Opening statement
"Big win for our football team this past week. I'm always pumped up about any win. When you start the football season off, you never know for sure what you have, and that first half, that's when you kind of see it. What we saw is that there were improvements we needed to make in a lot of different areas. We like some of the things we were doing. Luckily there's two halves to the game, and I could not be more proud of how the guys competed in the second half. We were down by fourteen points, and when the momentum is not with you, it takes some character guys to step up. In the second half, we cleaned up some things, got momentum. The Jartavius Martin interception kind of gave us a spark to start scoring points. Now it's a 10-point game. Fourth down stop, now it's a tie game. So again, I like the way we competed. Offensively, AJ Bush's first game, he'll play better the second game, but he did a lot of good things. He gave us an opportunity early on to score more points… we had opportunities there.
On the Players of the Game
"Each week we select three players of the game. Offensively was Reggie Corbin. Reggie was outstanding, running the ball. That run down the sideline, gives you goosebumps up your body. He's capable of that, and I thought he played overall a good game with everything. Defensively, Jake Hansen. We've waited for Jake to come out for a long period of time. He's healthy now, lots of tackles, I think he had six officially but we counted seven tackles for loss. He played outstanding ball, him finishing it with that interception. Just one of those really outstanding games. And special teams, Blake Hayes. Blake Hayes has done his job just about every time we ask him to. Few punts inside the 10, two long ones. He just really put our defense in a position to play ball. And there were so many other players. I mentioned some of them, lots more than of course just them. We had quite a few freshmen that played, that got better."
On the defense
"Defensively some of the big plays that happened, some of our younger players were involved, and they won't make those same mistakes again. Some disappointing things defensively, also. We had a lot of third and long, and they converted. Supposed to get off the field in those, and we will in the future. But saying those things, we're 1-0, and looking forward to playing another football game of course this week here in our stadium.
On the students
I thought when our students started coming, and kept coming, they stayed until the end. We will definitely be counting on them this week, and as far as students of course… they can come and bring a guest for free. Can't beat that. We'll need as many of them in the stands this week as possible. But again pumped up about the win."
On Dudek's injury
"Injuries are a part of it also, and unfortunately, we had an injury that is kind of hard to put it into words. Mike Dudek worked so hard throughout his career here. Mike Dudek's season will end. He had a knee injury that happened during the course of the game. Mike has meant so much to our program. We'll be counting on some other players to step up in that role. Besides that, we have some other bumps and bruises from the game. We'll let you know about the rest of the guys as practices play out this week."
On true freshmen stepping up in the secondary
"We've talked about the amount of young players we have. We had to get them in there. We like to tell some of our true freshmen coming in, getting some of them early time. We had a chance to see them. First time out, we had our corners in man-to-man situations quite a bit during the course of the game, and I thought we handled it fairly well. Delano Ware, also Kerby Joseph, Sydney Brown… guys that played quite a bit. After you start, they forget that they are freshmen. We just saw young players really playing hard throughout. It's going to be fun watching them grow."
On Jake Hansen's big performance
"Jake is a good football player, and we expect him to play well each week. He fits the profile of what we'd like to see in our linebackers. Student of the game, works hard… and he can make plays. I know he had a lot of statistics that kind of stand out, but we expected him to play well."
On Western Illinois and defensive game prep
"Offensively, this is a traditional offense. More of a traditional, two back, regular personnel type. We haven't gone against an offense like this for a long period of time. There was a time when most offenses were traditional, and when you got ready for a spread offense, there's a lot of things you have to cover, and that's where we are this week. Western Illinois is a good football team, and they played well this past week. For us, it's a state school that we're playing, and we're the flagship university of this state, so we understand how big this game is."
