Cooper Barkate After Notre Dame Loss, His Game, and Early Look Ahead to Duke

You had an unbelievable game tonight. Talk a little bit about the mindset that you brought into it with Nellie out and how you felt like, you know, you had to be one of the guys who stepped up. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think the mindset week in and week out is the same thing. The coach is doing a great job of preaching that. So, yeah, it was obviously an exemplified game, so we had to study a little harder, but besides that, about the same. Obviously, Malley means a ton to the team, so for him to go down in the middle of the league, what did that do to the team's mood? How did everyone handle that? It was tough. I mean, besides how good of a player he is, he's a real leader on the team, so losing him was a hurt to the team, but it's a next-man-up mentality, and he wanted us to go out there and play like he was out there, so yeah. That was one thing I was really proud of our team for, coming in, I think it was 24-3. I was only scoring three points on offense. It was tough coming into halftime. I felt a little depleted in the locker room, but the leaders came together and started vocalizing. And then we rallied in the third quarter with I don't know how many unanswered points it was, but that's what I was proud of tonight. To go back to Malley, did he call you guys or like send you back or anything before the game? Yeah, we were talking to him the whole week. Cooper, what's that moment like Wednesday morning? Yeah, like I said, it's tough, especially in practice, losing a guy like that for a game like this, but again, I mean, nothing we can really do. Did you get a chance to see the... I saw it on the replay. I was running a route, so I didn't see it in the game. But, uh... I thought it was a touchdown, but he played his ass off tonight. With the first touchdown catch he had, he really got us going first on offense. What do you think changed for you guys on offense? I don't know. I think the chips are starting to fall our way. I don't think we tried to do anything different. We tried to slow down a little bit, one play at a time. And then we started building. Cooper, Mario said that there's a lot of hurt in that locker room right now after this game, comeback game and all that. What was his message to you guys post-game? And how do you guys use this loss to, whether it's fuel, motivation, whatever, knowing you guys still have a lot to play for this game? Yeah, I think he let us know that this is supposed to hurt. You shouldn't make excuses for a loss like this, but Duke is a great team. And we gotta play them next week, regardless if we won or lost this game. I don't know if you saw their game today, but they're a hell of a team. So probably let this hurt for another day or so, and then Monday I'll forward on Duke.