After the Oregon State Beavers lost to UNLV on Saturday night, Beavers coach Trent Bray talked about his team’s performance during a postgame news conference with reporters.
Here’s a transcript, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Bray: Yeah, not the result. Too many self inflicted stuff, especially in that third quarter. When you play a good team like UNLV, that makes it tough to recover. Like the way they battled, never had a question about that, but we got to eliminate the self-inflicted things that are costing us the last couple weeks.
Q: Trent, what did you see from your offense in the second half that just wasn’t working out there?
Bray: I think it’s that. We turn the ball over down there, gave them the ball in scoring position, just didn’t protect like we normally protect, took sacks. Just stuff that shouldn’t have happened, that we could have control over.
Q: You didn’t see UNLV do anything differently?
Bray: No, they’re good. Their pass rushers just got home, and we got to be on our work all the time against a good team. We can’t have those lapses and that’s what it was.
Q: This makes three straight weeks now that you guys have blown a first-half lead. How much is that a concern moving forward for the rest of the season?
Bray: I mean, you never want to blow a lead. I mean, college football, it’s going to go back and forth, you’re in close games. So leads are going to change when you’re in close games. We just got to make sure we stay on course, which we got off course.
Q: I know there were still some positives. The secondary, they did a really good job tonight, holding UNLV in the pass game. Can you just speak about how some of the players that have stepped up through the injuries to tonight?
Bray: Yeah, I thought there was a lot of good plays in the back end. Exodus Ayers, a true freshman who hasn’t played a ton all year, stepped up and made some plays in the second half. Andre Jordan continues to make plays, which is great. Yeah, so there are guys that are continuing to improve.
Next game: Oregon State (4-3) at California (3-4)
- When: Saturday, Oct. 26
- Time: 1 p.m. PT
- Where: California Memorial Stadium, Berkeley
- TV channel: ESPN2
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Q: How big of a swing did you feel like that block punt at the end of the second quarter turned the momentum into their favor?
Bray: Yeah, it was an end of half, giving them an opportunity to get a field goal and score three. Instead of going up four, you’re only up one at halftime. It wasn’t good. Now, I did like the way, they got the ball too, but we were able to get a stop and keep them out from truly capitalizing on that middle eight. But that hurt.
Q: What did you make of Gevani (McCoy)’s play, again, giving you guys a chance in the end there, driving down the field?
Bray: Yeah, he made the throws we need him to make. We moved the ball down the field and we just ran out of time.
Q: After last week at Nevada, what caught your eye about the run defense today?
Bray: I thought they were definitely more sound. There’s still, we got to continue to get better. But I thought there was improvement in that area, which was good to see and we got to keep growing that way.
Q: Trent, with, two minutes ago, you had scored. How much thought did you give to trying an onside kick at that point?
Bray: We thought about it. But with the (two-minute timeout) still, and having all three, we had four timeouts, so we felt good about kicking it to him and getting the ball back.
Q: Did you get a good look at that last play of the game?
Bray: I have not. I wanted to before I came in here, but it’s probably best I didn’t, I’m going to guess
Q: You guys fought back. You had a chance there in the end, but now it’s two losses in a row. What do you tell your team to keep this from snowballing?
Bray: It’s just, we got to learn and grow from each win and loss. There was a lot of growth, I thought, from last week and we played a really good UNLV team, but there’s things we got to learn from because we could have controlled some of the stuff that went wrong tonight ourselves. And so those are the things we got to take care of. The things we can control, then we got to take care of those things.
— Nick Daschel covers the Oregon State Beavers. Reach him at 360-607-4824 or @nickdaschel. Listen to the Beaver Banter podcast or subscribe to the Beavers Roundup newsletter.
