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UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 29, 2015Jerry KillMinneapolis, Minnesota Q. Is it important to get a marquee win right away to start the year? JERRY KILL: Well, I think it soaked into our players as soon as the off-season started that we were going to open up with somebody that was either going to be No. 1 or No. 2 in the country, so I think our work habits were different. I think it helped us out tremendously. I think right now, I think we've all worked hard to get where we're at, and I think right now we're just in preparation to play our first game, and it happens to be TCU. I think our kids are excited about it. I don't think there's any question about that. It's certainly, I think, helped camp. I think it's helped everybody because we're playing a great football team. Q. Can you bring us up to date on the health of the players, and is there anybody that will not play Thursday night? JERRY KILL: I'm not going to say too much about that. I'm not going to let -- Gary doesn't need to know any more than he needs to know. We'll reveal that when it's closer to the game. But I think right now we'll know here in a few days, but I think we'll be fairly healthy. Q. You also probably don't want to go too much into the game plan, but just speaking generally, we saw the no-huddle so much this spring. Just from a comfort level when you guys practiced with it through camp, where do you think you guys got to in terms of just having that in your tool belt? JERRY KILL: Well, to be honest with you, we haven't done near as much no-huddle as we did in the spring. We experimented with it a little bit, and we've been a huddle team. That's who we are. You know, I think it's helped our defense more than anybody because of their preparation for what they're doing. But no, we're just going to do what we're to do. You can tell Gary we're going to run the wishbone, give him something more to prepare for. Q. Have you heard from boosters or supporters about what it would mean to get a win against a No. 2 team, kind of what that would mean to the program history? JERRY KILL: Well, I think pretty much if I walk outside the door here and go down here to get a Starbucks coffee, I have about three or four people say, hey, Coach, good luck against TCU, hey, we're going to be there. About everywhere I go, I think the people are excited. I think the state is excited. I don't know how you couldn't be. You're going to go first game out of the gate against a great opponent, first game live, 8:00. I mean, for a player and a fan, you know, and for our state, they get that recognition, you can't put a price on it. Yeah, I think there's been a lot of people ask about it. Q. As you've gone through camp here and you've watched Mitch, how have you thought just the way he's handled himself compared to maybe a year ago when he was going into his first full season as a starter? JERRY KILL: Well, I think for the first three or four days of camp Mitch wasn't as sharp as he wanted to be, but I can tell you the last two weeks he's been unbelievably sharp. It's the best I've seen him look since I've been here. I mean, he's done a really, really good job. I think our guys have worked hard, and I think he's got a boatload of confidence right now and more confidence than I've seen him have since I've been here. I'm excited to see him make that transition into the game, but he's done a good job. Q. You mentioned you were optimistic for the wide receivers and now you're getting ready for the first game. How have they progressed? JERRY KILL: Well, I think they've progressed a lot. We've had a good camp. Guys have stepped up, done some good things. Some guys have gotten older. You know, we'll probably have -- Rashad still is a kid that's stood out in camp. Rashad is 6'6", 205, 210, has had a great camp, and he'll certainly play. There's no doubt about that. We're trying to get Isaiah -- you mentioned Isaiah Gentry. We're going to get him healthy. And then guys like Eric Carter, KJ Maye, Drew Wolitarsky have had great camps. Again, they're older and better. But we've got some -- we've got six or seven receivers that we've got confidence in right now, and we spend a lot of time making sure we throw them the ball a lunch to get better at it, and I think we've got some weapons on the edge, and we need to be able to utilize them. Q. When you look at your secondary, how high was that on your list of priorities when you were building the program, that position and developing to where it's at now? JERRY KILL: We've built it on defense. I've always done that. You have to play good defense to win. When we went out and recruited, or drafted so to speak, we went and got defensive players first. I think we did a good job of projecting kids. Eric Murray was a guy that was a wide receiver, and we actually had him come to camp twice to make sure he could make that transition to defensive back, and now he'll be a high-round draft pick. Boddy was a guy that was in junior college. I knew his junior college coach. He had three years left. If we wouldn't have known the guy, we wouldn't have got Briean. Damarius Travis was a great basketball pitcher, a guy down in Florida that just wasn't highly recruited. Not that many people knew about him. And Antonio Johnson was a tailback, and we said, we think he can play safety. Those guys, I think we projected well, and Jalen Myrick, I can keep going on. We've just been able to recruit good in the secondary. They'll have their biggest test right off the bat. They're going to go against guys like run 10.2, 10.3 in the 100 meters. Last year we covered them up pretty good, guys just went up and made catches, made plays. Our secondary knows they've got a good challenge ahead of him, but those kids will look forward to it all year. Q. With Coach Patterson, have you talked to him a little bit less during this off-season or about the same? JERRY KILL: Well, I was with him on a Nike trip. There was 18 or 19 coaches that got invited to go on the Nike trip, and I was on the trip with him and spent time with him and his wife. Here about two or three weeks ago they needed something for their charity and his wife talked to my wife, but in the last month, no, we haven't visited much. I guess at all, really. Q. Less football talk than in other years? I know you've sent people down there? JERRY KILL: Well, yeah, and Coach Claeys went down there for 13 years on the defensive side of the ball. You don't get to talk football as much as you'd like to, and wish you could, because we're similar in a lot of things, but certainly on the defensive side of the ball. But that's part of this game, and the game is not really about us anyway, it's about the players and what they have. That's what it'll come down to, who performs the best in the first game. Q. What message do you want to send to Gopher fans to make sure they're really fired up at kickoff? How much of the atmosphere is going to play into how fired up your guys are? JERRY KILL: I think it's everything. To me we ought to have standing room only. I don't know all the games that have been played here, but I don't know if there's been any opening games that you would go and play a team that is in the top three in the country, and so the atmosphere, the noise, again, all that affects -- when you go to TCU, it's hard to play on the road, and they're coming on the road and playing at our house. In our house, people don't realize that our stadium is loud, the way it's set up. It's loud in there. The more enthusiasm, the more energy that's in our stadium, the more the kids feed off of it, and it definitely needs to be home field advantage. It really does. That's what college football is all about. I think it -- I guarantee you when both teams come out of that tunnel, there will be a lot of energy from both sides of the ball, and I think both teams will have to make sure their guys can -- they've got to settle down and play football. But I think early there will be a lot of energy. Fans will make a difference. They're a big no-huddle team, so the louder the noise, the tougher it is. Q. All these years of coaching, do you have any coming-out-of-the-tunnel memories that stand out more than others just in terms of -- from an observer's standpoint it looks like it's going to be unbelievable, ESPN here, Thursday night game with the national stage. Do you have anything that compares in terms of -- obviously Ohio State last year, for example, or Wisconsin? JERRY KILL: Yeah, I think that as a coach, every time you come out of a tunnel, you've got some juice, but I think when you play a first game and the opponent you're playing, you're not normal if you're not feeling a little adrenaline. I think everybody ought to be feeling a little bit of adrenaline. But yeah, you work 365 days and you don't get very many opportunities, and you're only around so long, so I think it's a great opportunity for our football team and for our coaches and our state. We need everybody to pull together to do everything we can, and I think we're -- I don't know, somebody said 17-point underdogs or something like that, and what have we got to lose. We just go out there and have some fun and play hard and see what happens. I think we had a donor that ran into their AD and even their AD said that he wasn't too worried about us. There's a lot of good things. That's what makes coaching football so fun. There's a lot of people that are locked into this game, certainly on Thursday night. Like you said, ESPN, 8:00, primetime, don't get any better than that. You shouldn't have to get your players ready, you know, like we go to practice today, I don't think I'll have to give them a pep talk about working hard, that's for sure. Q. Boykin was -- talk about him a little. I think ESPN this morning said he was the favorite now, the season favorite to win the Heisman. What challenge does he present? JERRY KILL: Well, he's preseason Heisman guy, so I'd say he presents a challenge. I mean, he's very much like the kids from Ohio State, it's a very similar situation. It's like playing Ohio State. Boykin is a guy that's got a very strong arm and he can throw bee-bees out there, gets the ball out quick so he's hard to sack, and he can run it as well as throw it, and that's probably the toughest thing is being able to keep him locked in the pocket and don't let him get out of there and start running around everywhere. But he's a great player. I knew about him back when he was a freshman and playing wide receiver. He's played a lot. But that tells you what kind of athletic ability he has. You know, we're familiar with some of their kids. I mean, we recruit Texas, and Coach Poore and so forth, we've recruited against TCU, so we know some of the kids. Cody Poock was recruited by TCU, and we got Cody to come here. They know a lot about our team, we know a lot about theirs. But he's a great player. I mean, that's the other thing; even if you -- I mean, if you're just a fan, you've got a chance to see a guy that may win the Heisman Trophy. It's a good opportunity to come see. Q. Do you know there's a coach who could not only build a program but could maintain a program. You're in a situation now with the Big Ten and where it is and your schedule, do you have a season in your career that's been as pivotal or analogous to another season as you've had in this one? JERRY KILL: I don't really -- I don't ever really look at it that way. I just coach. It's happened -- the way it's happened, it's happened the same every time, but I don't think it's so much the Big Ten. I think it's the way our schedule lies. I don't think anybody has got a tougher schedule in college football and certainly the Big Ten than we do because we turn around and play Colorado State that was a tremendous team a year ago. It is what it is. We've been dealt a tough hand schedule-wise, but we were last year. We just added a couple more tough ones on there. That's part of the game, and you know, sometimes playing the best brings out the best, and you know, last year TCU didn't go to well, but maybe it taught us a lot, to be better. We turned the ball over five times, and you turn the ball over five times, you're not beating anybody. There's a lot of things that we can do on our own to take care of business to be able to have a good outing. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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