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PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 17, 2017

Amani Oruwariye

University Park, Pennsylvania

Q. Just talk about the white-out and just the environment this weekend and how excited you are to play in something like this. I know Coach said you earned the right for all the attention you're getting and earned the right to play in big games, but talk about what it's like to lace it up and play in an environment like that?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: Yeah, we're excited to just get out there, another opportunity with this team, become 1-0, but it's even more exciting being that it's a white-out. You guys know how crazy it is for the average fan. It's like something they won't ever see ever. But we're excited to just get out there and play under that environment, under the lights, and like I said, be 1-0 again.

Q. What was the bye weekend like for you? Guessing you hung around here, or what did you do?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: Yeah, it's not really easy for me to get home, so I just hung around for the weekend, caught up on some sleep.

Q. Everybody always points to last year's Michigan game; is there anything that you guys even take out of what happened last year in Ann Arbor and how the team went 15-1 since then?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: Yeah, all we do is evaluate the film and just break down what we could have done better. But we're not taking it as a vengeful game or anything like that, we're just using it as a platform to build off of and just from our mistakes in that game.

Q. Getting back to the white-out, what do you remember from your first experience in the white-out?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: My freshman year we played Ohio State, and we lost. That was my first white-out. It was crazy. I just remember being on the sideline and just looking around and seeing the sea of white and just how loud the stadium was. That was the loudest I ever heard it. I was just in awe being a freshman coming in here. But it's lived up to the hype each year after that.

Q. If you had to describe the environment to someone who is not into college football and has never experienced it before, how would you describe it?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: I just -- I don't know, I just would say it's just the loudest thing you'll hear. It's the -- it's just all you hear is just screaming, crazy, fanatic, like crazy fans, and just, like, the whole town is just lit up in white because everyone is wearing white. I don't know, it's just -- you have to experience it most of the time to get a feel.

Q. Switching gears to Michigan, how would you compare this offense and this group of receivers compared to last year since they lost so many guys?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: Yeah, last year they had like better experience. They had a lot more experience coming back. But this year they're a little younger. They're still trying to find their identity. But they have some quality guys there. They've got some good guys that will compete, and we're looking forward to the challenge.

Q. (Indiscernible.) Talk about the impact he's made as a true freshman.
AMANI ORUWARIYE: Yeah, he's a very good athlete. He's obviously someone they look to as a great player and has great potential being that he's playing as a freshman at Michigan. So we're excited to get the opportunity to go against him. But it'll be fun.

Q. If you listed out the good catches that this team has had this year, you may have the best two and you're not a receiver. How did you get to the point where you're that confident with your hands and have you given the receivers any kind of stick for the kind of acrobatic catches that you've made so far this year?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: No, Coach Franklin and Coach Pry emphasize taking the ball away and working on the little things that can help us get our hands on more balls, and whether that's on the jug machine all the time in the summer, just out there making these catches on the field with our own teammates. So we did as much work as we could in the off-season practicing that, and I think it's paying off.

Q. Are you expecting the most physical game you guys have had so far this year?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: Yeah, we're exciting a real physical game with them. We know they're going to come at us and we're going to come right back at them, so we've got to win the battle at the line of scrimmage. The receivers will be physical, the running game, everything, so yeah.

Q. Have many people mispronounced your name really bad since you've been here, or did that happen in high school, also?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: No, it's been my whole life that they mispronounced it, but it's all right. People are starting to learn it a little bit better now.

Q. When you kind of look at where you guys are headed, James said obviously a lot of extra distractions this week, Gameday, those kinds of things, how has he emphasized that to you guys? Was it a Power Point of, hey, there's a lot of other stuff floating around this week?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: I mean, he just always is emphasizing control what we can control because there's a lot of -- there's going to be College Gameday, it's a white-out, rankings and this, that and that, that are going on, and he just wants us to focus on what we can control, and that's winning the day, winning practice today, doing everything we can, eating right, sleeping right, nutrition, everything. Just doing what we can do to be the best of our ability when it comes to Saturday, and not worry about the outside stuff.

Q. You guys always self-scout, but presumably a little bit more during the bye week because you have extra time. What have you seen, just either you or the DB's, things you want to do better down the stretch?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: I mean, as a group, like I said, we want to take the ball away as much as we can. We want to challenge receivers all the time. We're going to be put on an island sometimes so we can stop the run game, but we embrace that. We worked on it all off-season. But we just want to play to the best of our ability, like I said, and just try to make takeaways.

Q. I think Grant has only had to make eight coverage tackles so far this season. What have you seen from him on film if you're paying attention to him or in team meetings, maybe coaches are pointing out what Grant is doing? What is it about his technique that's got him on that level this year?
AMANI ORUWARIYE: Yeah, I mean, Grant is a great player. He pays attention to the details, the little things that coach teaches. He watches a lot of film, like all of us. But yeah, he's just very particular in his game, and he works on his craft all the time, and he's someone that the younger guys and even me myself look up to as far as a work ethic and technique and stuff like that. But he's really taken his game to the next level, so....

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