On Chauncey Washington maybe not playing this week:

He did well in the Arkansas game in the amount of plays we gave him, but it just hasn’t totally gone away yet. We are going to try and nurse him through the week and hopefully he’ll be able to play some more and just kind of keep going. He’s getting stronger, feeling more confident about it. He’s real weary that it is going to linger like you are talking about, so we are trying to get through that and we are almost there.”

On the running back situation:

“We are going to mix our guys throughout the week and go as we have. See what happens by the end of the week, see who makes it through and whose ready to go, who has a good week and just leave it in a real competitive mode. I know that makes you all uncomfortable about it, but it is the best way for us to do it right now, we’ll figure it out if it changes and when it does, hopefully we will adjust impeccably.”

On going for it on fourth down:

“We have no reason at this time to change our approach. It is just our style, the way we do things.”

On if he had spent any time in Nebraska:

“Just passed through a couple of times while I was at Iowa State. Drove through a couple of times, coming and going, very enjoyable.

On Taylor Mays ready to take on the responsibilities in the defense that Josh Pinkard had:

“He’s going to start in this game. He is ready to do it with the help of Kevin Ellison. Kevin is really good at the communications part of this game the understanding of the schemes and principles and adjustments and all that. So we’ll rely, as we already were relying on him, but even more so. He has to make sure when he says something to Taylor that Taylor acknowledges it and he’s got to hope he’s got it. He had a little better feeling for Josh, but they hadn’t worked that long either, so we haven’t fallen off that much there in terms of communications. It is a lot to ask from a young kid. This is an exciting spot to watch, how does he handle it. He’s prepared beautifully and he’s ready to do it. He played well last week, so he’s been out there before. Again, it is a very high-tech high-propelled passing game he is going to face, so it isn’t going to be easy.”

On what you thought of Reggie Bush on Sunday:

“I thought he looked really good. I thought he played really well. I loved the way he baited them in that first punt, made them think he couldn’t catch back there and tried to draw the coverage in so he could break one. They used him really well. He caught passes out of the backfield, he caught passes as a wide receiver, he looked very comfortable, he looked very fast and I think that had to be a very successful illustration of picking a kid, evaluating him, getting him to play and contribute in a big, big win in a program that needed it badly to get started with the new coaches. I think it worked out just beautifully, the only thing was he just didn’t break one and other than that I think he played great. He’ll play better, he missed a couple of pass protections, but he’ll get better at that.”

Pete Carroll Talks About Saturday’s Game Against Nebraska [USCTrojans.com]