Opening statement
First off, as most of you probably know, we had a serious injury. Christion Abercrombie, one of our former players who is at Tennessee State now, in a game against Vanderbilt, he suffered a serious injury, so our thoughts and prayers are with him and of course his family and their team as they go through this tough time. We all know that injuries are a big part of our game, but when it touches home like this, it's pretty tough. You can leave our program and still be a big part of it. All of us are concerned, but keep your thoughts and prayers with him. This past week, bye week. Lots of things you want to get accomplished during the bye week. For us, of course recruiting was a big part of that. We had a chance to get out and look at some of our commits, just kind of look at hopefully the new members for our football team as we go forward. It's also a productive week for us to kind of evaluate exactly where we are at this stage of our season. Things we need to change up, you know we've critiqued everything. Personnel, scheme, all those things, so we feel like we have a good handle going in to this Rutgers game. Injury wise, of course, that was a big part of it too. We hope to be able to get a few guys back, of course we're not going to talk about those guys yet, but we are getting players back, which would help us an awful lot. Rutgers played pretty good football this past week against Indiana. Close game, one score game right up until the end. So, I'm sure they're really excited about playing us, they beat us here at home last year. They were able to run the football against us, so of course we're pretty excited about playing and getting back on the football field this week.

On loss to Penn State
Our team was disappointed, and you want them to be after any loss that you have. But after a loss or win, you critique how you played, and we've gotten better, we've made progress. So I think our players see that. Now it's about that next step, you keep setting the bar each week. We see that if we take care of some things, we can be a pretty good football team, so that's where we are.

On opportunity to make progress this week
For us, you just can't look too far ahead. We understand the challenge ahead of us this week. It's always tough when you go on the road. Two teams that feel like they have to have this game, that's what were concentrating on as much as anything, and all of our thoughts are going in to Rutgers. This is as big of a game as we've had in a long time as we see it.

Right now, the one thing that can help our program is to get a win against a Big Ten opponent this week. That's the best thing we can do right now to help our program.

On first road game of the season
This is our first true game going on the road, but we have a system, a plan for road games. Besides changing uniforms we have the same routine that we go through whether its home or away. You know when you go on the road there's a crowd that you're going to have to deal with, but we'll be prepared for that. This isn't a new environment for some of our players, we've been there before.

On coming off a bye week
I think if you're banged up a little bit and get a bye, that's a good thing. If you have played a few games and you get a chance to evaluate some things that you've done, that's a good thing. We've made improvements during the bye week and we should see a better product. Each week we make changes, and we've had a long period of time to look at some things. There are some changes that we've made, absolutely.

On QB AJ Bush Jr.'s health
When you have a hamstring injury, you think when there's no pain, you're ready to go, but you're normally not. AJ hurt it on Saturday, and he thought he was ready to go Sunday, the next day. But you have to hold those guys back each week so that it allows them to heal up. He's staying into it, and again it's just a matter of time before he'll be back out there.