great team to test us and see where we are from a conference standpoint. So, we're looking forward to it.
(re: his assessment above of USC at halfway point as far as winning close games): "A good contending team, a team that sees itself as being a champion, will win the close games. That has to do with seniors, with the older players stepping up and getting the job done. I think we have fallen short three times. The heartbreaker, obviously, was the Oregon game because we were so close to it, but that paled to the one last Saturday. We are not playing consistently. We are not playing well enough. It's not effort, it's not wanting to, it's not playing hard. It's just we're not able to make the plays and have the kind of performances we need to have when the game is on the line. That's been the biggest problem. Believe me, it's not one phase. This is not a defensive problem. This is not an offensive problem. This is not a special teams problem. Everyone has had the opportunity to contribute. It's the kind of thing where we just have to settle in and play more consistent football."
(re: assessment of team from mental standpoint): "If I knew the answer, I would do it. How you come off playing your best football in two years in one half and then have that happen to you, I don't know. I've said this from the very beginning. Playing on the road is no fun. When you open the season with four out of the first six games on the road, three of which are in tough places to play, you might come up short if you're not a real strong, strong football team. And we just were not able to make the plays we needed to make. It's about performance. We had opportunities in all three games to make the plays. Opportunities in all three games to take hold of the game and win it. In all three of them, we had second-half leads and we weren't able to do it. We're not as powerful and strong a football team as I anticipated that we would be at this point. A lot of effort and a lot of guys really working hard to get better, but it comes down to performance in the clutch and that is something we have not been able to do. It's something as simple as recovering a fumble or something as simple as not shanking a punt or something as simple as not catching a ball in your hands. It's simple things. It's not deep dark secrets. It's a matter of doing the basic, fundamentals of football that we need to do. We do them in spurts but we don't do them as consistently as you have to do them to be a legitimate contender in this conference.
Stanford Coach Tyrone Willingham - 10/19/99
(re: any different approach for the last half of the season as compared to the first half): "Well, there is no approach for the last half of the season. There is simply a game-by-game approach. We've always tried to do that, whereas our focus is just the next ball game and really what happens in doing that, it eliminates the ups and downs that you go through to some degree. Whether we've been down one week or up one week, we come back and start anew and start trying to tackle the challenges that the next opponent brings.
"I think there is a little different attitude (this year). I think it's primarily because we're 4-2 right now as opposed to where we were last year. We had a little bit more of a disappointment taste in our mouth and tone to what we were doing. I think any time you have more success, everyone in your program is more excited and positive about what your future holds."
(re: if he thought before the season his team would be performing as well as it has): "I guess I can honestly say yes to some degree. I felt we were a much improved team over last year and I didn't know if it would be reflected in our wins and losses, but I felt like we were a better team and I went on record saying that even before we began the year. Even last spring I said that. It is somewhat of a surprise because we've played some very difficult opponents and had some success against them and probably some of the places that have not been traditional Stanford favorites. (I'm) speaking primarily of Arizona, a very difficult place to win and we were able to come away with a win there."
(re: difference in play in Stanford's four wins and two losses): "It's amazing, each game, when you look at the losses, was very different. There's nothing constant about our two losses. I think we got beat and pounded down at Texas. It was our opener for the season and they came out playing their second game. As we always say as coaches, that's when you see your most improvement. They were about two or three ballgames ahead of us and we were not quite up to speed yet. Then in our second loss, San Jose State played very well and we had some errors and didn't seem to have enough emotion to overcome them in the final minutes of the game. Even though I felt good about our team the way they fought back, but still yet didn't have enough emotion to get us over the top. Our wins, we've been very fortunate. We've been able to, in the majority of those, win the turnover game and that's always a very important game to win in winning any football game."
(re: Troy Walters): "Troy has been, in his career, by some of the numbers he's put up, has been remarkably consistent. He is that way day-to-day. He is that way in his personal life. He is an amazingly consistent individual. I go back and highlight the fact that he is a two-time Pac-10 All-Academic player and has been a Pac-10 all-star as a return guy and a receiver. And then to have his final year shape up in the matter that it has is exciting. He's a special person. His attitude, the way he works, the way he lives his life and the way he communicates with his teammates is that of a special young man."
(re: Todd Husak): "Todd has really kind of picked it up from a year ago. He did so many good things a year ago and gave our team a chance to be successful along with the play of Troy and our receiving corps. We've been fortunate that we've been able to add a slight presence to our offense and that being the presence of some run game to really help out our pass game and really help out Todd. He has been an outstanding leader for us and has been able to execute and run our offense to the degree we'd like to have it run."
(re: Stanford's defense): "You're always concerned (with your defense) because you'd like to believe that your defense is the one area of football that if it's consistent for you, and when I say consistent I mean consistently good, that you can count on it every week . . . because you bring the right attitudes, the right emotions, the right physical play to the game when you play good defense. There is always a concern. But at the same time, our defense has been timely, it has made some plays and done some things to put us in position to win."
(re:USC): "First of all, we have tremendous respect for coach Hackett and his staff and for his players. When we look at them, we know they've had some ups and downs but at the same time we can really see how outstanding a team they can be by looking at the first half of the Notre Dame game, which was probably played as well as anyone has played a half of football this year. It is a team that we have great respect for and really recognize what they can do.
(re: how he feels about the state of the Stanford program): "I think we still have a lot of growing to do and a lot of improving in our program to do, so I don't think we're there."
(re: Pac-10 race): "We're really not looking at other teams. We think it's important to us to stay focused on our next opponent and if we can do that, then everything will take care of itself."
