What Illinois coach Bret Bielema said about loss to Ohio State

COLUMBUS — No. 1 Ohio State improved to 6-0 on Saturday with a 34-16 win over No. 17 Illinois. Additionally, the Buckeyes struggled at times but are ultimately heading back to Columbus with a win.

Following the game, Illinois head coach Bret Bielema met with the media to discuss the loss. Here’s what Bielema had to say:

Bielema on Illinois’ loss to Ohio State:

“Obviously, going into this games we had some really high aspirations and hopes. They showed up in a great way and unfortunately, our first half performance didn’t match that. I think offensively, defensively and special teams there were some things that we hoped to capitalize on and we just didn’t do that. But I did think at halftime as bad as that first half was with the turnovers and the downing of the punt to give them several possessions inside the plus fifty to have as few points might give us some hope but weren’t able to really get anything going.

“When you take into effect the way we turned it over but also defensively to not get off the field on third down that was some concern. Just not a lot of things went but we gotta crate those moments. I tell them all the time, before you win a football game you gotta stop from losing it. We lost that game. Just too many things we gave them. A good football team like that you can’t spot them opportunities and expect to have success.”

Bielema on the Illini’s offense:

“I actually wanted to go temp the whole freaking game because they couldn’t do shit with it. We were doing a lot of good things. In retrospect, I think we could have done that a little bit sooner, a little bit quicker. Our quarterback is really good with it but they got good players all over the place. Matt’s obviously a really good coordinator. They’ve got really good personnel but seemed like when we went temp things really began to work our way. We just needed to go to it a little more sooner, a little more often.