Nebraska Football
Postgame Quotes vs. Houston Christian
Sept. 13, 2025 (Lincoln, Neb.)
Nebraska 59, Houston Christian 7

Opening Statement
“I really appreciate the crowd. The people who were there. It was a hot day, and I appreciate them staying all the way to the end. I’m really excited for Terence Crawford tonight. I want to wish him the best.” 

On the first half performance
“I genuinely was going into the game like it's going to be a war. When you do that, you don’t ever get in there and go ‘oh shoot I wasn’t ready for a fist fight’, so I was ready for a fist fight. With that being said, I am happy that we’re able to play those guys and then get to the half. We scored 38 points, just not happy with the last drive on defense and the last drive on offense, the two minute drive and that is something we’re going to need is the two minute offense, so we’ll have to go back and look at that but I thought beyond that we were extremely efficient and tackled well, it looked like we were physical. We played the two defense, the second to last drive on defense, put the whole group in so we were able to get them in early and that was just as much just the heat and we have good players on that group so we need to get them to play. Guys got to play a lot of snaps, T.J. Lateef, that’s a golden day for him to be able to play that many snaps. Cortez Mills Jr. to make that big play, catch that many balls, Isaiah Mozee, all those guys. It was good to get a lot of guys real reps in the second half, coming out of half. A lot of times, like last week, we put the ones in to start the second half and this week I thought ‘What does T.J need?’ He needs to be sitting in the locker room, all those guys in the twos, they need to be sitting in the locker room, like ‘hey I’m going in, have that time to think about it and then they had to go out and perform.’ We got the stop on defense and then we went down and scored on offense, so I was really happy to see that.” 

On progress moving into Big Ten play
“I think you take everything with a grain of salt. We haven’t played the caliber of teams we’re going to play, but all you can do is measure yourself against where you are and the standards that you have. I thought we played an excellent game, the first game in a lot of areas where some of those things are still showing up, the field goal on the first drive and our ability to push the ball through the redzone. We’re going to continue to have to get better. Some things that look like they’re good right now aren’t going to be as good versus a different opponent. You just have to keep reacting as the year goes on. I think we’re a significantly better team than we have been, but the road gets a lot harder. If we stay where we are right now, we won’t win a lot of games moving forward. We have to improve. This was improvement from last week, I thought the week of preparation was excellent. I thought the focus into Friday night wasn’t always elite, and I thought it was really more young guys. I thought the older guys, I have to single out guys like Ceyair (Wright), and Marques (Buford Jr.) and DeShon (Singleton), and the whole O-line, and Dylan (Raiola). I kept bringing it back to this is the standard that we have. I thought a lot of guys did a lot of really good things. We have a long way to go, but to be 3-0 and have played a Power 4 team, and dominated two teams we were supposed to dominate, that’s all I can ask of the guys.”

On Kwinten Ives
“In all three games, the other teams have tackled really low, and we don't tackle low so this week we did a lot of drills of ball security and punt returning drills where we threw bags at guys’ feet. There aren’t a lot of low tackling teams in the Big Ten so I am anxious to see how exactly all that looked. I thought we saw a lot of production out of him, and he caught the ball really well. He hurt his hamstring in the summer, came back, then hurt it again in camp so he was stuck behind a lot of really good players but with (Isaiah) Mozee having to go out to the slot they are kind of playing the two back stuff with him. He is not full time there anymore so Kwinten (Ives) has gotten an opportunity and he’s done a good job. He gives us a big back and a big presence. I think he is a starting caliber player in the Big Ten, and I’ve always felt that since he was a freshman, but we’ve had some pretty good backs in Rahmir (Johnson) and Anthony Grant so he's just had to wait his turn and when he gets an opportunity right now he’s doing a nice job.”

On if the team is ready for Big Ten play
“Dylan (Raiola) was talking about doing his Sunday workout today. I asked the guys to show up and be ready to go tomorrow, and it’s not about any one opponent. I mean, now we are in Big Ten play, we will be playing nine conference games and we are a proud member of the Big Ten. It is a challenging conference and we have a tough schedule and we play a lot of great teams. We have to show up every week. We have to improve every week and improve before we even get to the game. I think the guys will be ready to go tomorrow.”