USC vs. Hawaii: Coaches Quotes

Sep 1, 2012; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Southern California Trojans coach Lane Kiffin reacts during the game against the Hawaii Warriors at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee/Image of Sport-US PRESSWIRE

USC head coach Lane Kiffin spoke with the media Saturday night after the Trojans’ handling of the Hawai’i Warriors. Check out this round up of gems from his Sept. 1 press conference:

Kiffin on the win:

“Glad to be 1-0; a lot of teams in the country aren’t.”

Kiffin on the amount of young players that got in the game:

“We played a lot of players, which was good. Before the game got out of hand, we were rotating a lot of guys in, especially on defense and special teams so I’m excited to get to this film to be able to see some of these guys that had not played a lot, to play.”

Kiffin on the defensive line:

“A lot of question marks there [defensive line], but it seems like they made a lot of plays up front.”

Kiffin on WR Marqise Lee:

“I think today showed what I really thought was going to happen with him from year one to year two. He’s so much bigger and stronger now. He made so many plays for us last year towards the end once he was starting to get comfortable in the rotation and playing, and he’s even better now.”

More on Lee:

“He’ll be the best one ever when it’s all said and done.”

Kiffin on QB Matt Barkley:

“I thought Matt did really well. He was a couple drops away from some big time numbers in the first half there. He didn’t get greedy with the balls down the field. I thought he managed the game really well. The concern would be this guy’s gonna be a front runner for the Heisman and he’s coming back to do all these things and just screw it up by trying to do too much. I thought that was a big challenge for him, and he did a really good job.”

Kiffin on RB Silas Redd’s Debut:

“The fumble obviously was disappointing but I thought he did well for a first game, getting out there and getting comfortable, nice touchdown run. But we got a lot of work to do and I think our players know that too.”

Kiffin On the lack of a run game:

“Well we aren’t gonna win a ton of games if we’re not balanced. So we can’t do what we did today verse some other teams on our schedule. We need to be more balanced, more efficient in our run game, and the numbers show that.”