Arizona head coach Jedd Fisch opened his Monday press conference by acknowledging and offering his condolences to the University of Virginia after a shooting took place Sunday night that claimed the lives of three football players and wounded two other UVA students.

“Our thoughts here at Arizona football are with the families and friends and football community of Charlottesville, Virginia,” he said.

Fisch also talked about his program’s win over UCLA on Saturday and looked ahead to this week’s contest with Washington State. Here’s everything he said, with video of the press conference below.

Opening statement

“Before we get started. I just want to acknowledge and talk about what’s going on at the University of Virginia right now. Our thoughts here at Arizona football are with the families and friends and football community of Charlottesville, Virginia. Obviously it’s a terrible loss. College football is a small tight-knit group, and the fact that we lost three student-athletes that are football players and what occurred there… I don’t know Lavel Davis or Devin Chandler or D’Shean Perry, but I could just imagine what Coach (Tony) Elliott’s going through right now, and just our thoughts and prayers are with them at this time. Obviously, just a horrible, tragic situation. And I know there’s another incident that’s going on at the University of Idaho that occurred with students on campus, which is extremely close to Washington State, so I can imagine there’s some issues going up there, distractions. Scary, scary times and scary stuff. So our thoughts and prayers are with the University of Idaho student body as well. Very, very tough times right now.

“On a different note, we have had a good day and a half here in preparation for Washington State and closing out the game against UCLA. We’ve been able to catch up on a little bit of sleep. I think we got in at 5 o’clock in the morning and coaches got in around 11 yesterday and got started on gameplanning, reviewing film of UCLA, and started working a little bit ahead on Washington State.”

On the impact the UCLA win can have on the program, specifically with recruiting

“Really nothing different has happened for us. We’ve had great success recruiting. We’ve had no issues with people returning our calls. We’ve had no problems with people excited about our program. We play with a ton of young players. A lot of people in Southern California want to be part of our program. That’s been very evident since we’ve arrived. And it’s just the first step in what we believe will be success here in the future. But our job right now is to fully focus on trying to beat Washington State. Our guys certainly enjoyed that victory that they had Saturday in Pasadena.”

On LT Jordan Morgan

“Jordan will not play the rest of the season. Other than that, we’ll let Jordan disclose whatever injury specifics it is, but Jordan will be out for the rest of the year.”

On how satisfying it was for him to beat UCLA

“It is satisfying to watch our kids work as hard as they work and reap a benefit like that. And the fact that we beat a team that was No. 9 in the country in the AP poll and No. 12 in the country in the College Football Playoff poll, who had only one loss, who hasn’t scored less than 30 points all season, there was a lot of people that were questioning whether we could do that. We were a 20-point underdog. And as I’ve said, keep making us the underdog, that’s great. No problem there. But our team’s gonna go out there and expect to win and do everything they possibly can do it. I think our team is very prepared. They work very hard at it. And for them to see that if they trust the process of practice, if they trust the process of preparation, then they’ll continue to win football games. Right now we’re sitting here at 4-6 and will really work very, very hard to try to get these next two.”

On how they handle the left tackle spot with Morgan out

“Sam (Langi) would be the starter, he would go in as the starter, and then we have a few other options there at the No. 2 spot. We’ve got Joe Borjon, we’ve got Jacob Reese. We could always move some guys around if we needed to. Jonah (Savaiinaea), big Jonah can move out there if we needed to do that. But right now our plan would be for it to be Sam and Sam did a great job.”

On OL Wendell Moe

“I think Wendell Moe is just going to keep getting better. More comfortable, feels what college football is like as a freshman. Wasn’t here (in the spring), so the fact that he was able to evolve and grow throughout the season and get better each week… my hope is that he gets better this week than last week, but I thought Wendell had a really good game. I thought our offensive line in general had a really good game. We ran the ball when we wanted to run the ball, and we ran the ball when they knew we were gonna run the ball, which is always the biggest sign of having confidence up front. And when it came down to pass protection, there’s a couple of things here and there that got us, but for the most part, Jayden (de Laura) had either a clean pocket or threw on the move.”

On LB Jacob Manu’s emergence as a true freshman

“That was one team with Jacob Manu, T-Mac, Keyan (Burnett), and Noah (Fifita), three of them were (playing) in the game. T-Mac catching a winning touchdown. Jacob Manu had 10 tackles. … That’s what we’re playing with, that’s what we are. We love it, we embrace it. When we told you guys we were gonna play with a lot of freshmen we meant it. When we said we’re gonna build the program the way we wanted to build it, we meant it. You have guys like Jacob Kongaika and Ta’ita’i (Uiagalelei) that both were playing at Mater Dei last year, and Ta’ita’i had a huge sack in the game. You had guys that were truly affecting the game that were true freshmen. Clearly, Jacob Manu has taken on not just the role of affecting the game but being the leader of the defense.”

On how they look at the next two weeks

“We got to win this game. That’s really how I look at it. We have to do everything we possibly can to do everything in our power to play the best game we can possibly play. We know we’re playing a very good team. … They’ve had a lot of years of success in a row and they know how to win games. It’s going to be our sole focus to find a way to play our best game this week. We want to play better than we did last week.”

On whether or not it’ll be a challenge to keep the team grounded after a big win

“Well, they’ve not won two games in a row since 2019. September, I believe. So, if that’s the case, we need to find a way to get grounded quick and know that it’s our job to try to actually go back-to-back and see if you can win a couple games in a row. Our guys, they seem very grounded, they seem very ready to play, they seem focused on trying to get another one. Just like we told them, winning four this year compared to one is better than winning two or three I guess, but winning five would be better than winning four, and winning six would be better than winning five. We have to find a way to keep on building this program up.”

On whether or not they’re dealing with a flu bug

“We have not, knock on wood. We have not had those issues at this point in time and I’m hopeful that we continue to get vaccinated for the flu. I know that’s been a big one. We’ve pushed that pretty hard. And then also all the COVID vaccinations that our guys could possibly take, or get. Hopefully they continue to do that so we can stay healthy. We can’t prevent injury, so we might as well try to prevent illness.”

On Jayden de Laura facing his former team

“I would love to just say that it’s gonna be just another game for everybody. I would assume that it’s going to have some form of an impact on Jayden. It’s a little different situation than Hunter (Echols with USC). He was the starting quarterback there, he was the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year there. And now he’s here. On the same token, it’s Jayden’s job to make sure it doesn’t affect him and he doesn’t play the game any differently and that he goes out there and he executes in the manner that he executed last week. I believe he will. As you all know, I believe in Jayden de Laura very much. I think he has a great skill set, and if he can just play within himself and not let the opponent affect him, and treat them like they’re nameless and faceless, in a lot of ways that will help him and all of us.”