Nick Holt Quotations

When you're a head coach who is rebuilding a program, it takes time to build from down in the bottom when you want to do it right.

We have six days to prepare for our opener and we're going to need every minute of it. I'm happy that we got out of the scrimmage healthy and hopefully we'll go into game week ready for a good football game.

Leaving you guys is the hardest decision we made in our young career. You guys don't need me any more.

I feel good about it. It's bittersweet to leave this place, especially when I know it's headed in the right direction. I know we can be good now.

He's back over there and is happy. We've got to get all four of those guys ready to go.

He has one hell of an arm, man.

He can throw the ball and he's accurate. He's a leader and he's competitive.

I think we'll be OK (on the line) this week.

I think we leave this program better than when we got here.

I would not have been interested. I think it's an excellent conference. I think it provides us stability, and I think we can grow with the conference It helps us with recruiting. It has a great reputation, and I think it fits our school perfectly.

You just have to every day teach them how to win, teach them how to go hard. We don't talk about it that much. We just talk about playing as good, as fast, as hard and practicing as well as we can. And then that stuff takes care of itself.

We needed the time off to get healthy. We'll get some guys back and that will help us be competitive. We are trying to get better. We got back to fundamentals.

We finished that game with three freshmen, a true sophomore and a junior. It wasn't very good.

We should be better than we were last year. I'd be disappointed if we weren't showing improvement. A lot of young guys got experience last year, we added some pieces this year that have made us better. The longer guys spend in a system, the better they should get. We're not there yet, and we can get a lot better. But I think everyone's encouraged by the progress we're showing. Our next step is to turn the losses into wins. We need to get to a point where we're not happy just to be competitive.

Washington State is a good football team. They do a nice job running to the football, playing hard, pressuring and getting after you. Nevada has their work cut out for them.

They already have film of us from last year. They know what we do, and we didn't know what they did until (Monday). So it probably balances out.

Offensively, you can't give up seven sacks. You can't have nine (sic) tackles for loss. You've got to protect your quarterback better. You've got to run the ball better than minus-4 yards. You've got to be less predictable on second down. They are well-coached on defense. They got after us and they did exactly what you should do.

They are a solid football team. They run the ball 70 percent of the time. It will bring a big challenge to us.

It's a smaller community than the greater continent of Los Angeles. More than anything, it's the people.

It's 14-0 and the offense hasn't even been out on the field yet. It could have got ugly, but it just shows you the improvement of our football program.

It's an opportunity I just couldn't turn down.

I've got confidence in myself. I've learned a lot of good things from a lot of great coaches. I knew if I surrounded myself with the right kind of players, we'd be able to do some good things here.

That's definitely one of the reasons I came back. Anybody who's ever been here for a length of time ends up loving the place. It's just a neat place to coach.

The kids got after tonight and there was a lot of intensity and good hits. Getting under the lights brings a different atmosphere and it is fun for the kids. We got a lot of good work done.

I'm going to go work for a Vandal, that's very important.