Read everything that Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck had to say following his program's 21-17 win over the UCLA Bruins on Saturday night in Pasadena.

GET THE INSIDE SCOOP EVERY DAY WITH YOUR PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION!

MORE: INSIDE GOPHERS NATION MESSAGE BOARD

First and foremost, you got to give UCLA a lot of credit. My goodness, what a football game! This is what the Big 10 is all about. There are no easy games in the Big 10, period, and I'm not saying this was easy for them. It was easy for us; I'm not saying that. I'm saying there are no easy games. Look at the scoreboards as we go through the week: SEC, Big 10, Big 12, ACC—it’s unbelievable. You have no idea. Jim Tressel said it best: you have no idea who's going to win. That's why he could say, he coached college football and have no idea. I mean, today went back and forth, back and forth—probably one of the worst halves I've ever been a part of as a head coach. For the first half, I was writing that part down, and we probably should have. But what was amazing is you get 60 minutes to play football, and I always equate that to like 60 years of your life; it’s just done in 60 minutes and three hours of football. There are so many life lessons that our players learn, and it's not that they learned it; they have it in them. That’s why I tell you all the time: going to be great husbands, fathers, dads, uncles, grandfathers—this is a life program. I mean, you’re all going to judge us by wins and losses. I get that. But my goodness, even when we were down 17-14, I was walking up and down. I wrote down my notes, but I’m proud of the team I have. This is unbelievable—the resiliency, the resolve. We said it was just going to come down to us, period. We gave them an analogy of boxing this week: you’ve got a team backed into a corner who played four top-20 teams and lost, and those records are 20 and 1. This team was a good football team in third place all the way across the country with all the stats that everybody's writing about—one in eight, multiple time zones—and we just countered that all week, and we just had to keep swinging. It keeps swinging, it keeps swinging, and they came out swinging. We knew we were going to get some shots taken at us, but we had to be each other's cornermen. That was the whole mindset. We have to self-talk; we have to do it better. I’ll be honest: at halftime, I don’t know if I ever talked to a team like that at halftime. It was real honest; it was real honest to every single position group, and it wasn't negative. It was pumping confidence, belief into all of them, including coaches, because that wasn’t very good in the first half. But that's football. That is college football. How many people are going to have a press conference? Sixty-seven teams have lost to say we didn’t play our best football. It's coach talk; it’s cliché, I get it. But we didn’t, and they took advantage of it. We came out in the second half and played better football. Did we still play our best? No. So I love this team; they can keep growing and getting better. We won the turnover battle, which was incredible: 3 to nothing. I think that’s a difference in the game, and I can’t tell you how proud I am of this football team, of our administration, Mark Hoyle. Our administration allowed us to be able to travel out here the way we needed to travel. That was going to make the trip worthwhile. With lots of people coming out—multiple, you know, two airplanes—that takes a lot for administration in times like this to be able to do that, and we needed that in the second half. I can’t thank all of our fans; there were 15,000 plus in the Rose Bowl. They made the trip out here. In fact, we gave them a game ball. I’m not giving out 15,000 game balls; I’ll get the bill for that one, considering it an IOU. But what we’re going to do is just as good as money. Some of you know that movie; some of you don’t. But we’re going to keep a game ball that says “The Fans” on it from this date. I hope everybody who came here for the reasons that they came here for—family, memories, moments their grandfather told them about—had a glimpse of that. I know it's not the Rose Bowl game, but I've never been here, and this was special. Special for our program, special for our fans because of the venue where it is, the memories back in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Just proud to be the head coach of that football team in there. Mark McElroy, our officer, gave us a great speech this morning and played here as an offensive lineman. He gave an unbelievable story this morning at our captain's breakfast and gave him a game ball, too. He comes; he sacrifices every Friday and Saturday in season to come spend time with us as a police officer. And that’s what’s so cool about an organization. And you’re all ready to ask questions, but this is called stalling because I really want to talk about the people that mean so much to this program. It’s one win; it’s one to know. This isn’t the championship, but it’s the one-game championship. If the goal of the week is to win, there are no bad wins. You know, hard losses teach you a lot. This is just a tremendous win for our program, and you’ve got to give UCLA a lot of credit. They’ve got really good football players who played their tail off, and Coach Foster should be congratulated for that.

Yeah, I thought that we could be able to open it up and throw the football down the field. We got into our two-minute set where I think he's really comfortable. Some people might ask, "Why don't you do two-minute all game?" That's just not how we play. But when he's in that mode, he's really, really comfortable, and we're able to use it. He's very effective. Our wideouts did a great job, and I thought our players did a good job for the majority of the time. You know, they had 10 penalties; we had four, and four is high for us. But I thought we kept our composure in that second half, and I felt like that was maybe some of the difference in some of those drives. I thought our guys did a really good job of being poised. But you know, we pitched it and caught it on that last play. I don't think you know how hard that is. I mean, he went through four reads, the O-line held up, pressure in his face, kind of ducked, moved around, and found Darius, which was his last option, and Darius did the rest. That's execution.

It came down in the first half. We didn't executre. I mean, do you want me to read it to you? We had a drop that might have scored. We had a false start on the second drive, which backed us up; we couldn't get the first down. We dropped another ball on third down, and the third drive ended with a missed field goal. On the fourth drive, we only had one more and we punted. I mean, yuck. Second half was way better. You know, I thought that we got pressure on him all night and kept them off balance. They've got some really good players, as you saw.

I didn’t say harsh; I just said intense, positive, making sure they understand what they were doing. If I had the question or the answer, Ryan, to say why we were flat in the first half, I would have fixed it in the beginning. We crossed every T, dotted every I, but my responsibility is to make sure they come out ready to play for 60 minutes. It's a road environment, like I just told you. We didn't execute; that comes down to me. You think you have the schedule right? You obsess about a schedule. You do it uniquely. You talk to as many people as you can. Remember, I've played in Maction. I've done the west, I've done the east. We've been out here twice in our year —like we've been through it all. And you come up with what your team needs. Not only that—I mean, we need to buy in. I've never met a buy-in at the wrong time. I mean, we are beat up. We are held together by tape, bubble gum, and straw. Straw doesn't really do much to hold it together, but you know, Scarecrow kind of does. So, I don’t know. But it's college football. And if every team came out flying, it would be 86 to 85. I mean, it’s difficult to do. But our players overcame, and you got to give them credit. They took it to us in the beginning, and we didn't capitalize on our opportunities. And again, that is my responsibility and my fault. I tell you that if we lost, it was 100% on me, and I even told them intensely, positively, and believing in themselves—the exact same thing that is my responsibility and I failed them in the first half.

I thought they had a really good package in the first half. Again, there are a lot of self-inflicted wounds. Right. That we're going to have to fix because al I can control is us, but there are some things that we're doing in some mod fronts, overloading sides, different blitzes. They pinned back their ears and came after us. They're able to be able to get some negative plays. We put ourselves in a position with the drop, another drop, a penalty, which gives credit to the crowd. All those things you know, but they, UCLA played as good as they played the first half that I've seen on film. That was a complete first half and we didn't play as well to their credit. But they did some really good things on defense and then offensively, I mean, they were pitching and catching, had a good rhythm. They're mixing up the run game with the naked game play action game. Quarterback was running pretty well. We had no idea which one we were go face. You know, we had to prepare for ghosts because we were preparing for two of them and you know based on the data that you see and you work through it, I actually thought we were going to see six (Justyn Martin). You know, we always say, OK, if we had, if we had a bet, which one do we think we're going to see? You know, we thought we were going to see six and I tell you four (Ethan Garbers) did a really good job all day.

I think Daniel Jackson is going to go down as one of the greatest receivers in Gopher history, you know? And I know we're known for running the football, and we need to address what's wrong with our passing game, but he is the ultimate playmaker. You know, it's interesting because Tyler Johnson's here too; he made the trip. You know, he plays for the LA Rams, and Tyler’s in here, and it’s kind of fun when you have those guys keep coming back and being around the team. Daniel is able to make plays in the crucial moments under the pressure of the situation, and I think it's one thing to be able to catch it and do your job. It's another thing to do it under the pressure of the situation. You go back to last year's Nebraska game; what he did for us, what he's done this year for us—I mean, he's the ultimate playmaker, and he's only getting better. He's a great teammate. Over the last two years, I would say he's probably grown the most in his leadership and in being just the best teammate he can be. That's all you can ask from him, and I'm really proud of him, and his family should be really proud of him in the Kansas City area.

It's pretty good. That's what he does, and that's what he does. I mean, I've never met a more confident person in my entire life. You know, even hands 82 back in the day— not even close to the confidence he had; I mean, not even close. I have never met anybody like him. I really have, and I'm glad he's on our football team. I've never heard anybody say, when you go to coach him, "I know, I know." That's it. I know, go get a bug, but every chance he touches the ball, you're like, "Wow, what's he going to do with it?" And he's got great eyes; he's got great feet. I keep telling the story about the Army All-American game. I mean, people in practice were kind of like, "OK, it’s easy; these guys kind of got beat by some of these guys." He’s a baller. He's a baller. Now, is he perfect? No. Is he growing? Yes. Is his best football ahead of him? Absolutely. He's a young true freshman, but I'm glad he's our true freshman, and I know this: the players love him. And it's very difficult to do because he's playing out there when some other guys aren't. I remember when I was in high school, when I got a chance to play on varsity as a freshman. Better not talk about your—I got it—but I remember a lot of parents, a lot of players were probably upset that I was playing as a freshman. And you got seniors and juniors, and nobody's upset he's playing; nobody's upset he's playing well. That's what this team is: they connect, they grow, they want the team to succeed. Whoever's out there, they want to be able to have success, and they love it—not only just because he makes plays but also because of the type of person he is.

"I'll be here next week. That right, boss? What's that song? California Dreamin’. I must have listened to that song 150 times throughout the week, and it's even pretty good: all the leaves are brown, you know? I mean, it’s The Mamas and the Papas. Am I right on that? I must have. I mean, listen, on the way home too, it’s huge for us. We're a national recruiting base, and when you think about the state of Minnesota—with all due respect, Motzko is going to love me for this comment—Minnesota is the state of hockey. That’s what we call ourselves: the state of hockey. And we have to go outside of our state of Minnesota. We take care of our in-state players. We're having more players commit to us in the state of Minnesota than we ever have, especially in the top ten, even producing samples quicker anywhere in the country, including anywhere in this state. But we're a national base because of our coaches’ connections to where they are. We turn over coaches a lot because I want them to go accomplish their dreams, but now we've got some connections in this area, just like when we recruit Las Vegas. We were getting guys like Jordan Howden to walk on from Las Vegas, who’s now starting for the New Orleans Saints. Like, this is a huge area, and now that we have the Big 10 platform from coast to coast, we’re going to be out here an awful lot. I love California. The larger flight costs a little bit more money, but there are a lot of good players out here, and I'll be back here next week and really look forward to the guys we’re going to see. It's good to be able to get those two wins, especially like last week and this week in the state of California. That helps us a lot, especially in the LA area. So I can't thank everybody for coming out: our fans, our donors, our boosters—what a special evening for us."

============================

- Talk about it INSIDE GOPHER NATION.

- Follow us on Twitter: @MinnesotaRivals, @RivalsDylanCC

- SUBSCRIBE to Gophers Nation