Nov. 8, 2011
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State head coach Mike Riley met the media Tuesday to preview the Beavers' game with California Saturday in San Francisco.
Kickoff is slated for 3:30 p.m. PT and can be seen live on ROOT Sports Northwest and Comcast SportsNet California. The game is at AT&T Park in San Francisco instead of Berkeley, Calif., as California is renovating its home stadium, Memorial Stadium.
California holds a 33-30 all-time advantage in the series but the Beavers have won 10 of the last 12 matchups and five consecutive with the Golden Bears as the home team.
Below is a selected portion of Riley's press conference. For the full version, visit the Podcast page under "Fan Zone" on osubeavers.com.
Opening statement ...
"Once again we're facing a very good group of athletes, a team that has some impressive wins. We're playing in a new venue for the Beavers since our Emerald Bowl trip there. It'll be a little different than it was then, but we're excited for the opportunity to play a good, physical football team."
On past success against Cal ...
"Every year is a new year. You can't put too much stock in the past. Because, however, both staffs have been there, we look at last year's game and try to use that in preparation for this game. In terms of new personnel, both these teams are at different places - certainly we are. It becomes a brand new game."
On a common thread in the recent victories over Cal ...
"This is our old cliché here - it's whoever plays the best that day. We've played well against Cal. We have a ton of respect for Jeff (Tedford) and that program. We've had a long-standing rivalry - you always feel that way for teams in the league, but especially when staffs have been there for a while. It always seems hard. They're always a good, well-coached team, and it's going to be no different this time."
On facing Cal wide receiver Keenan Allen ...
"He is a fantastic athlete. Not only are our defensive coaches talking about him a lot, but so are our special teams coaches. They have a lot of athletes; he's one of the best."
On the recent success of the fly sweep ...
"A lot of it has to do with winning at the line of scrimmage. You would think that if we have a good balance with our fly sweep we'd be doing better inside, and that's our goal. If you look at attacking a defense, you want to have all parts working - the inside run, the outside run, the play-action pass, and your drop-back game. You want all those things to be basically on attack-mode hurting the defense. We have not hit on all cylinders and we're missing that part of the game, but we're going to work hard to try to get it back. We picked a tough team to do it against. We played the three top defenses in the league the last three weeks, Cal is now No. 2. We're hitting some rough sledding here, but that's not going to diminish our will to run the football."
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