Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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it had anything to do with the game itself. It made it a little bit harder on our end, but it didn't affect anything in the game itself." On if he took a moment to appreci- ate playing the game at Fenway Park: "I came out like 15 minutes early and just looked around. I thought the Fen- way Park people and Sam Kennedy did a terrific job of transforming the park into a football stadium. "It really felt like a football stadium. It didn't feel like you were squeezed in or you were shorted anywhere, other than the sideline situation, which I said we could manage. It just felt like a great venue." Fifth-year senior linebacker Joe Schmidt … On matching Boston College's defense: "It was really about being mentally prepared for something like that. I think our coaching staff does a great job of preparing us for a sudden- change scenario where we might turn the ball over. "Our offense has been so excellent all year holding on to the football, but we still need to play team defense and just go out there and pick up our offense. "That's what we're trying to do, and I think we did a pretty good job of that tonight. But there's a lot of things we need to improve upon. I think that's what we're going to focus on over the next week before we play Stanford." On the biggest thing the defense can improve on: "I think we did a good job of taking care of big plays. Unfortunately, we just let up one and that late drive we'd love to have back. "We had a couple chances to get off the field. We're just going to look at those and our overall performance so we can assess where we are and how we can get better." On fifth-year senior safety and fel- low captain Matthias Farley: "He is somebody that's always prepared. He's a defensive back, a special teams captain, a leader whenever he's on the field — and Matthias made some great plays for us today." On playing in Fenway Park: "It was really cool. I really enjoyed this experi- ence. I'm a Boston Red Sox fan and always wanted to go to Fenway. This was very special, and to come out with a victory made it even better." Boston College head coach Steve Addazio … On the game overall: "Obviously Notre Dame has got a heck of a football program and a heck of a football team. They won tonight, and deserved to win. I thought we came out and played hard. I thought our kids battled. We made a bunch of plays early on de- fense. … "Our goal was to come in here, be physical, be tough, be relentless. As a coaching staff we made our mind up that we were going to lead this team very competitively. Everyone was go- ing to have a lot of energy, a lot of juice, and we were all going to fight for a win in Fenway, and we did that." — Jordan Wells