I was putting together a few links when I heard Steve Sarkisian on KJR-AM this morning, so I'll pass along a little of what he said.

--- Sarkisian said he went into the last drive, which began at the 4:01 mark, thinking he wanted it to be "the last drive of the game. I didn't want to give them another opportunity. So that was the thought going in.''

--- He said after the 12-yard sack on first down his thought was "how do we get to a managable third-down conversion.'' On the third-and-15 play he said "it was a tremendous job of protecting Jake (Locker) on the third and 15 to (Jermaine) Kearse and he (Kearse) took a very big hit to convert it.''

--- He said the play was "a middle read'' so Kearse had "a read coming down the hole. ... what I liked about it was the rhythm and timing of the throw, and that starts with the protection.He was able to throw in rhythm and really deliver a throw like he has been able to do since we've been getting going here. ... the ball was in the numbers not up high. If it gets high and it the ball could get jarrded loose. He (Kearse) was able to cradle the catch ..''

--- From there, he said the team ran a few times to run out the clock and ensure USC couldn't get the ball back. "I was still in the mindset that this has got to be the last drive of the game,'' he said.

--- He talked about the 19-yard pass to Kearse with 33 seconds left and said again it was a great throw and more proof of Locker's accuracy. "He's a very accurate passer. To think our goal coming into the season our goal was to be a 60 percent passer and to think we've gone against LSU and USC so far and he's sitting at 60 percent right now is very exciting for us.''

--- Said the one thing he might have done differently is run the clock down to 3-4 seconds before the field goal to make sure that was the last play of the game. UW had no more timeouts left so there wasn't really an advantage to stopping the clock earlier, such as covering a bad snap or something.

--- Said Chris Polk played much better than 71 yards might make you think. "There were not gaping holes and he scratched and clawed and the most important stat is no fumbles. I was proud of Chris. We really challenged him this week and he came back with the mentality he was going to be a physical player against USC and he did that.''

--- Said Donald Butler and Mason Foster had great games. "Those two guys have ben playing at a very high level for us all year and they just continue to do so. I thought they set the tone of how physical we are playing on defense. They tackle extremely well and then to force the turnovers was huge. ... That's kind of going in what we expected out of them and they are living up to it.''

--- Talked about the defensive adjustments after the 10-0 USC lead, something I wrote about for Sunday as well, and said "I thought we put a little quicker team on the field'' in getting Everrette Thompson in at DT, moving Cameron Elisara to the other DT spot and having Talia Crichton at DE. "I thought those guys played faster football and we were not getting reached and we were able to stay in our gaps, which allowed our linebackers to stay over the top and make plays,'' he said.

--- As for putting this game aside and getting ready for Stanford, he said he thinks his team will be able to do it because "there's too much out there for us. Right now we are playing for first place in our conference Saturday. There's too great of an opportunity not to embrace if Saturday.''