Kalen DeBoer was proud of the way his team fought to close out Friday night’s game and put itself in a position to have a chance. The Huskies fell down 33-10 at one point on the road to the Bruins — facing the first real bit of adversity they’ve seen all season — and rallied back to make it a one-score game at the end.

But UW played sloppy early in building itself what proved to be an insurmountable hole. The Huskies missed tackles and turned the ball over and had uncharacteristic penalties. DeBoer talked about all of that when he met with reporters after the game.

Here’s everything he said, with video at the bottom.

Opening statement

“Tough loss, dug ourselves too big of a hole in the first half and early third quarter. It was a team thing. You can look at (it like) you’ve got to get a stop or two, but we’ve also got to match some scores early in the game. We hurt ourselves with some penalties, field position weighed heavily in their favor. Both sides of the ball have their role to play with that, as well as special teams. I feel like the ownership of what happened tonight is certainly felt in the locker room, and it’s across the board.

“There’s a team that’s hurting in there because they expect to win. I really believe that. They came out at halftime with a genuine belief that we can go win the football game. It isn’t just something that’s fake. I really felt that and you saw us believe that until the very end. It didn’t go our way, we’ve got to be better in so many things, but the guys are going to fight. If there’s anything you learned anything about our team tonight I think it’s that.”

On tackling and general sloppiness

“Yeah. The penalty thing is where I think you start because those are things that you control. The foolish penalties, whether it be an unsportsmanlike (flag)… fortunately we overcame one at the end but it takes more time to score and we needed more time at the end of the game. We’ve got to be better in the penalty area and those add up.

“We converted some first downs on some third-and-shorts, if I remember right, and a holding pushes you back. It’s not necessarily a foolish penalty, mental mistake, but it’s just something we’ve got to be better at. We really haven’t had those things pop up much at all throughout the year so far.

“Tackling-wise, that’s what they do, they put you in tough spots one-on-one. Their scheme does very similar things to what we do with our scheme. You get out in space and you’ve got to tackle some of their best players. (Zach) Charbonnet is out there catching balls in space and one-on-one, you’ve got to find a way to get him down. DTR, when we’d go after him and get him down and try to lock up the receivers one-on-one, we saw what happened there. They got some big targets and some guys that created space and were tough to tackle one-on-one there too. They’ve got a good football team, you’ve got to give them credit as well. We know no one is going to overlook us. I think that’s the thing that our now guys now realize, is that we’re a team that people are going to get up to play. Not that we went into the game thinking otherwise, but we’ve got to emotionally and physically be ready to play. And the guys fought. I thought emotionally they stayed in it the entire game. I saw the sideline up and down, and it was positive, it was a fighter’s mentality. We were going to go down swinging.”

On if they look at it like the offense just ran out of time at the end

“I mean yeah. I get that. That’s a way you can look at it. But I thought the second half, for the most part, we end up putting drives together. It took a lot longer than what I think we were used to. We had to stack plays on top of plays. Their defense did a great job of making us earn it. They just weren’t going to give the balls down the field and challenged us to run the football. As time went on, we pieced drives together but when you have to stack plays, a holding happens somewhere in there, or a negative play. They made us earn it today. We have answers to that that I think as the game went on we showed that we have, and guys made plays and we got those one-on-ones and fought our way to the end zone. But I get it. Yeah, the clock did run out on us in some ways as well.”

On turnovers

“Yeah, we just don’t do those are things. That safety is something that hasn’t really happened to us. We had a turnover, a couple of turnovers tonight. We had a turnover earlier in the year, but we just haven’t made those big mistakes like that. Based on the resiliency that I thought we showed, I don’t think that was anything that made the difference in the game, but it certainly wasn’t something that helped us and it put us behind the 8-ball early on.”

On moving Jaxson Kirkland inside to guard

“We’ll evaluate the film. We just feel like Jaxson can be a great, great guard. You see how powerful he is and we got a chance to watch the film and he was a great guard at one point on the other side earlier in his career. We had the luxury with Troy (Fautanu) to be able to play wherever we feel Jaxson is just going to give us that extra bit. And knowing what we were going to face tonight we thought that was pretty good with the matchups inside, moving Jaxson inside. We’ll take a look at the film and we’ll continue to evalute. Jaxson is a great player, Troy is a great player, those are really the two that it involves.”

On having to go really young at cornerback (Davon Banks and Jaivion Green) because of injuries

“Yeah. It hurt us. They went for some double moves and some things that they did to our secondary. There’s no way we’re going to put it on them because there were other things that happened throughout the course of the game, too. Certainly, those guys were thrown out there and they had some tough matchups against a quarterback that can sling it and some receivers that can make some plays.”

On Michael Penix, Jr. being pressured and sacked for the first time

“(Laiatu) Latu, starting with him and just what he can do, they pushed the pocket so well and they mixed things up. They’re more sound defensively than they have been and what I’ve seen over the years. They play good team defense. When the quarterback has to hold onto the ball a little bit longer and that pass rush is starting to get in his face, I think there’s a time or two where he felt it. I thought as the game went on, it was great to see him respond and build that confidence. I thought he and (offensive coordinator Ryan) Grubb and the offensive line just continued to build. We got the one sack toward the end and that’s going to happen when they know it’s a passing situation and can pin their ears back.”

On the message to the locker room

“The message tonight was I wanted to get a feel for what it was like in there. I feel like we’re a team that expects to win. And we’re a team that puts in the work to be able to expect to win. It’s going to hurt, and I felt like there were a lot of guys hurting and there were a lot of guys owning up to already what their response was going to be to the mistakes that they made. There’s nothing about losing today that makes you feel good, but I know the quality of character that our team has, based on the response that we had — whether it was halftime or at the end of the game.”