Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule met with the media after a 31-24 overtime loss to Illinois. The Huskers are now just 3-1 on the season.

You can watch the entire performance above, and below is an excerpt of what Rhule had to say.

Opening speech

“Ah, that’s a bitter defeat. Winning the game in extra time. Disappointing. We definitely have to learn from that.”

About Illinois’ schedule

“We predicted they would come out and spread out, no huddle like they did. In the second half, they had a lot of yards on the run game. I think at halftime they ran over 100 yards. Just like last week. We didn’t seem to be the more physical team. We won the battle to win the ball today. The defense took the ball away from us twice today and couldn’t get off the field. I thought we had a really good offense for a while and would have liked to have given them a little more possession. They sat there for a long time. Obviously penalties hurt us on defense. There were three drives with the 15-yard run, which is unfortunate.”

How this game compares to games from last year

“Last year we were determined. Tonight was disappointing. Last year I never felt like we got pushed around too much. In the second half we play man-to-man. The guy they play man-to-man tries to make a play. The guy catches the ball. Even on the play they threw the ball to the big O-lineman with No. 94. We can’t let that happen. We stopped them. I love our guys and like I told them, the story was, ‘Hey, they’re going to win all these games. We’re 1-0 every week, safe.’ So we can learn a lot from this game. I’m sure our guys will bounce back. It was a costly night. We had some big injuries. Tommi (Hill) couldn’t play. Turner (Corcoran) looked like he was hurt pretty bad. Gunnar (Gottula) went in. We have to regroup.”

To perform the offense and stop the run

“I don’t think the offense was the big problem. They stuffed the box. They couldn’t cover us. I didn’t feel like they could cover us. I think the problem was, like last week, we didn’t get the ball. Even on that last drive, we were pretty hard at it. Unfortunately, we didn’t score on that play. That’s how Illinois plays. They put everybody in the box. We ran. I thought they were efficient. There are going to be games where people are going to start playing a little bit differently against our guys and we’re going to be able to run the ball a little bit better. I thought Satt (Marcus Satterfield) opened the ball on that drive. With the deep ball to (Isaiah) Neyor and then the cutback to Tommi (Hill), I felt like we had a lot of plays tonight.”