What did Northwestern State head coach Blaine McCorkle say after Minnesota football's blowout win?
Northwestern State head coach Blaine McCorkle’s team may have come out on the wrong side of a historical Minnesota football’s 66-0 beat down, the Gophers’ largest margin of victory since 1926. But instead, the second year head coach was proud of his team and appreciative of how Minnesota handled Saturday afternoon’s game.
“Well, the score is what it is. I mean, you come up here and you play these games, and sometimes these things get sideways in a hurry, but we definitely didn’t do anything to help ourselves,” McCorkle said in his post game press conference. “
“Yeah, they’re bigger, they’re better, they’re stronger than us. It’s Big Ten football, right? But when you play these games, you have to be clean, and we weren’t clean in the first half in those moments, and that let the game get away from us maybe a little bit more than it should,” he added.
Northwestern State, a 45-point underdog entering Saturday’s game, struggled with the Gophers’ speed and physicality from jump. On the first play of the game, Gophers’ cornerback John Nestor jumped a hitch route and picked off an Abram Johnston pass for a pick-six. The Gophers would add a scoop-n-score later in the first quarter from Matt Kingsbury en route to a 35-0 lead by the end of the first 15 minutes of play.
Despite being down 35-0 at the end of the first quarter and 59-0 at halftime, McCorkle’s Demons team didn’t show any quit. The Northwestern State defense kept the Gophers’ to just seven points in an abbreviated second half and ended their day defensively with an interception and turnover on downs on Minnesota’s final two offensive drives.
“I am proud of our guys. I think they did show up to fight,” McCorkle said. “I think they did show up and try to play hard, and I think that, you know, success is defined as improvement. That’s what we talked about in the locker room, and I think we’re, you know, even with the score today, you know, opponent aside, we’re an improved football team.”
On top of that, McCorkle was appreciative of Minnesota and head coach P.J. Fleck, calling the Gophers “first-class” in the process.
“I really appreciate the way Minnesota handled the game. I think they did it in a first-class manner,” he said. “Being on the other side of that thing before, too, there’s a way you handle those games, and I think they handled it really well, and I appreciate them.”
“Coach Fleck and his staff, for the way they handled the game and kind of took care of us there as the game went on,” he added. “I appreciate some comments he made to me about our program. It was really first-class of things that he said, and it meant a lot to me.”
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