Post-Game Quotes: Indiana vs. Penn State
11/8/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
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Head Coach Kevin Wilson |
"Guys battled hard, tough loss. They made plays more than we did. Tough game. Pleased with the way we played. Got to keep working on it."
Q. Talk about how your defense had 11 or 12 stops, couldn't have asked too much more from them except for that one play?
KEVIN WILSON: "Yeah, and they just -- we didn't mean to. They kind of read a lead draw iso play, and I think one of our young backers thought it was a split zone look and just didn't properly fit in the right area. We were in a quarters two-deep look, and their back is a solid player and just hit the seam and had the one big play. Other than that, the run defense was okay. Got our hands on some balls, got some pressure, but those kids played hard. It's something to build on.
"Penn State, I know they've got some line injuries, and like ourselves, I know they're still kind of working through some offensive issues, but it's something to build on, and that's what we talked afterwards. It was nice to see, but we expect to see that. We want to start seeing more consistency like that, and those guys really need to start up and start playing some good Big Ten defense. We haven't had that. We've had a couple good days. We need back-to-back with at least three games remaining. Appreciate the way they played. Want to build on i.t"
Q. A couple key drops by your receivers during your second half. How do you evaluate the play of your receivers?
KEVIN WILSON: "Again, tough, and real young. You talk about the quarterback not doing well. I thought the one play in particular gets us down an easier scoring opportunity. We went for a long field goal after that, and we could have with the wind tried to sky punt it. We thought we had the leg to get it there and didn't. It didn't hurt us as far as them scoring after that, but that was a nice one.
"Again, time on task. Young receiver, that was a freshman receiver, it's a freshman quarterback. They've still been here long enough, they've all been here through summer, they've got five months on task. They need to be a little bit better.
"They had some drops, but we need to clean it up, and everybody talks about the quarterback, but when protection firms up, you can see he can (Diamont) make some plays and he can run around, and he'll need to get better, but his surrounding players need to play better. That hurt him for sure."
Q. What did you like about the team’s effort today?
KEVIN WILSON: "Well, for the most part at the end, we tried. We tried one route at the end, put one in the middle late and got a pick. I appreciate the way our defense, two times bowed up for the stop and bowed up fair for a field goal still giving us a chance at 13-7. Even only a minute left, still a chance, and that's all -- if you've got that, at least you've got a shot at it.
"You know, he didn't force the ball, played -- I think the more you can tell in warm-ups, I think he's more used to, just like I was laughing, it's amazing how you're only three weeks in, but he's just more comfortable. He's gaining on it. We'll keep doing some things with him, but we've got to keep finding ways. Penn State is a good defense. They can stop the run without overloading it, so as we threw the ball, they still had the leverage on receivers. We didn't have a bunch of wide-open guys. We did have a couple drops on some intermediate passing.
"I appreciate the way Zander played and battled. He's getting better, but he's got miles to go between now and Saturday. He's just a freshman. Our whole offense has got a long way to go."
Q. One offensive touchdown in the last two quarters. What do you have to do to get that going?
KEVIN WILSON: "Well, getting hands on it for sure. You know, we've went round and round between different formation groupings, and of course our passing game has got a little limited in what's going on. Maybe we've got to do some things defensively. Got a defensive score today. We're going to have to create some kicking opportunities, whatever. We're a little bit different right now. It just is what it is. Again, we threw it, we had 40 runs, 28 passes and a couple of times Zander ran, so we had a little bit more balance in the attack today without getting wide open. He didn't get sacked a lot. He moved around okay. But again, we've just got a lot of work with that crowd right now, just piecing it together without getting fragmented too much."
Q. You talk about quarterbacks, and it's important to hear what they see out there. Is he starting to see a little better?
KEVIN WILSON: "To some degree, but at the same time I still think there's just a lot going on. He can go the wrong way in a heartbeat or get bluffed a little bit, so time will tell. But the more he plays, the more relaxed he's getting. I think the more he plays, we're doing a little better trying to help him out, but we've got to keep helping him and he's got to keep coming along and his teammates got to keep helping him."
Q. How would you assess Tevin's play today? Still under 100, but it seemed like he ran hard.
KEVIN WILSON: "Yeah, he always does, and again, we're not necessarily trying to always get his stats as much as win the game. We try to get some few screens out there and he was negative in the pass game to get the ball on the perimeter. We just had a hard time getting the ball outside, and they're pretty stout. We didn't block them inside. He ran hard, had a great week of practice. Again, I think he's a phenomenal player. They were giving up 77 as a team. He had 70 on him. So he had a solid day, but I know he's going to be disappointed because he wanted to win, and that was a game we needed to win. We needed to make some plays, we just didn't quite get it done."
Q. 10 penalties, can you talk about that?
KEVIN WILSON: "Yeah, I think the last four games we had three, four and five, so I don't know what happened all of a sudden. So our track record was we had three, we had four, and we had five, and then all of a sudden we had 10. It wasn't like, well, we had great coaching to get to three, and all of a sudden it was bad to get to 10, but all of a sudden it was three, four, five, and it was 10 today. It is what it is. Hands outside, hands to the face, a couple procedures. That's just the nature of the game. Didn't really affect the game. Maybe sometimes we had a drive going and got a 2nd and 15, 20, and that was kind of hard to overcome, but other than that, that's a good team, and sometimes when you play hard, your hands are going to get outside and you get something. I didn't have an issue with anything other than just the way we just played."
Q. Did anything happen to Nick?
KEVIN WILSON: "He tweaked a ham the other day. They didn't know if he could go. He warmed up and looked good, and as a matter of fact he kind of went in thinking he wasn't going to go. He was available, but at the same time he actually tweaked a ham last week, he didn't -- he did some light work all week. We really warmed him up and he looked very good in warm-ups. I asked him if he was ready. He said yeah. I think Kevin just felt not having practiced in all of that time, and it wasn't nothing he had done. But the way he warmed up, I sense he'll be good to move forward this week."
Q. If Zander had gotten dinged would you have had to use Cameron or Walker?
KEVIN WILSON: "Yeah, that's kind of our next deal. It would be Danny first. We just got Zeke Walker from high school to do some of that stuff, and then we've got Bryce Smith, the walk-on. So that's the four bodies we've got right now. That's what we're working. But Danny is the second guy right now."
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Senior S Mark Murphy |
“I was going to try and get in on it first thing, it was coming in so hot, I didn’t care as long as I caught it.”
On the play that led to the Penn State 92-yard run:
“I know they ran a screen on the other side, which helped split the field and no one was able to track him down. It’s a misfit, sometimes it happens. Unfortunately, most of the time you can down the ball and we couldn’t there.
On the play of Penn State’s Christian Hackenberg:
“The biggest thing for us is he’s a great passer when he can sit back there and throw the ball, we tried to get pressure and tried to force him into difficult situations.”
On how he stays motivated with only a few games left in his college career:
“For that reason like you said - I have three more as an Indiana Hoosier. If we win those three, I can get another shot so it’s not hard to stay motivated. We just have to keep fighting and keep coming.”
On his pick-six:
“It feels good to have a defensive score, we haven’t had one in a while. It feels good to be able to make a play for my teammates.”
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Senior DE Bobby Richardson |
“I thought we did very well, probably one of our best games this season. But, we still could have done better. All week, we’ve really just been stressing going hard, play for each other, play for the seniors. Myself, it’s my second to last game in the stadium. We’ve really just been telling each go hard, run to the ball and get it to them.”
On how the seniors stay motivated:
“It’s not hard. We have to because it’s our final games. We still have young guys who have to develop here and we still have to play for each other so we just have to play ball.”
On any added pressure on the defense:
“It’s a little bit of pressure, but we just try not to look at the negatives, always focus on the positives, how good we can get and just get better.”
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Junior RB Tevin Coleman |
“They were amazing. They were really good, they’re the No. 1 rush defense in the nation so they played a hard game and they really stopped us. They were playing hard, the ends were rushing up the field, linebackers were filling their holes and I just couldn’t get anywhere.”
On getting the ball outside:
“We try to get it outside the tackle because they loaded the box. We tried to get outside but they still stopped us.”
On the play of Zander Diamont:
“He was more comfortable back there, he completed a couple passes and we just have to keep on working with him and keep on getting better each and every week.”
On the play of Indiana’s defense:
“It was amazing to see them stop them and have a real good day today. We just have to keep on working and keep on fighting.”
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Head Coach James Franklin |
“First of all, like always, I want to thank you guys for making the trip and covering us. Want to open by saying that was the prettiest win I’ve ever seen in my twenty years. The water tastes better, the Gatorade tastes better, your questions are going to be better. Everything is good right now.
“Really, really proud of our guys. We went down and saw Keiser on Wednesday, and everything we asked that guy about what we could do to help him and all he wanted to talk about was the team, and how much he missed the team, and how proud he was of Marcus Allen and all he wanted was the win. So we took a picture in the locker room with his jersey and we’re sending that to him. So, really, really proud of our guys.
“Some notes. Fewest points that Indiana’s given up this year. Held Tevin Coleman to 71 yards, I think he had 10 straight 100 yard rushing games. We’ve won three-of-four games on the road this year, which is a good stat. Bill Belton, this is an amazing stat to me, kind of shocks me, but the fact that Bill Belton has the longest touchdown run in Penn State history, 92 yards and fourth career 100 yard rushing game. So really proud of those guys.
“I thought, overall, special teams did what they had to do. We have to do a better job on kickoffs. (Sam) Ficken has been unbelievable with field goals, but we have to do a better job of kicking the ball deep in the end zone. Grant Haley has been special all year long. Talking about a guy in open space tackling arguably, week in and week out, their best open field runner. He’s been really, really good at it. I thought(Daniel) Pasquariello was a little bit better. I don’t know what the stats say but I thought he was a little bit better today. He handled a bad snap and I thought that was a big play in the game. Our defense was great throughout and our offense found a way. We were a little bit more productive with the running game. Obviously we’ve still got some issues with protection and being able to run the ball consistently. But again, this is the prettiest win I’ve had in my twenty years of coaching. I’m looking forward to getting back on that bus and head back home, enjoy this win for a couple hours if you guys will let us, and then wake up tomorrow morning and enjoy getting prepared for our next opponent. Open it up to questions.”
On defense thriving on challenges it gets put in...
“I don’t know about that. Their job is to go out and get three and outs and turnovers and support our offense, and our offense’s job is to support the defense, and we all support special teams. Is there times that’s going to come up? Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. And that’s when the team needs the defense to respond and they’ve done a great job of that all year long."
On what they did against Indiana running back Tevin Coleman...
“What we wanted to do is do what we’ve really done all year long and that is make people one dimensional, stop the run. That’s something that we’ve been able to do. We’ve been effective in the passing game as well because we’ve been able to get pressure on quarterbacks. This guy was a lot more slippery than we thought, hadn’t really seen that on film."
“But I thought, obviously, we were really gap sound, we were aggressive, we were able to get off blocks and things like that. And again we were able to stop a good rusher. You look at his statistics, their offense really went hand in hand with him. They were not an efficient offense. They would go zero yards, two yards, three yards, and then break an 80 yarder. And they’ve been doing that week in and week out. And we’ve done a pretty good job and put an emphasis on stopping explosive plays. I don’t know if we did a whole lot more than what other people have done, down in and down out. What we were able to do is stop the big plays. What I think Jeff was telling me was he’s had a run of like 43 yards or longer in almost every game this year. So it’s an amazing stat and I think our defense did a great job, again, of stopping the run."
