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PURDUE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 6, 2016

Darrell Hazell

West Lafayette, Indiana

THE MODERATOR: Welcome to week 2 of Purdue Football. The Boilermakers will face the Cincinnati Bearcats this Saturday at noon in Ross-Ade Stadium. We'll go ahead and get an opening statement from coach and then we'll open it up for questions.

COACH DARRELL HAZELL: As you look at our first week against Eastern Kentucky, I thought our guys played extremely hard, and really a good barometer to measure that is, you know, Dick Vermeil, the old Eagles football coach always used to tell -- you can tell the toughness of your team on how they cover kicks, and I thought we did a really good job of covering kickoffs and punts, which was really good to start off the season that way. So obviously we're excited to play Cincinnati this week; good football team, and we'll be looking forward to kicking it off at noon on Saturday.

Q. First, what's the status of ^ Hunte and Larkin, and do you think they'll be able to play on Saturday?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: We're going to try to give Hunte a go today in practice. He should be -- he ran around Sunday when we did some throwing and catching a little bit and he gets better and better every single day. So he's getting really close. He's a probable for this Saturday. In terms of Larkin, he was out of the boot yesterday. He walked around. We'll still take it day by day with him, but he says he feels so much better as of last night around 7:00. So it's a day-to-day thing for those guys.

Q. And offensively, with David hitting nine receivers, the ability to have that many versatile weapons, how important was that for your passing game?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think that's big. It allows you to -- allows teams not to be able to gear up on one particular guy. If he can spread the ball around that way, I think we got a lot of weapons, both at the wide receiver position, but also coming out of the back field and the tight ends. You can't per se double guys as much when you have so many different valuable weapons that you can go to, so I think that'll help us down the road.

Q. Can you assess the way the freshmen cornerbacks played with Mosley and Hayes and the way they stepped in the other day?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah. I thought they did a good job first time being out there. Obviously there's a lot of technique things that they gotta continue to work on, staying low at the point of the break point of the receivers. But they were out there, they competed, and they're only going to get better the more and more they're out there. We'll continue to play a lot of the young players. And that was a nice thing; we played a lot of guys on Saturday, which you know, was or was not the plan; it doesn't matter, but it happened the way it did, which was good for us.

Q. And when you look at Cincinnati, what are your thoughts on them? Kind of assess the way they look heading into Saturday.
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I thought they did a good job last week getting on track in the second half. They made some plays, enough plays to win the football game. They got a good quarterback who's able to find some guys, and they have two big running backs that will pound it up inside. I think they're still trying to figure out where they are in the schemes of things, schematically, but they did a pretty good job in the second half last week. And then defensively, I thought they competed very well in the back end at the defensive back position.

Q. With Cincinnati having become basically a perennial bowl team, is this a really good barometer to see exactly maybe your potential for getting to a bowl, how good your team can be?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Oh, absolutely. I think this is a big game for us, for a lot of reasons. Obviously we gotta keep getting better each and every week. The good teams make sure they're most improving between week one and week two, so I think that's one of the key parts for us, continue to get better, but also, you know, obviously you're playing a good football team and you want to play well and have some success against good football teams.

Q. Obviously time and score will dictate this in some games, but you had 261 rushing yards, 251 passing yards. That's almost perfect balance, I would think, from a football coach's standpoint. Again, taking the time and score, flip that a little bit, in some games. Do you anticipate that maybe continuing to be a key?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I hope so. I think that helps us. If we're able to run the ball for 250 yards, that's a lot of rushing yards. But if you can spread it around and throw it, keeps people off balance. As much as we can be balanced, I think having a phenomenal tailback like we have and being able to go to him at any point in time, you can guarantee his touches. That's one thing that we know. You can't always guarantee wide receivers' touches, so you gotta sometimes manufacture those. But as much balanced offense as we can play, we'll keep guys off balance.

Q. And I would think, you know, Pete asked you about the wide receiver depth. Sometimes that won't be one guy catching 10 passes, and I would think you would rather have seven guys catch four passes.
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, I think the one thing if you look back at last week's game, the guy you like to get more involved is Yance, DeAngelo Yancey. I think we attempted three or four throws at him. We gotta make sure he's involved more in the game plan because he's a really, really good weapon for us. But there's a lot of guys out there you can throw the ball to.

Q. And I wanted to ask you, Gelen with a huge play, I thought that was the most important play of the game because they're driving down maybe to make it 14 to 7. You know, you're a father of a young student-athlete. Do you think it's hard sometimes for offspring, Torii Hunter, Jr. plays for Notre Dame. Gelen is Big Dog's son. When you go to a campus where everyone expects him to be great, is that hard and sometimes does that take some time to find your own niche?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah. I'm sure the expectation for him in his own mind, let alone everyone else's mind, is way up here. And sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get into those roles, which he is now coming into his own. But that's gotta be hard for him, I'm sure, when he sees his brother, sees his father and they want to see the same productivity out of him. He's coming. We like where he is right now.

Q. Last thing, obviously that play, sometimes in any athlete's career can be a shot or a home run or a big play. Sometimes those can be springboards, can't they?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Oh, absolutely. I think that's a great way to put it. You know, sometimes you need a little confidence to get your thing going, and that was good to see him be able to finish that play, not only make the catch, but also finish the run off the catch.

Q. Cincinnati last year turned the ball over one of the most times out of any program. I know it's a new year, some different coaches on their staff, but is that something you're going to be looking forward to try to exploit or try to take advantage of?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: We always do that. It's one of our main staples in being a successful football team is winning the turnover margin, but also going after the ball very aggressively, whether it's interceptions or trying to strip it. And Coach Tuberville is well aware that they've had the struggles in the turnover. So he's preached that to their team about securing the football, but that's one of our goals each and every week is to win that turnover battle because that helps you win football games.

Q. They had some great wide receivers, but a lot of them graduated. I think they've graduated six wide receivers. When you look at their new wide receivers, what do they bring to the table?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, they're all gifted. They're young, obviously, and they play young at times, but that doesn't mean they're not good players. And they're all quite capable of being dangerous, so we gotta make sure we do a good job from a defensive back perspective, linebacker perspective of locking those guys down and not letting those guys have clean lanes, and challenging the catches.

Q. How about on the defensive side of the ball for Cincinnati? They've got Eric Wilson who had 15 tackles that just jumps off the page at you, including two sacks. Is there things in particular you're going to have to be doing to try to slow him down and what does he do that makes him so effective?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: He runs well. He's instinctive. And he's got a little gift of just slipping his shoulders and slipping blocks. So we gotta do a good job of matching up on him and making sure that he's not able to run the gaps and get him blocked. He's a good player.

Q. Last week you were dealing with a lot of uncertainty. You didn't know who the quarterback was going to be, new coaching staff. This week there's still some uncertainty with new coordinators. They've gone to a new quarterback this year. They have new wide receivers. How much does having an extra week of film from Cincinnati help you as opposed to last week where you were kind of going in without really any film to watch from the other team?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, the quarterback showed up last season. The guy that's playing for them this Saturday showed up quite a bit for them last -- I studied him last night for quite a while, in the bowl game, the game prior to the bowl game. So we got a pretty good bead on how he plays, how he throws it, what gives him issues. So we've got a food feel on some things -- obviously they're going to make some adjustments from week one to week two, but we got a pretty good feel on what they're going to do.

Q. Josh Hayes, you talked about how he's come along over the course of camp. At what point did you see something in him that kind of elevated him up to where he is right now in the depth chart and what he's providing for you?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think the number one thing that Josh shows us is that he's a competitor. Everything that he does he's trying to win the drill. That's where it all starts with him. He's very talented, in terms of quickness, ball skills, all those things that you want to see in a young defensive back. Obviously there's still lots of things for him to learn, the little idiosyncrasies that he's gotta figure out as a cornerback and when guys are sitting down on the routes and how to get out of those as quickly as the receiver is, but he's going to be a really, really good player for us.

Q. To go into a game and get an interception in your first game, regardless of the circumstances, do you feel like there's something that can be a long-term benefit from that?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: That'll boost his confidence through the roof, and ours, just being able to make that play. He was in great position. He turned and looked for the ball just as you coach him to do, and then he was able to make the play with the guy draped on his back. That was a good play that he made. So he's going to play a lot of football for us this year and years to come.

Q. You've had time to evaluate things more. What did you like or didn't like that you saw from Norwood and Cason in their first extended action there?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I thought Cason was a little gassed after about the second or third series. Now, I didn't realize we played 31 plays defensively in the first half. That's a ton of plays. We ended up playing 80, but we played 31 in the first quarter -- excuse me. First quarter we played 31 plays. So he looked a little gassed early, rightfully so. But I thought Myles was really physical. He had really two big shots that helped us hitting guys. So if he can continue to play physical and learn how to get out of the break just as the receiver does, he'll be a good player for us.

Q. You mentioned the size of the running backs a couple of times. Is this going to be a bigger test for your defensive front than last week was?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I think every week is a bigger test. You know, our inside guys, Jake and Eddy played exceptionally well, penetrated. They got off blocks fast and made tackles fast. We need those guys -- if those guys can play like that all year, we'll have a lot of success defensively. It's nice to have an Eddy next to a Jake, especially if you're an offensive guy and you're scheming people that have one, it's a lot easier. When you have two guys, you gotta figure out how you're going to double them and what are your issues. Teams will have issues with those two guys inside.

Q. We talked to you yesterday, you had mentioned generally you liked what the offensive line did, but you stopped short of talking about any individuals because I guess you hadn't talked to them yet. Can you share any more yet in terms of individuals that stood out?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Like I said yesterday, Martesse played really well, Jason King played well. But the rest of them played well -- I mean also played well. We will give out those awards today at 2:15, so I don't want to share those yet.

Q. In terms of pass rush, did you get what you wanted out of week one or what needs to be better?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: We got gotta tackle them. We got in the backfield a couple of times on those pass rushes, but we didn't tackle the quarterback. That's the one thing you gotta keep contained. We missed one sack for safety. We gotta do a better job of containing and getting the guy at the quarterback down. And we thought we'd come out quick last week, the ball would come out quick on hitches and bubbles. He held it a couple of times, a little bit longer than we thought he would. This week they'll probably hold it a little bit longer. They do a good job of slide protecting and turning the line one way and bringing it back the other way. So we'll have to have some protection beaters, but we'll have to get home and make some sacks.

Q. Can you assess where Kimbrough is as far as securing punts or actually receiving the punts? It seemed like there was one where he was still a little bit shaky on Saturday, but then another one where I thought he ran back and made a pretty good play.
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Absolutely. I think one of the things, unless you've caught punts, you don't know anything about catching punts. That's just the general public. It's a hard craft to deal with the wind and guys coming down on you and judging the distance, all those things. It's a hard job. And for a first-time guy out there, I thought he did a pretty good job. There's one that we set him too deep. We set him to 45 yards into the wind where they were punting into the wind. We should have set him a lot closer, probably should have set him at 38 yards where he had a chance to come up and catch that. But by and large I thought he did a decent job of catching the ones that he should have caught and getting away from the ones that he shouldn't.

Q. Is there still a lot of instruction with him in those scenarios where it might be more instinctive to someone else?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Not necessarily. I think there's always instruction for that position. And until you're out there, like I say, you have no idea what really happens back there. Sometimes it looks easy, and sometimes you're going to say get up and catch it, that's not always the case.

Q. And have you coached against Tuberville any other time other than the game four years ago?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: No. Tuberville, this is the first time I've coached against him was four years ago.

Q. Just what's Cincinnati's offensive identity?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, you know, I took another look before I came over here. They run zone. They're going to spread you out. They're going to try to throw the hitch. They're going to try to play-action pass when they bring the tight end in and try to push it down the field. It looked like they were running a little bit of midline option, not a whole lot. But they'll be in a three wideout set, I would think, probably the majority of the time. Three and four wideout set.

Q. What about their defensive identity?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Defensively they're an odd front when you have a tight end in your package that's attached. When he's detached, they'll go back to their even front. They're a one high, drop the safety down in the box to the weak side late or they'll play a two-man shell a lot of times when you're in two by two formation. So yeah.

Q. What's your plan this year for Landers?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Play him. Get him better every week and make sure he's ready when he has to be ready. That's the plan for him.

Q. You had mentioned after the game when somebody asked why will this win carry over, "because we have a different mindset" was one of the things you said. How so?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: How so? Just our approach to everything that we do and the seriousness of our guys. Before, you had a cluster of guys that felt that way. Now you have a locker room of guys that think that way. It's fun to watch these guys prepare. Their preparation is outstanding and their attention to details is outstanding. Their ability to coach each other is really good. That's what makes us different right now.

Q. You had mentioned also we have better players right now.
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: That's true, too.

Q. In terms of overall talent that you have on this team, do you think it's the best that you've had since you've been here?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yes.

Q. Why? Because it's everywhere -- or I guess -- you know what I'm saying?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: There's -- I mean if you look around at each of the positions that are starters, that's where you're better, at every position that's a starter. I think that probably the thing that you are concerned about is with the back end a little bit. But the front seven is really good, really good. We have an unbelievable back. You have guys on the outside, lots of them that can hurt you. You got a quarterback that understands the importance of taking care of the football and does it, not only understands it, does it. So when you have those components and you put them all together, you got a chance to be really successful.

Q. You've also mentioned leadership as being better. Where does that show up?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: It shows up when guys, we have 10 guys with lockers that are not clean and I get a text from one of the guys that are in the locker room that says, coach, you need to tell those 10 guys lockers that aren't clean; how are we going to fix that. Just little things like that that may not seem very important, but it's very important. Those are the detail things that these guys look after, and that's why we are different.

Q. After the six wins that you've had over the last three years, the team has lost the next week by an average of 19 and a half points. Is there anything that you've learned or anything that you will do differently this week from that?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: That means absolutely nothing to me. Means nothing to me. I mean I'm so far beyond looking behind what has happened last year, two years, three years ago. I don't listen to any of those things. We're preparing to win the football game on Saturday.

Q. Were you able to get a good gauge on your team last week because it was an FCS opponent? Were you still able to evaluate based off of that?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: We play who's on our schedule. I don't care if it's an FCS, FBS, an NFL team. You play who's on your schedule, and that's all you're concerned about. All these different categories, we don't say this is a FCS school, this is an FBS school; we say this is the team we're playing, what are the things that we have to do to play this football team. The guys in our building, we don't look at it that way. We look at it who are we playing this week, what are the things that we have to do to be successful this week, and that's where we're going.

Q. I guess kind of going with that is because if you guys think you played well and you would think, oh, wow, we're playing really well right now and kind of have this confidence maybe going into this week an overconfidence or not? Do you have to worry about that at all?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: No. Again, it's a mature football team that believes the understanding that the preparation that we do in our meetings and on our practice field, with our bodies, taking care of our bodies -- that's the other thing, that we're doing things to take care of our bodies that we didn't do before. The cold jumps during the season, the stretching during the season, massages, all those things that are important to wins. Don't overlook those things because those are as important as running an isolation or running a blitz. Those things are important, because if you don't take care of your bodies, you're not out on the field and you don't win football games. I mean it all ties together. It's not one component that helps you win a football game. It's all the components that are combined.

Q. Do you want (indiscernible) played in the passing game?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yes.

Q. Do you feel like you have the potential to do that; right? Was it just something that didn't show up last week because of a reason?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah. We missed a few. Maybe if you hit two of those balls we're not having that conversation. But we have more than enough big capability guys in our program to push the ball down the field, hit some of those seam routes. There's one route that Dave threw he took Yancey on a goal route. We had seams called, and both the seams were open for big plays, and he just elected to go outside. Fine decision by him because it's a first or second down. Not good on third down, but first or second down, take your shots. But he did have two seam routes that were coming open, and it was perfect because you had a middle high safety, and that's what it's built for. You know, running the seams, look the safety off throw to the opposite seam runner, and he just decided to go with a press coverage against Yance.

Q. Also you had mentioned you wanted to put pressure on offenses with an extra body is what you said. I'm assuming that means bringing pressure, bringing blitz, bringing an extra guy.
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Got ya.

Q. How often did you do that last week? Did you like your aggressiveness in terms of that?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I thought we did a really good job of calling some blitzes and making the guy move around a little bit. I don't know if he ever felt really comfortable sitting back there. I thought our blitzes could have come a little bit faster, meaning the safeties hit the mark a little bit quicker. I thought we were a little bit late on a couple of those blitzes, but the amount of blitzes we called I thought was really good.

Q. Military appreciation game. Obviously I know that means a lot to you. Been in the news a lot lately with Colin Kaepernick choosing not to stand for the anthem. You stood for the anthem; you always have. Why?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: The flag is very important to me, just to be able to think that a guy like me has an opportunity to do the things that I'm doing each and every week, and all the people that have fought for us and are fighting for us. They gave us this opportunity. And that's why it's so important to me.

Q. Have you had any players on your team come up and say I would like to protest by not standing for the anthem?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Not one.

Q. Would you allow them to not stand?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I'll address that when that happens. That's not happened yet.

Q. As you mentioned earlier, the biggest games are from one to two. Where does this team even make the biggest strides from one to two?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I'd like to see us do a little bit better in pass coverage being able to defend some of those comeback routes, getting the ball out. There's obviously that 4th and 1 kind of eats at you a little bit. We gotta make those in regards to what we're doing, just being able to convert those. Obviously the field goal that we missed, I thought we did a good job working our two-minute drill, getting down there, having enough timeouts to be able to utilize the clock that well, but we gotta hit those field goals. But there's a lot of little things in each position that we can do so much better, which really gives you hope.

Q. You mentioned the pass defense. UC has a lot of different personnel. They have a new coordinator, but are they still capable of really testing you guys from a passing game?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. They'll push it down the field. If they can protect, they'll try to push it down the field and throw those balls up and see if they'll come down with a couple of those balls to make some big plays. That's why I think we gotta, one, make them uncomfortable, make sure there's somebody at his feet so he can't step up and throw it, but also, two, go ahead and challenge the route and get that ball out more times than not. They're going to make their plays. That's part of football. Some teams are going to make plays against you, but we gotta make sure at the end of the day we're making more significant plays than the other team is.

Q. Mike was asking you earlier about Cincinnati's turnovers. Do you go as far as to break the turnovers down that they had last year, see where they were, see where maybe you could exploit the issues, if there's any themes to those turnovers or anything?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Well, last year the other quarterback, Gunner, had quite a few turnovers and then the young guy came in that's playing this week, he had a couple turnovers as well, but it's come from different positions. Now, they had a really good back last year; he's not with them any longer, but they had those two big backs, and one of them put it on the ground last week, the big guy. He's No. 7. So there's different ways you can get turnovers.

Q. I know you stress that all the time, the turnovers, but do you talk to your team this week about the fact that Cincinnati has had some recent issues and to, you know, push them a little bit harder?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Always pushing it. Like I said, that's one of the biggest things on our goal sheet is who wins the turnover battle, so we'll always push it, getting the ball out, whether it's the special teams trying to get the ball out or an offensive player.

Q. You guys had four in week one, which is a good number, obviously, the short sample size, I guess. But you have to feel like you stressed some things in the off season, in the spring, training camp and things. What sort of things did you stress that you feel like maybe had led to you being pretty opportunistic in game one?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah, that's a good question. We had a period built in for six or seven minutes each of those first -- I don't know, first 10 days of practice where it was a ball security and ball disruption period, where we had different drills and different circuits that the guys would rotate around and try to get the ball out on defense, whether it was stripping a quarterback, whether it was stripping a receiver or running back; and offensively we rotated in circuits of different stripping drills where we're securing the football. So you get what you emphasize most of the time, and that's one of the things we'll continue to emphasize.

Q. You did that in the spring, too; right?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: We did.

Q. Is that something you saw somewhere?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: No. It's just -- it's a fact. It's a fact that turnovers win games.

Q. I mean did you see doing it in the drill type, you know, rotation?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: I've done it before in the past, but probably not to the extent that we did it in the spring or in the -- because you look at your turnover margin coming out of last season, you say, okay, where did we fall short, and that was one of the areas where we fell short, so what is the emphasizes gotta be put, and that's why we put a much bigger emphasis on it this spring and fall.

Q. It seems pretty obvious, but it can help a defense that might seem like it's susceptible to giving up yardage. Not saying that's necessarily your defense, but you have some younger guys out there, a little bit weaker maybe or thinner in the back half. Do you feel like that can be sort of something that gives you an edge if you're able to get some turnovers?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: It's always an equalizer if you're giving up yards, you're giving up yards, you're giving up yards, and then bang, all of a sudden you get a turnover. That's always the equalizer, and that's when you tell them to keep fighting and something is going to happen. Most of the times offenses will shoot themselves in the foot, you leave them out there long enough. That's why it's important for us to keep stripping that football.

Q. Outside of Gelen's play, how do you feel like he played otherwise?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: He played well. He played well. I think he graded out in the 80s. Don't quote me on that, but I think he graded out in the 80 percent range. But he played well. I thought he was physical. I saw him throw guys off of him and get to the ball. I'm not sure how many tackles he had. I don't look at those things, but yeah, I thought he played pretty well.

Q. Talk about the importance of fast starts. And obviously you did that Saturday. How much more important is that when you take a step up in the level of competition against Cincinnati?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: It's always good to get off to a great start. I think it's easier playing -- I know it's easier. I know it's easier playing out in front than playing behind. It couldn't have worked out any better. We win the coin toss. We get a return out to the 37, the offense goes right down the field and scores. Get the extra point; we kick off, we hold them inside the 20, and then we get a pick on the first series. I mean you couldn't have scripted it any better. And then we went down and scored again. So that was a great start for us, and to answer your question, I think anytime you can get off to a good start it makes you -- there's so much more energy and those things that help your football team.

Q. I think you probably -- sign of maturity with the team is to prepare for each team the same. But what's it like for a team when it takes a big step up in the level of competition from week one to week two, whether that's preparation or actual game day? What do you see out of your team?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Again, it's about who's on our schedule, and the preparation doesn't change. I don't care who we're playing, we're going to prepare the same way. And obviously we know who's what. But our focus is to make sure we get better as a football team in every single compartment, unit, to make sure that we're playing at the optimal level that we're capable of that week, and each week's going to be a little bit better. We want to get better each and every week. That's the goal to make sure we do that.

Q. As a coach I'm sure you pretty well remember every game that you coach.
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: No, I don't. Some I try to forget. (Laughs).

Q. Fair enough. I guess obviously not a fond memory, your first game as head coach on the road at Cincinnati. What do you remember about that? What sticks out to you about playing it?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Two things. You know, I thought we had a chance early in that football game. I don't know if you remember this or not. We had the ball inside the five, and we screwed it up. We had some calls that didn't get in right, and we had some guys lined up improperly that we had the ball, which we lost some yardage. Then we took a penalty and then we missed a field goal. That comes to my mind that those are things that you can't do when you're playing on the road or regardless of where you're playing. That reminds me, and it was very hot that day. It was pretty hot that day.

Q. And then lastly, I guess, what was it like to share in or be a part of a win with your new boss in attendance for his first Purdue football game?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: Yeah. I was happy for Mike. He was in the locker room after the game, and we all had smiles on our face, and it was great to have him there. And he's got a lot of great things that he's going to bring to Purdue University to keep the tradition going there. So I was happy for Mike.

Q. Coach, you've talked to Stacy and Kyle about preparation, and everybody about preparation. The one thing that stuck out to me and a lot of other folks that I talked to was that after halftime it looks like something different happened, because the team that came out didn't resemble a little bit kind of where it was going at the end of the first half. How did halftime change? With all the new coaches and everybody in there, is there a new aspect? Is there a new focus on what you approach at halftime? How is that working now?
COACH DARRELL HAZELL: You know, it's funny that everyone always wants to address the adjustments at halftime and all those things, and you know, a lot of times it's all about execution, regardless of whether it's the second quarter or the third quarter or the fourth quarter. There's no magical formula. There's things that you talk about that you gotta do this and you gotta do that. But there's no magical formula that you're concocting in the locker room at halftime, all these adjustments. You talk to any coach that's been in the locker room long enough, you make two or three adjustments. You can't tell them seven things. You tell them two or three things that could help your football team, and what happened in the third quarter, probably a little bit better was you got No. 18 or No. 54 that got after them pretty good, and that makes a lot of adjustments right there. There is no magical formula. Obviously there are things that you can get fixed. But it's just your demeanor when you come out of the locker room, how hard you're going to play those first couple of series. We took the win at the third quarter, which was huge. We had dropped a few punts in down deep, which was huge, and we got some three-and-outs, which was really big, and we were able to just keep exchanging service for about three or four series, which is part of the game. You're not going to go out and score every time you're out there, but we exchanged service. We kept gaining 10, 15 yards of field position, and all of a sudden, bang, we ended up scoring and the whole cycle starts again. And that's what you do when you come out. And it's a big chess match of figuring out which piece goes where and when. And the wind was part of it. The punting was part it. Making two great plays keeping it out of the end zone was part of it. We downed two inside the five. I mean those are big plays. We didn't talk about that at halftime at all. We didn't talk one thing about downing two punts inside the five. That was not part of the halftime adjustment. But that's how it all works together.

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