AFTER THE UCLA WIN 9/23/00 29-10
"I think we played very well. We took care of business, in terms of no turnovers and a very minimal amount of penalties. We took care of the little things that make a difference in a game like this."
"I am proud of my players and coaches. They battled and I can't think of a better stage or better opportunity with people watching across the nation for us to do what we do best. We took the first step. But every week it's going to get bigger."
ABOUT UCLA
"It doesn't get any better than this. The last two games have been, I don't want to say of epic proportions, but the drama involved has been major."
"As a coach, sometimes you look at how you are going to get your team excited to play," Bellotti said. "There is no problem with that this week. In fact, I've tried to tone things down later in the week. They are by far the best team we have seen all year, and that's taking nothing away from Wisconsin," Bellotti said. "There aren't any weaknesses."
"If you look at the last couple of games, we started slow, spotting them two or three touchdown leads to where we had to come back furiously," Bellotti said. "Starting strong and getting the crowd into it will be crucial."
AFTER THE IDAHO WIN 9/16/00 42-13
"It gets real from here on in," (UCLA is next week). "I feel like our team knows we are better than how we played today," Bellotti said. "We still need to play a complete game."
"Honestly, I feel better about this team than I did in the preseason. To a degree, I think we have answered most people's questions about the defensive line, or the safeties, or the running backs, or the receivers. . . . But for us to make too many assumptions at this point are pipe dreams or guesses."
"Our protection improved dramatically. Joey didn't get hit as many times. The offense made a big leap. We had been racking up a lot of yards and not getting the points those yards should dictate. Today, we did a good job of taking advantage of big plays and turning them into points. The defense played inspired. We did a great job of pursuing against the pass and the run."
ABOUT IDAHO
"Watching (Idaho's) offense, it is extremely potent. They have more schemes than I think I've seen. They have every play known to man and that impresses me, because they seem to execute them all very well. And on defense, they look like us. Watching them, they're almost a mirror image to what we're trying to do on defense. They beat a Pac-10 team last year. They have great tradition there. Obviously, we need to be completely prepared and emotionally ready."
AFTER THE WISCONSIN LOSS 9/9/00 27-23
"I thought defensively we played well, except for four plays. The problem is you can't take those plays out of the game, so we need to find a way to step up to that next level, in terms of our execution on both sides of the ball."
"We'll look back and say, `one play,' " Oregon coach Mike Bellotti offered in his review of the outcome. "The trouble is that in this game, there were about six or seven."
"I'm very pleased with the players' attitude, effort, enthusiasm and intensity. They played their hearts out. The problem is I do feel we're capable of executing much better than we did on offense, on defense and on special teams. To me, one of the measuring sticks is whether we win the game. The other is did we play hard and as well as we're capable of playing? I don't think we played that way completely. I take pride in our efforts but it's difficult not to be disappointed when we could have won."
"I never say we should have won, that's why you play the game, you can't say `we should have won;' it's got to happen on the field. Certainly we had opportunities, several times during the course of the game, to make plays that could have made the outcome a lot different. I've said many times that one play never loses a game, but sometimes one play can win a game."
IMPRESSIONS OF FALL CAMP
"I was scared after our first week of practice because we basically had two broken hands, a broken leg, a player out for the season because of concussions, another player with a severely sprained ankle and another player with a separated shoulder. I thought our intensity early in practice was awesome, but it might have contributed to our injuries.
"The second week, we toned things down and didn't make the progress I would have liked in terms of overall repetitions or quality repetitions, but we kept people healthy. Early on, I think we're going to have to learn on the run during the course of the game as opposed to being prepared prior to the game.
"At one point, six of our top eight defensive linemen were not practicing so this has been a unique fall camp for us in that regard. I don't feel that we have made the kind of progress that we needed to make. I don't think we hit in live drills enough in terms of preparing some of the young players, but we couldn't risk exposing our line to anymore injuries.
"With the injuries, I feel like we got caught in something that hopefully won't hurt us, but it means we're going to have to continue to learn o the run as we play our early games."
FALL CAMP HIGHLIGHTS
"Probably the most pleasing developments were Jason Willis as receiver, A.K.Keyes at corner, Walker Templeton and Jed Boice on the defensive line, George Wrightster at tight end, Matt Floberg at fullback, and J.P. Mischkot (freshman from Marist!) at fullback and long snapper. I think those people exceeded our expectations to a degree, so I'm excited about that."
STATUS OF OREGON QUARTERBACKS
"The quarterback situation is unchanged. I feel real good about our top three quarterbacks and that's Joey Harrington, A.J. Feeley and Jason Fife, in that order. I don't have any plans to use a rotation at this point, but we as a coaching staff have not met and prepared our weekly game plan yet, and I do think there will be opportunities for all of them to play early in the season."
OREGON'S KICKING GAME
"I'm happy with the kicking game. At our last scrimmage, we made every single kick attempt and we made them with certainty. There was no question whether the kicks were going in or had the distance and that's encouraging. It certainly gives the team confidence and that's what you need to be successful in those situations."
REGARDING NEVADA
"In any first game, there's always the "X" factor. What new things are they going to put in? What differences are there going to be from last year? With a new coaching staff, we have no idea what Nevada's going to do offensively or defensively. So you go into this game having a contingency plan for the what-ifs. Every first game is like that, this one is just more so."
NEVADA QUARTERBACK DAVID NEILL
"We were very fortunate with him that we were able to dictate the game last year. He scares me. He's very mobile. He's a very accurate passer and a tremendously talented athlete that we were able to contain last year. The focus of our defensive attack is to contain the quarterback."