Golden Nuggets: Bigelow Says His Knee Is Still Recovering, Tedford Tries to Explain the Field Goal

With quotes from several Cal players as well as Ohio State players and coaches, yesterday's press conference has many more quotes than usual. First let's hear from Brendan Bigelow, who had a breakout game in front of a national stage.

On his touchdown

"I initially took the handoff and thought don't slow down. I spun off a few people and just tried to stay on my feet, keep pumping and keep running. My eyes got big when I turned the corner. I just try to take what I learn in practice and apply it to the game."

On his injury
"I'm still recovering from my injury, but I'm reaching that point. I'm close to it and I feel ready to add to this team. We need to keep working hard and getting ready for the next game which is pretty big too."

Disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, Tedford didn't really tell us anything we don't already know.

On the game overall

"We can take a lot of good things from today. We made some successful plays, kept our composure and played with a lot of heart. However, we didn't come here just to play well, we came here to win. "

On the second half
"We just kept executing and using the playbook. That's why we went for it on fourth and one. In the fourth quarter we were looking to tie the football game and just go ahead because we were playing fairly well and doing a good job running the clock."
...
On senior quarterback Zach Maynard

"Zach played really well today. He managed the field, took a lot of hits and kept going and kept control of his offense. He really hung in there and played well against a great Ohio State defense."

On the end of the fourth quarter
"When its 28-28 on the scoreboard and there are four minutes left to play, we are going to go for it. We wanted to put some points on the board."

His answers to the second and fourth questions above don't really gel with each other (beyond the fact that the team never went for the second-half 4th-and-1 he mentioned). If we were playing well, executing on a variety of plays, and running the clock, why not go for it on 4th and 1? His answer to the final question indicates that we tried to put points on the board, but it sounds like no one pressed him on why he decided to kick instead of try to convert the 4th down. Oh well. More links after the jump

Football

• Faraudo's live thread traces the events of yesterday's game.
• Uncle Ted has an instant post-game analysis. What did we learn? When the Bears multidimensional offense is humming, they can keep up with some of the best offenses in the nation.
• Ken Crawford at Excuse Me for My Voice recaps the loss by highlighting some of the positives and negatives.
• BearsWithFangs has an in-depth recap with several position-by-position analyses.
• CalBears.com has a photo gallery from the game.
• Faraudo recaps the game and includes a gallery with 41 photos.
• Gorcey recaps the game for BearTerritory and focuses mostly on the offense's explosive day. Most of us probably missed it but Steffan Mos booted the first two punts of the game. The first was a 57-yarder; the second was a terrible 18-yard punt.
• Cal is not mentioned in Ted Miller's bowl projections.
• What did we learn this week in the Pac-12? Cal cannot be overlooked by anyone.