Dan Lanning: "That's what they call Big Ten Football."

Saturday night Oregon left Iowa City with a much needed win. Much needed if you want to keep your playoff hopes healthy and alive. For now Oregon remains on track to control their own destiny.

This win had everything. Big plays. Storylines. Weather. Just an absolute gem of a game despite relatively low scoring by both teams. But that’s what was expected.

Here is Dan Lanning talking about that win Saturday night.

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Opening Statement:

“Guys, that was, I guess that’s what they call Big Ten football. And what an unbelievable game. You’re looking up there at the score early and you’re like, okay, it’s 2-0. Man, Iowa does such a good job of being in the fight, you know, continually being in the fight. I felt like we were winning in a lot of categories tonight and they were just hanging around and they did a great job.

Like, obviously, they’re right there in it and you got to give a lot of credit to them for the position they put themselves in. I think there’s going to be a lot of learning moments for us on how we can finish games like this, but to get the ball back with a little bit of time and our guys go execute a two-minute drive, I think just tells you the heart and resiliency of our group. We talk about strength in numbers.
We had some guys that had to step up their opportunities, and they were ready for their opportunities this week, which is unbelievable. Great for them.

I know everybody will want some updates on injuries and where guys are at. You know, I’m really just proud of the way the guys played. But, you know, ultimately, it’s kind of a weird, weird week.
You know, we didn’t actually didn’t have a lot of contact. Dakorien (Moore) kind of tweaked his knee on a non-contact play, I think he’s going to be OK, but was obviously out tonight. Kenyon’s really kind of had lingering injuries since the Rutgers game where he makes a big catch in the end zone and we wanted to give him the ability to try to recover from that because we’ve he’s tried to practice and it hasn’t been what it needed to be. (Alex) Harky rolled his ankle but he was really close to being able to potentially help us in this game and kind of same with D-Jack (Devon Jackson) so all those guys being out you see a bunch of guys step up.

And you need guys to step up in big moments like this, face some adversity early in the game with the interception, and guys just putting each other on each other’s back, right? Defense coming up with a big takeaway. Really good. We said special teams had to be special tonight. We weren’t going to let 21 beat us in special teams, right? I thought our guys didn’t announce any job of covering. And you can’t say enough good things about Atticus Sappington. You want talk about ice in your veins in a moment like that. Several big kicks. I probably should have tried the kick earlier. It was a little bit of a long field goal with the wind down there on that end, and we ended up punting it.

But, you know, ultimately really proud of the way these guys played and attacked.”

On Dante’s Two Minute Drive:

“Man, Dante (Moore) was lights out in that drive, And it reminds me of what we do in practice when we put our guys in a lot of scenarios like that. I don’t ever give them a minute 40, it was a minute 51. I don’t ever give them that much time in practice to go execute that same situation. So they were able to do it quick. You know, Will did a good job, I thought, of starting off with some runs, which was important, you know, to make sure that they know the run’s still alive, especially when you have three timeouts.

We were short of the first down a couple times. Nobody panicked, got up and lined up. And I think we even converted a short yardage there on a third and one with a, you know, a tempo unbalanced play. So, ultimately, just really good job by our coaches and really unbelievable job by our players in those moments.”

On Atticus’ Game-Winning Kick:

“If you want the truth, I was pretty nervous. Yeah, I’m nervous for him because it shouldn’t come down to that moment for Atticus and that guy’s going to feel an unbelievable amount of pressure however that goes. But I’m really proud that he’s able to handle a moment like that. We do a lot of pressure
kicks in practice and try to recreate it, but there ain’t nothing like 70,000 fans, right? Last second of the game. Was it seven seconds left having to kick that kick? You can’t recreate that in practice, and Atticus handled it like a champ, man. Thanks for the question.”

On Winning despite all the circumstances:

“Yeah, as much as the world tries to look ahead, we try to keep our eyes right, what’s right in front of us. And I knew how our guys had to perform tonight, and I thought they did a great job of that.
This is a tough team to run on. That’s as good a defense as you’ll get to play and they play great great D. But we felt like it was really important to run the ball and we had a lot of creative ways to do that I got to give credit to our coaches and then credit to our players you know for Genorris (Wilson) to step up and play a really good game and again we got to go watch the film but there’s a bunch of guys out there that numbers got called Jamari (Johnson) and and Roger (Saleapaga), and those guys to show up and block the way they did and our backs to run the way they did and our wideouts blocking down the field. But we felt like that was an important key to the game is how we, you know, win the rushing battle. And we did that tonight.”