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OPENING STATEMENT
Certainly welcome, everybody. Just sitting here thinking, the '81 team, it's so good to have them here, the Fry family, have them here with us, and it's been great to have a chance to interact a little bit. Thinking about having a guy like Andre Tippett with us yesterday. He was kind enough to come out to practice and visit with the team.
First of all, one of the things I explained to our players, we throw these terms around so easily. Hall of Fame or All-conference and all that stuff. This guy is a two-time Hall of Fame player. Both levels, college and the NFL. There's so many outstanding players that never make that mark, so it's fantastic. He is a Hall of Fame person, too.
Where I'm going with this whole thing, the one thing he shared with our team yesterday was just about the grit and resilience of the '81 ball club, and that's how I feel about tonight. Today the guys did a heck of a job. Obviously, we're really happy to get the win, but we had to earn this. The guys worked hard. Each and every week it's all about improvement, trying to get better and moving forward, and our guys did a great job of that this week. We had a good week of practice, preparation. Got back late last Saturday night, and the guys pushed forward and did a heck of a job. Really proud of them that way.
They prepared, competed, and Minnesota is a veteran football team. I didn't really emphasize that on Tuesday. I didn't want to psych any of our guys out, but if you look at how many starts they have offensively up front, the quarterback, that one receiver is a very experienced guy. They have a loot of guys on defense that have played, too. We have great respect for them.
We knew it would be a tough game, tough assignment, and they did a good job of controlling the football. They ran it what felt like was 400 yards. When we had opportunities, we capitalized and made some big plays. Protected the ball for the most part pretty well, and offensively drove it, hit a big pass play to Charlie. Keagan did just a fantastic job of making more than something out of more than nothing really. Then the blocked field goal was huge. Certainly a big play, and then Tory at the end with two punts to put them -- gave them the start on the 90-yard field to go.
All those things are important if you are going to win, and these games are physical, they're tough. That's what you would expect in this conference. You expect it in November. Again, just proud of our guys. Great to move to eight wins, and it's the best we could do this week, and the guys did a great job of that, and certainly great to have Floyd back in our building for another year.
Just happy about all those things. We're going to enjoy this win for sure. We'll go back and look at it tomorrow, learn from it tomorrow and hopefully have a better week of practice than last week. Last but not least, certainly just want to thank our fans. It was another great environment in Kinnick, and they really help bring us home, so appreciate that.
A special thanks to the military, all the military folks that were here, those that follow our team and certainly great to have the F-35 pilots here, too. That was a special treat for us, and they got to visit with the team. Appreciate them taking time and having an interest, too. Those guys are Iowa natives. That helps.
It's all good. Fire away. You can't bring me down tonight, try as you may. Fire away (Laughter).
Q. What was the strategy when you got the ball at the 3-yard line late in the game?
COACH FERENTZ: They would have, if we lost, I know that. Believe me, I had that thought at the time. There are two ways to go. You try to go score right now, which they would have been happy with. And then the other thing we wanted to burn a little clock, so, it's a chance -- it's five points or it's whatever it would have been. It felt like our defense would be okay with the time that they got back when they got the ball back. 44 seconds. Felt like we would be fine, so we felt you had two choices. We thought that was the smartest.
We were not planning on losing three yards on that one run play, but that's the way that worked out. Caleb just stepped in there and did a great job.
Q. Your defense was on the field for 40 minutes. Yet, at the end of the game as gassed as they probably were, they still came up with two huge sacks. VanValkenburg and Evans at the end. What does it say about their resilience to be able to weather 40 minutes of pounding like that and still come up with those big plays?
COACH FERENTZ: Go right back to what Tip said. Great resilience, and the facts are they had their way with us in that first half. They were really working us. They did some themes schematically that they don't normally do or at least don't feature, and they clearly had a good plan there. It took us a while to adjust to that. Not only schematically, but we weren't playing some of the blocks very well. It's tough because they're big and they're strong and they're physical, so they were getting us turned a little bit and creating creases and those backs do a good job of finding it. A lot of credit to them.
I do think we tweaked a couple of things, but more importantly, we just played better in the second half and played a little stronger. I thought we got stronger as the game went on against a team that's really big and physical and veteran. I'm really proud of our guys. I thought they responded. Then, regarding Zach VanValkenburg and Joe Evans, they're trying to get them in that situation, which we didn't have them there very much, and we finally got that, and it was almost like watching slow motion to watch Valk come inside on that stunt, and then the rest of the game they had the back and the tackle double. It was good to get to that point finally. That was one of our goals.
Q. Were you angry about the chop block -- do you think it was a chop block, or were you just mad at the play, the flag being picked up?
COACH FERENTZ: I was upset the flag there was and then it got picked up. I'll say this, I really appreciate the candidness of the official, and I appreciate him coming over and telling me what he saw, what he thought he saw, and the decision that was made. You can deal with the honest truth, and I really do appreciate it. We have good officials in this league. Although the reviews, some of the spots I got to see. Not sure about that.
Q. A couple of your stand-out players in this game were in here earlier. Charlie Jones and VanValkenburg. You didn't go to them. They came to you, basically. You got any observations about that, about recruiting and how sometimes it's the flip-flop that works?
COACH FERENTZ: We've had a million players -- million is an exaggeration. A lot of players that came through the program that were maybe lower level guys, according to everybody when they came out, and players change. It's like our team. Our team has grown. I felt like we took a step this week. I'll go back to last week. Your starting quarterback can't go, and somebody steps in. You're on the road playing a team that's tough and gritty, but, it's funny. And I'll go back to Jack Heflin, too. There's another guy that had a nice career at Northern and came over and fit in well with us, and I'll say the same thing about Charlie Jones and Zach VanValkenburg.
The thing about Zach, it's hard to evaluate looking at the Division II film, but the one thing about him, he went hard, and he is a smart, mature guy. You feel like if you get a little time, maybe this guy can grow into something. He has.
And then Charlie, to me was a real wild card. He almost kind of annoyed me earlier when he got here, and he knows this. Some idiosyncrasies, and I'm sure he feels the same about me. You see him in live action, once you get to live action -- and we don't practice kicking live -- we knew pretty quickly last year that, boy, this guy has great judgment fielding balls. He is reckless and just daring on the return part of it.
The other part he has really developed into a good receiver, as we saw today. That's a real credit to him. He has worked really hard at that and got no problem with that. Love players like that, and that's certainly how he is. He does a lot of really good things.
