WATCH: Chip Kelly talks UCLA's celebration, winning mentality after victory over LSU

The Bruins' coach stepped into his press conference with wet hair after getting doused by his players in the locker room

UCLA football coach Chip Kelly talks to the press following his team’s upset win over LSU on Saturday.

CHIP KELLY

Your hair looks wet, was there a pretty good celebration in the locker room?

We actually have the same celebration all the time and our guys enjoy throwing water at each other. It’s good to have wet hair on Saturday night, that means we did something good. The players were excited and they should be because they’ve worked very hard for it, but as we told them it’s just one game and our goal is to be 1-0 on Saturday night and so far we’ve had two opportunities to do it and we’ve done it, so we’ll regroup, we’ll be back at it on Monday. We have an improvement week coming up because we’re off. There’s still a lot of things that we have to clean up. There’s still a lot of things that we can continue to do to become a better football team. And our players love that. I think the great thing about this group is they love everything about football. They love training. They love practicing. They love playing.

Environment of this game?

I thought it was awesome. But I thought last week was awesome. I go back to last year. We didn’t have any fans and I don’t think we can be greedy. We’re appreciative of the group that came last week against Hawai’i. It was loud. It was fun. And these players deserve it. I think it’s a really fun group to watch.

Running game?

It just says that I think we have the ability right now in the two games that we played. That’s not projecting it going forward, but we have the ability right now to run the ball and if we’re running the ball well, we’re going to stick with what’s right. I think that when you look at what we hit with play action passes today, those were huge for us. So I think if you’re going to start to load the box to try to take away the run, and that’s the cat and mouse game that goes on there. They made some adjustments and then we had to make adjustments. I thought we had one on that last drive, we tried to throw it on the first down, but Dorian knows in that situation that if it’s not a 100% completion, you got to keep it and he gained five so I thought he made really good decisions today and just proud of how he played and I think he’s going to get better each week. That’s a positive for us.

Brown and Charbonnet?

I’m an equal opportunities scorer. I could care less about how it gets across the goal line. We could throw it across 27 times or we could run it across 27 times. It’s just really what the defense is giving us and we feel like we have the ability to do both. Kyle had a big touchdown, Greg had a big touchdown, Cota had one, so we threw for three, but to have those backs I think makes us feel better.

Ability to answer when LSU scored?

What we talk about a lot is that football is not a game of perfect. No one plays a perfect game. Football is a game of resiliency. You’re not going to shut every team out you play, you’re not going to score every time you get the ball, but you have to be able to have a recovery protocol when you have a bad play, how can you flush it, get out of it, and move on to the next play. But I think this team it’s a sign of maturity that they can do that so they scored first. Great, then we have to answer so to speak, and I thought we really did that today.

Defense's performance?

Don’t get this the wrong way and write this as a headline. I’m not impressed with our defense, it’s what I expect from our defense. I’ve seen it all the time from them. I think it’s a really, really good unit. I think we have depth up front, I think we have depth at linebacker, I think we have depth in the secondary. You saw us change grouping out there, it was like watching a hockey game, changing lines. It’s because I think our defensive staff did a really great job of keeping our guys fresh. Every guy in that whole group that played, and there’s about 25 of them, was just so dialed in on the game plan. They knew exactly what to do, and there’s not a dropoff when you go from one group to another group, which is really cool. I’ve been impressed with them for a long time. I think maybe some other people are starting to think that, but I’ve been really happy with our defense for a while now.

Maturity of this team?

I think in everything, I just think it’s a really disciplined group. When we have a team meeting, I look at my watch and it’s eight minutes early and everybody’s in their seat. They understand that if you embrace the process, the process will embrace you back. I think these guys are getting out of it exactly what they’re putting into it. The cool part of it, the mature part of it is that they’re actually putting more into it because they want more out of it. It’s the greatest game ever invented because you can’t fake football. You can’t half-ass it during the week and then show up on Saturday and just play. It takes everything. And I told our team last Saturday, we were playing an afternoon game and I told them in the locker room after the game, I said, “guys, just so we’re on the same page, you’re not going to beat LSU tonight on Saturday tonight. You can lost to LSU tonight.” It’s how you handle your lifestyle and what you do when you’re not in our building and that’s the maturity that we see on the field on Saturdays, is the maturity that I see every day from this group.

Benefits of big win in terms of week-to-week process?

Yeah, as I just said, I think our players are understanding if you embrace the process, then the process will embrace you back. But the great thing about football is no one cares tomorrow. Your next opponent does not care. Fresno's a really good football team. But next week is an improvement week for us, it's not a bye week, it's not an open date, we're not going to Cabo, taking five days off and then showing back up and getting ready for Fresno. We'll be back at it on Monday. We have a really good plan on how we work out in our improvement weeks, and the great part about this group is that's what they want. If you asked them what do you guys what to do, they don't want a day off, they want to work. And that's the fun part for us, so we'll be back at it on Monday, we'll have a couple days off sprinkled in there, but we got a lot of work to do and we understand that. But to have this feeling on a Saturday – there may be some people surprised out there, there wasn't anybody surprised in our locker room because of the preparation they put in this week.

Key to put pressure on Max Johsnon?

He's a really good player and I'll tell you what, he's a tough son of a gun cause we hit him and he just kept getting up. He was as impressive a guy as I've seen standing in there, and I think one of the qualities of a quarterback that people don't talk about enough is their toughness, and I thought he just stood in there and our guys kept hitting him and he kept bouncing back and they even made that play late there with four minutes to Boutte that went down the sideline. They fought, it was fortunate that our offense didn't give them the ball back, but I believe if we did give them the ball back, that they were gonna come out slinging it again. So that's a really good quarterback right there, I've got a lot of respect for him.

Q Lake being all over the field?

Yeah, Q's one of our leaders. He's a special guys and really leads by example. Talk about a guy who's got a work ethic, you talk about a guy who loves football, that's Q Lake. And what you guys see today is what we see every day in our training sessions.

Where's Ben?

Writing

Oh, just tell him I was asking for him.

We'll text him now

Please.

Treat every game like it's THE game that week...

That's a novel concept, right? Cause we only play one game a week.

Jarmond and Kliavkoff celebrating with your team...

That's the fun part of winning.

Will it be hard to reign them back in?

Not this team. This team is really mature and they understand it. But I think sometimes if you maybe didn't believe going into the game that you were gonna win the game, then maybe that's when you gotta reign some guys in because they start to think they're a little bit better than they are. But they know exactly what they are, and that's what makes me proudest, is that they know they gotta come to work on Monday. And it's an improvement week for us, so we were nice enough to give them a half hour later start, so they earned it.

How big is the win mentally for the defense?

I think it's a good question, I think it's something we can build upon. And I think part of it is when you can then go back and watch the tape and see what we did right to stop that for them and then understand where they fit in the schemes. I thought our guys did a really good job in their run fits, I think our coaches' job is to put our players in position to make plays and then the cool part about this group is they go out and execute. And I think it's a really smart group, we do a lot of things, we can be complicated on the defensive side for the other team to look at. I think it's actually really simple for our players to understand and they do a great job of that. But it looks complex to the teams you're facing. I give all the credit to our players, they really executed the plan that our defensive staff put into place and I thought they were awesome tonight.

Advantage having the Week 1 to Week 2 improvement on your side?

No, that's a really good point. The fact that we had a game under our belt, there's so many things that occurred in the first game that we could get right in the film room to fix because you don't know. And I think it was huge that we had a chance to play a Week 0 game, that was a positive for us, so. But I'd like to amend that statement, I hope your biggest improvement is from Week 2 to Week 3, see if we can continue to get better as a group.

Think you deserve to be ranked?

I don't care. Where you're ranked in – are we in August or September? September? It really doesn't matter. I think what's important is these guys know. You don't have to write down a ranking for these guys, they know they played really well tonight. They also know on Monday nobody cares, so whatever. It is what it is. It's good to talk about for other people, but not for us. Will you talk about it?

We're the AP, we do the poll

You gotta talk about it. Where would you rank us?

Gotta wait for the rest of the games

Rest of the week sorted, that's a good answer. That's called block and bridge, that was really good. I do that a lot.

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