Postgame Quotes: vs. Rutgers

Indiana vs. Rutgers
November 13, 2021
Postgame Quotes

Tom Allen | Indiana Head Coach
All right. Really nothing positive to say. Very disappointing, frustrating, bad performance by our team. So very upset about it. And we'll just have to evaluate it and address it and continue to press on.

Questions.

Q. On not being able to find the fight…
TA: Losing today the way we did showed that. You've got six turnovers. Not handling the football right from the first play on. And just execution in that regard. Dropped balls, missed tackles.

And I get it. I understand this is hard. That's fully understandable. But you have to also take a strong, hard look at yourself and how you want to be known and remembered and identified by how you play the game. And that's what it is.

You put that out there, and you put it on film. And you've got to own that. And we've got to own that as coaches. So that's the part that really disappoints me was just the lack of execution and just doing things the right way.

Yeah. I know we've got a whole bunch of guys out, but that's not the point. To me, that's just irrelevant. You still play hard, you still play physical, you still execute and do what you're coached to do.

But, yeah, very -- to me, that's the biggest thing that sticks out is that's not how we practice. So that's just really -- had it been that way all week, I kind of maybe would have felt a little different. But you fumble the first play of the game, I think you just unfortunately set a tone that we never seemed to snap out of. But, yeah, very, very frustrating.

Q. On the message to the fans about next year being better…
TA: It better be. I expect it to be. But, we've got to finish out this year. There's no doubt -- I get it. I understand that that's our responsibility to be able to play to our standard and the way we want to play each and every time we take the field no matter what the circumstances are.

And right now, we let the circumstances I felt kind of drive the way that -- the energy we played with and the focus we played with and the effort we played with. And that's just -- it's not how it works. You can't let that become the driving force.

And so, to me, you know, the guys -- as I just shared with them -- it wasn't like it was a real positive message in the locker room. It was pretty in your face. And that's what it is because it's not acceptable.

So, to me, we've got to find a way to be able to finish out these last two games and play with toughness, grit, and fight.

Q. On the starting quarterback thought process this week…
TA: The thought process was, you know, obviously Jack was the starter before getting injured, and if he can physically go -- really weren't sure when the week started how that was going to play itself out and how that looked. But I feel like that he made progress each and every day.

And so just knew that Donaven was going to be the starter because we just didn't want it to be the case where we didn't know how long Jack would be able to go. We felt good by the end of the week he was going to be able to play. And then kind of see how he did when he was in there, how his foot held up and then expected to play both of them. Wanted to kind of complement the two together.

Basically, that was the thought was to be able to play them both for sure. And based on how each was doing and how the game was flowing, we'd kind of just gauge the rest of it from there.

And then, obviously, Jack ended up getting injured. It wasn't even the foot that he had already injured. It's a different one. Once he went down, obviously, Donaven took the rest of it.

I just expected to play both of them and obviously they did. And we've just got to -- it's one position, as all positions, just got to play better.

Q. On the offensive struggles…
TA: To me, where I envision this is being able to stress the defense and stay on the field. We like to be able to utilize -- to play winning football where you drive down the field and you use up the clock. You have different tempos that you're able to utilize through that.

And, obviously, the lack of high-level quarterback play has been not to what I want or expect. And then got to evaluate up front as well because it obviously starts up front.

At this point, we're not scoring points. So, it's not even close to what we want to it be. It's not even close to the way we want it to look.

So that's something we have to look, and we will. At this point right now it's trying to find a way to get ourselves in a position to go win a football game, which we've not been able to do.

Q. On the sideline incident…

TA: Devon Matthews and Peyton Hendershot are two highly competitive guys. And they both want to win. They're both frustrated. They made it right together between the two of them.

They're frustrated. They want to win. And they want to -- they know that we're not playing the way we need to be playing. They know we're not playing the way we expected ourselves to play. And that's very frustrating.

They're just two highly competitive guys that -- obviously you don't want to see guys getting at each other, but you know what, sometimes that's a part of the process you go through. As a man, you confront it, like we did. And then those two guys were able to address it and press on. I don't think it's an issue.

Q. On Cam Jones not being able to go…
TA: He's just sick. We knew it was a concern but tried to get him hydrated. Again, his is just sick and couldn't go.

That was a big blow. Really didn't -- a couple days ago didn't think that would be the case, but never turned for the better and we're never going to put him -- if the guy's not 100 percent ready to go, we're not going to put him at risk with that. So, he was not able to go today. So that was definitely another guy we needed out there and didn't have.

Q. It's not COVID?
TA: No, it's not COVID. He'll be fine this week.

Q. On potential personnel changes…
TA: You talking about personnel as in coaching?

Q. Yes.
TA: Those decisions will all be made when the season is over as far as just the evaluation of that. Nothing is going to happen right now.

Everything gets evaluated. You have a season like this -- you always evaluate everything anyways. But a season like this and things don't go the way you want them to go, you've got to a take a hard look at every part of your program, all three phases, all the coaches, and myself included, but bottom line is we've got to find a way to win a football game right now.

Have a great day. LEO.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

Donaven McCulley |QB | Fr.
On what happened on the first play..
DM: It was a bad exchange. Fumbled the ball and they recovered it. You can't start the game like that. It just set the tone for the rest of the game and it was just hard to come back from that.

On what Rutgers did to make it tough…
DM: It wasn't really what Rutgers did, it was, honestly, I just need to complete better balls and throw better passes to put my receivers in a position to just make plays and I feel like I didn't do that.

What he's learned about himself this season…
DM: You just have to keep pushing. It's going to get hard like your life is going to be hard. You just have to keep fighting. You can't give up. We're just going to try to win these next three games.

Micah McFadden | LB | Sr.
On the postgame message…
MM: I think it's just we've got to stick together. We can't worry about who's injured, who's not playing, who's sick. Whatever 11 guys are on the field at one time, those are the guys who have to play and perform for this team and today all three phases didn't do that.

On how practice went vs. how today went…
MM: I thought we had a pretty good week of practice like he (Tom Allen) said. From what I saw defensively I thought we performed pretty good during practice. I thought our red-zone play could have been a little bit better during the game but I think we did do a good job this week preparing for them.

On what has gone wrong this season…
MM: I think it's a combination of a lot of different things. I think obviously injuries have affected this team in a way and I think guys could have prepared a little bit harder. I think there could have been a little more effort throughout our fall camp preparation to really get everybody's minds ready for this season and this schedule and opponents that we played.

Greg Schiano | Rutgers Head Coach
That was a victory. I'm really proud of our guys. They battled through adversity during the week, unsure of who was going to be able to play, some did, some didn't. But together, they found a way to win the game. So, I'm really proud of them.

On the defensive adjustments after missing three starting linebackers...
It's really about coaching playing, because there weren't really any schematic adjustments, and that's kind of what we play. I think Singleton and Powell really stepped up big, and had to, 3-man total. They did a heck of a job. I talked to our team about don't tell me what we don't have, we have our entire D-Line, and we have our secondary. We're just missing our starting linebackers, so let's find a way to do it. I thought our kids did a really, really good job, I think the coaches did too. They had the new guys ready to play significant roles, it's not like they haven't played, neither one of them, it wasn't too big for them.

On the offensive line play...
It's hard to tell, like you said, from the field, we were able to run the ball between the numbers. We need to look real hard at what are we doing best right now, let's really dive into that. Again, when you're building something it's kind of a rollercoaster, the bottom of the rollercoaster, now this feels good, we need to find consistency, and that's what the programs about. I'm excited, we're five and five, we're four and four, we're three and three. Our guys are fighting, and we want to be able to write that story at the end of the year, and we got a chance, and obviously we'll see what we can do.

On playing with vision and control...
It's always a good way to play the game if you can, kind of dictates a little bit. They've had some injuries at Quarterback, so they're trying some different guys at Quarterback. We knew that Tuttle might play, and he did actually, the third series he came in. Real proud of our guys, they prepared really well, and they had a great energy today, you know there wasn't a crazy atmosphere by any means, but our guys brought their own energy and I think that's important.

Indiana University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Peyton Hendershot

Cam Jones

Devon Matthews

Donaven McCulley

Micah McFadden

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