Oklahoma Quote Book: The Best of Tulane Postgame

“We’re not going to apologize for winning, but at the same time we’ve got to own the good and the bad. And there was certainly plenty of both.”

— Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley

“Obviously, we didn't come down here to play close. But we could have won the game. If we would had played better in the first half, I think we would have had a much better opportunity to do it.”

— Tulane head coach Willie Fritz

“The No. 1 standard at Oklahoma is to win football games, but how do you do it? Again, you either believe it or you don’t.”

— OU defensive coordinator Alex Grinch

“Not quite how you dreamed it up after all these months.”

— Riley on Spencer Rattler’s first interception and Tulane’s immediate TD

“The second half, I think clearly, our team felt like the game was over. That’s obviously my job to make sure our mentality is right. I don’t think it was.”

— Riley

“We did come in the locker room kinda comfortable, a little too comfortable when there's a second half ready to be played.”

— WR Marvin Mims

“Second half, we just came out a little casual.”

— QB Spencer Rattler

“They played a lot better than we did in the second half and their mentality was a lot better than ours in the second half.”

— Riley

“Sometimes when you weather a storm early in the game, if you naively think that that’s the only storm that you’re going to have. … There’s been other instances in our past where similar things have happened. It’s a 60-minute football game. That team across the way is going to fight tooth and nail to find a way to get points and get themselves back in the football game. You gotta have respect for that.”

— Defensive coordinator Alex Grinch

“I thought we had a few more busts than we typically have. That’s something we take pride in, not allowing easy throws. We had a few too many coverage busts where we weren’t in the right place or had some opportunities to make plays, had a couple chances to pick it off where we simply didn’t make the play.”

— Riley

“We’re gonna look at the tape, there’s gonna be some guys that rose up and probably need to play more, there’s gonna be some guys that weren’t quite ready yet but we need to season a little bit more, and they’re gonna have to fight and earn their opportunities.”

— Riley

“It kind of felt like one of those Chef Boyardee commercials when you were younger. I would just roll around and just come to your home. It felt like one of those. I felt like the ball just rolled right to me and I was there to scoop it up. Thank God we had those takeaways.”

— Nik Bonitto on his early fumble recovery

“You take away any of those takeaways, we’re probably feeling a whole lot worse than we do right now.”

— Grinch

"You know, we weren't playing against an eighth-grade team out there. That's a good ball club. They've got some great athletes.”

— Fritz

“We got to get some things cleaned up, you know, we'll continue to look at that lineup and and make sure that we get the best five out there as much as possible.”

— Riley on all the false start penalties

“That’s where my power comes from. The ‘stache … I’m going to let that thing grow out.”

— Kicker Gabe Brkic, who tied an NCAA record with three 50-yard field goals

“We can obviously be better as play callers as well, specifically I’m obviously talking about myself in that, to try and help the guys out. It’s a 60 minute football game and I’ve got to do a better job of getting the guys to play all 60.”

— Grinch

“My message to the defensive staff is we’d rather sub too much than not enough. And I felt that was the responsible thing to do.”

— Grinch on all the late defensive substitutions

“I had a good breakfast this morning. I had chicken and pasta. I went out there, took my mind off football and booted it.”

— Brkic on his 56-yard FG before halftime

“It was huge. It gave a lot of us time to breathe on the sideline. It was really hot today. A lot of us needed the breather and needed time to take snaps off and get some reps to the other guys who we feel comfortable playing with.”

— Nik Bonitto on all the defensive subs

“I think in some ways, it just feels like an excuse to put it all on the kids and say they didn't prepare very well. … So something was lacking. And again, from a coaching standpoint, you say, ‘OK, what can I do to drive the point home?’ ”

— Grinch

“I will credit the guys in making the stop at the end. We’ve been on the other side of that, as recently as last year, where we don’t get that stop at the end.”

— Grinch

“First off, shoutout to Tulane even for coming down here. I appreciate those guys coming down here and playing us with everything going on where they're from. That's a tough team. That was one of the hardest hitting teams, one of the most physical teams I've played. They came out there, and they played great, better than us, for sure. They wanted to win more than us. You could tell it.”

— Rattler

“Our mood wasn't super excited, but Coach Riley went in there and got on us for not being up and not having our heads up because it's better to learn off a win where last year we had to learn off two losses. I would much rather learn off a win.”

— Rattler

“I wouldn't consider it a wake-up call. I feel like it was more us not knowing what they were going to run. We knew they had a new coordinator coming in so we didn't know what to expect.”

— Bonitto

“I have one more thing. My dad’s best friend, when we were younger, he told me kicking a football is like parallel parking. Every kick, you just parallel park the football through the goalposts.”

— Brkic

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