Ken Niumatalolo Transcript: Notre Dame

KEN NIUMATALOLO: First off, proud of our kids. I thought they played hard, had a couple of mistakes. We talked about against these guys you can't do that; you have to almost play perfect. I thought we did a lot of good things, and we were close there at the end but obviously not close enough.

Again, proud of our guys. Our guys fought to the end. Our kids didn't show any quit. Tip our hat to Notre Dame. Came up short even though we had a chance at the bend.

Q. You almost did play perfectly on offense in terms of time of possession, 42 minutes. That's pretty darn good.
KEN NIUMATALOLO: We have to finish those drives, those -- we have to finish the drives, and we know that. It is what it is. I mean, we just had some plays that we had to make some plays on defense, had a chance to make it -- like I said, our guys battled, you know what I mean, to the end there and just came up short.

Q. What went into the decision to start Garret rather than Zach?
KEN NIUMATALOLO: Well, we just were gonna see -- Zach had been out for a while, Garret had been practicing and playing well. We wanted to see if they were changing -- because some of the stuff that Coach Elko had done against Army, trying to change up different looks and do different things, and because Garret had been playing, felt like, because he had been playing, stick with him.

We knew that Zach wasn't going to play. We were going to see what they were doing, and they did a lot of similar things he did against Army, so most of it is just because Garret had been playing and Zach had been off for a while.

Q. No thought about him at all today?
KEN NIUMATALOLO: No, it just wasn't good enough. He's much better than we thought, but -- loved to have played him, but wouldn't do that to that kid.

Q. (No microphone.)
KEN NIUMATALOLO: Yeah. And, you know, Garret missed some stuff early on, and said, hey, you've got to make those plays. It puts a lot of pressure on guys but we knew that. We knew coming into the game that we had to play perfect against these guys. It's like that every year.

It's a lot of pressure on our kids. We talked about that this week, just being able to handle the pressure, came up a little short, but, like I said, I was proud of the way our guys fought.

Q. How would you say the defense held up against one of the more explosive offenses in the country?
KEN NIUMATALOLO: I thought we did good on some drives. That drive at the end of the half killed us. That was a back-breaker, because we will get the ball the second half, and then we can really stay on point, but that drive at the end killed us.

We had a big stop there at the end that gave us a chance to win, but we needed a couple more stops and we didn't get them.

Q. What do you have to say about Gargiulo? He played really well.
KEN NIUMATALOLO: Really impressed with him, big catch came up with, he's running the ball really, really well, seeing things and really proud of the way he's playing right now.

Q. You went the whole way with (No microphone.)
KEN NIUMATALOLO: They were available. It's just that Anthony was playing really well. Same thing with when Chris has been playing, if Chris has a hot hand we will stick with Chris.

Q. (No microphone.)
KEN NIUMATALOLO: Pregame.

Q. Really?
KEN NIUMATALOLO: Yeah, pregame. Tried to kick and be couldn't do it.

Q. The miss (No microphone.) I don't know what the conditions were but I know it was raining hard and --
KEN NIUMATALOLO: Yeah. Can't do that, can't turn the ball over. Can't miss field goals, can't bust coverages, you know what I mean? (No microphone.) -- was two deep. We should have been in great shape on their long touchdown pass where we should have been right on it. Our eyes wrong once, hurts. (Away from mic.)

Q. The final play, I mean --
KEN NIUMATALOLO: Yeah, if we would have got the ball off. He was open. We didn't block, we missed the block on the edge. If we get the block on the edge, we had a shot, but missed the block and he had the rush, but he was open.

Transcript by ASAP Sports