EUGENE — Cal lost to No. 9 Oregon, 24-17, Friday at Autzen Stadium.
Justin Wilcox recapped the Golden Bears’ fifth loss of the season.
Below is a transcript of Wilcox’s postgame press conference.
JUSTIN WILCOX
I thought they fought incredibly hard, just as we would expect them to. I know that’s what they expect from themselves and their teammates. It wasn’t a matter of not fighting. It was very competitive, we ran to the ball and gave great effort. We responded through some adverse situations. It’s extremely frustrating, there’s no other adjective to use.
Q. On the adversity they overcame as a team tonight...
WILCOX: There was a lot of fight, no quit in them. We came back from adversity throughout the game, we went down and scored there late in the game. They came back and got a big kick return on us, then went down and scored. The momentum seemed to shift a little, but I thought the guys kept with it and kept competing in every phase. That gave us a chance to win the game in the end and unfortunately, we didn’t quite get it done.
Q. How big of a problem is Kayvon Thibodeaux for your offensive line...
WILCOX: He’s a very talented player. We knew there would be times we would slide or chip, or keep guys in [to protect against him]. There were also some times we wanted to get guys out in routes and get our guys the ball quickly so they could try and make a one-on-one play. So yeah, he’s a talented player for sure.
Q. On what he saw during the final play...
WILCOX: They brought zero, which we expected them to bring zero in that situation. We just didn’t execute the play like we would’ve liked to so that’s what happened.
Q. On spiking the ball rather than call timeout...
WILCOX: The number of plays isn’t going to change, because there’s a limited amount of time. Saving a timeout, you give yourself a chance to potentially run the ball. There’s a couple of different trains of thought, you can hurry up and throw one, or run it, but we wanted to regroup there.
Q. On Marqez Bimage and the defensive performance...
WILCOX: They competed very hard. In the first half, we took the ball away a couple of times and that was big. In the second half, and even the first half at times, we struggles to leverage the speed. They ran away from us a few times, that screen on first and twenty was a huge play, the quarterback got away from us a couple of times. Overall I thought they competed extremely hard. They played hard against a talented, talented team.