Interviews: OC Cubit | DC Banks | LB Monheim | WR Dudek

Head coach Tim Beckman met with the media at his weekly press conference on Monday. Selected quotes are below.

Opening statement:
"I will start off with a recap from that football game. It was very disappointing, no question about it. As the head coach, you take that on your shoulders because you want your players to be successful. That's the bottom line. I don't care what anyone else thinks or says, you want your players to be successful. If we take out 10 plays in that football game it's a different game, but that's the game of football. You have to make those plays in a football game. You never know when those are going to come. We didn't make those plays. We've got to get better at tackling on defense. We all know that. You could see that this week. We have to make sure that we don't overcompensate at the linebacker position or at the safety position or at the corner or any of the positions by out-running things and letting them cut back on us. We have got to be able to stop the run. That's crucial in the game of football and we're not doing that well right now. Offensively, when you get the ball in the red zone, you have eight opportunities down there in the red zone and you flunk on four of them. That's just the bottom line. You have to be able to score points when you're in the red zone. We want touchdowns and that's what we're going to hold our kids accountable for is scoring touchdowns."

"Now, as we progress, I can say this: this is a new season - we got halfway through - it's halftime as we tell our football team and we're not 0-6, we're 3-3. We have an opportunity to move forward. We are going to take it one game at a time. We're going to set our goals for this football team individually, by position and by defense and offense, and we're going to achieve those goals. Our players play hard, there's no question about that. I haven't talked one thing about effort because our players play hard. They really do play hard, now we have got to play smarter. We're taking it one game at a time, as I mentioned before. We're excited about being able to play Wisconsin. We're 3-3 at the midway point, we have six opportunities left and we're taking Wisconsin first."

On moving forward:
"Everybody wants to win. You want your players to be successful. That's the bottom line. You want your players to be able to feel what the win feels like, especially when it is a winnable football game. It didn't happen, but that's life. You have to bounce back. There is no such thing as quitting. There's no such thing as lying down. There's no such thing in life, especially in sports and in everything you do. So we're going to challenge the football team - which I know they are going to accept - and we're going to move on. We're going to get better today and at the practice we will have tonight."

On the quarterback situation:
"It showed a little bit about Wes because he was ready to come back into that football game and play (despite his injury). We again didn't feel like it was probably right to have him in there. We don't play people that aren't ready. I hope people understand that. We're in this game for the student-athlete. We know that we now have an opportunity for two of our quarterbacks. Reilly O'Toole, who started against Nebraska and had a fairly decent game until you take away a couple plays, but as I mentioned, that's the game of football. Then you've got Aaron Bailey. Aaron is going to know that maybe the opportunity that we had of possibly redshirting him is probably not going to be able to occur now because he has to help us win football games. That's what Aaron Bailey wants to do for this program. Those are things that we have to get prepared for and get our guys ready for Saturday."

On Wisconsin's running game:
"That's our Achilles' heel. We haven't stopped the run the last two weeks, or really the whole season. We`ve got to stop a really good running back; they've got the whole offensive line returning. It's Wisconsin football. They're going to run the power, they're going to run the zone-lead and they're going to run the zone. They will play-action off of that. They do it well and that's why they have such an outstanding running game, number one in the conference right now."

On defensive tackle Rob Bain's performance:
"I thought he played well. He didn't grade out, but one on the defensive did, but I thought Robbie stepped in for his first start. I think everyone gets better through competition. Robbie Bain and Jarrod Clements have been competing against each other and I thought during those practices Robbie Bain practiced better."

On Joe Spencer:
"I think what Joe Spencer does is he's very competitive, he's a physical kid, he can give the calls that (offensive line coach) Tom (Brattan) and (offensive coordinator) Bill (Cubit) want based on protections. He's proven that he's very capable of playing that position."

On Reilly O'Toole:
"I think he overcompensated for some things and tried to overdo (some things) instead of just doing what we need to do. I don't think that's just on Reilly, but I think the entire football team is trying so hard that the mistake comes from being over-aggressive. I think just playing Reilly O'Toole football, which is capable of winning football games and not pressing himself to make the big play. We can drive the football down the field."

On what Aaron Bailey brings to the team:
"Aaron (Bailey) brings a little opportunity to run the football. If you watched last year's (Wisconsin) game, he was able to play in that football game and make some things happen. We're going to put whoever out there that can win football games for our Illini family."