On Nebraska's early scores putting Wake Forest in a hole
"I think it did. It was so early in the game and all that crazy stuff happened so fast that our guys were just kind of reacting and playing. I felt we were so fortunate when we kicked the field goal to go in at halftime and make it 14-3. Our guys in the locker room were fired up. I think we felt like offensively that giving up two scores, we weren't playing very well. Defensively, we felt like we were playing pretty good football and felt like we could come back out and win a football game. They came out of the locker room at halftime really encouraged that we weren't further out of the game than we were with how bad we played offensively in the first half."
On the impact of Nebraska's opening drive in the second half
"I thought that would really discourage our defense but they came back and played a great game the rest of the way. I thought that opening drive of the second half, they just got (Cory) Ross out on the perimeter and our defensive back got cut and got knocked off his feet and went down, and we ended up in a foot race there. Other than that run, we played pretty good defense for four quarters. I'm disappointed that we played that good of defense and not win the football game."
On Wake Forest's turnovers
"Turnovers kill you but turnover for scores are just ridiculous. We had three of them of them tonight. That is a season or two seasons worth of turnovers for scores. We just didn't give ourselves a chance. We haven't played well together as a team."
On the difficulty of coming from behind when the passing game was struggling
"Our bigger problem was that we couldn't consistently run the football. We had a couple first downs on a couple different series but I think we needed to be able to throw the football a little more. But I think this is the best defensive football team I've ever played against that blitzes as much as these guys. Most teams that blitz you like they do, you get them a little bit. You find creases, it's hard for players to be disciplined and hit gaps. And these guys just come at you and come at you and come at you. We tried to have Ben (Mauk) in the pocket some. I thought the one series we came out and just kind of stayed in a two-minute book and just kind of threw the ball down the field pretty good. But then we took a sack and it took us out of that series. So, I think we were just kind of a hodge-podge tonight and really didn't do anything effectively."
On the play of his running backs
"I thought both those guys gave good efforts tonight. I thought Chris (Barclay) made some mistakes he typically won't make. He just needed some life. We put him back in just because he needed some fire in him. But he did some nice things. Those guys will be working 1-2 and I don't know which way it will go."
On looking back at the game at what changed the outcome the most
"No question, the most disappointing thing to me was three scores off turnovers. I've never had that happen to me as a head coach or assistant coach. I've never seen that happen. An interception run back for a touchdown. That happens once in a while and a fumble picked up and run back. But to have the ball taken from your running back and have two interceptions ran back? The one, we tried to check to the slant and got the ball tipped up in the air. Tonight our defense batted about five or six balls up in the air but we didn't get any of them. It was just the way the night went. I think what we're going to do is go back and look at 31-3 and know that if we take care of the football we are in the horse race right to the wire."