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PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 9, 2006

Joe Paterno

THE MODERATOR: Questions for coach.

Q. Too many mistakes in a game?
COACH PATERNO: Notre Dame played very well. I thought that they did a great job coaching. I think they outplayed us, we made too many mistakes, we were sloppy. I think also you have to give the Notre Dame kids credit for how alert they were and you have to give the coaching staff credit for how many good things they did. They kept us out of balance most of the game.

Q. (No microphone.)
COACH PATERNO: Oh, yeah, I felt we had a chance until we screwed it up real quick in the third quarter. You know, we've done that before. Just got to go back to work.
We were sloppy. Again, I don't want to get into -- you got to give Notre Dame credit. I think they played a really good football game. They tackled extremely well. Whether they were that good on defense, I thought they played a heck of a good game on defense. We had a couple shots early in the game where we didn't come up with the ball.
Overall, I think most of the things are correctable, but we'll have to see.

Q. The clipping penalty, how big a play was that? On the replay, it didn't appear there was a clip. Did you have a view of it?
COACH PATERNO: It was right in front of me and I didn't think it was a clip. I wasn't able to convince the guy with a striped shirt on it who was in front of me.
But that was a big play. I mean, again, we start talking about one bad call or one bad play, you're not going to... They played a heck of a football game, Notre Dame did. I think you've got to give them -- I don't want to take anything away from how well they played, how well they were coached.

Q. Does a young team need something good to happen early and when it didn't...
COACH PATERNO: I don't know. You know, I went out in this thing with the idea, this would be a good experience for the young guys. Regardless of what the outcome would be, I think we'd be a better football team for it. Obviously, I hoped we would play better than we played.
But, you know, Morelli is playing (indiscernible), things aren't going well, he hung in there. He hung in there and did some good things. He had a couple of passes early in the game, if they might have been caught, big-league catches, but the ball was thrown really well.
I think there's some pluses on it, yeah. I think, yeah, a bunch of young kids get out there, I thought the offensive line did well. Once or twice, a couple of young guys fell asleep.

Q. Your impressions of Brady Quinn today?
COACH PATERNO: I thought Brady Quinn was a heck of a football player coming in, and he didn't do anything to change my mind. No, I think he's an excellent football player.

Q. Does Posluszny look maybe a step slow to you? Is he fully recovered from that injury?
COACH PATERNO: Got tired. Had the ball so long. We asked him to do some so darn many things. I think towards the end of the first half, we were hanging on in there. Notre Dame had been really coming at us good pace, the whole bit. Started the game right out of the huddle, things like that.
I think Paul played a pretty darn good football game considering what we were asking him to do in pass defense as well as playing the run.

Q. On Morelli's fumble, was it timing of the game? Seemed indecisive.
COACH PATERNO: Talking about the option?

Q. Right.
COACH PATERNO: He probably made the wrong decision. Had the first down. It was a good third down call. Third and two, if he turns up in there, he's got the first down. Got a little hungry, turned up. Thought he had a chance to pitch the ball out. It was a bad pitch.

Q. Do you think your defensive front people, were you a little disappointed your defensive front people weren't able to put or pressure on Quinn?
COACH PATERNO: You're trying to do it with four men. There again, I think that's where we ran out of gas. We were doing a pretty good job for a while. Then I think they lost that little step, got a little tired. When you play with four guys, they get tired in a hurry against a club as good as this kid. Quinn ran on them a couple times. Quinn took off on them a couple of times.

Q. What do you say to especially your young players on this team to help them bounce back or learn from this experience?
COACH PATERNO: That's my job. Go home, go to work, keep our heads up, keep our mouths shut, let's see if we can get better.

Q. Can you talk about the game plan in the first half? You had about twice as many runs as passes. Is that what you were expecting going in?
COACH PATERNO: We felt we could move the ball a little bit. We had some luck running the ball. Yeah, we actually moved the ball fairly well the first half. It was a question of we didn't do anything to finish them off. Kind of a couple big plays they made.

Q. Did you have any premonition this game was going to get away like it did? I've never seen a game where it seemed to be headed to be a close game.
COACH PATERNO: No, I don't think you ever feel that way. I'm thinking about the next play. I'm not thinking about whether it got away from me or didn't get away from us. That's hard for me to answer that.
You know, you guys would have better insight as to whether the game got away or not because you're up there. I've got to make some decisions, things like that. I never really thought, till they get the fake punt, the big play, which was a great call on their part, till that happened, I still felt we had a shot at it.

Q. The tight end Carlson had a big game. Did they do anything that surprised you that got him so open?
COACH PATERNO: No. But they did a good job. He found him a couple times. Did a really good job. A couple of his throws were right on the button. We were in pretty good shape on a couple of 'em. Obviously, he made the play, Quinn made the play. That kid is a good tight end. We knew he was a good tight end.

Q. Seemed to be pretty successful on the screen plays today. Was that part of the game plan going in?
COACH PATERNO: Well, they were doing a little blitzing. We felt we had to do it. I think you're going to have to these days, with all the zone blitzes and everything else. We were able to do a little something with the screen game.

Q. Was Tony Davis hurt? Did you have any injuries?
COACH PATERNO: You know, I'm not sure. I know Bell got hurt, was limping a little. He went back in. I don't think Tony Davis was hurt. I think there's a couple young kids we wanted to play. We wanted to play No. 10. He's been a kid that's worked awfully hard, Sargeant. There are some kids we wanted to play.
Okay, thank you, guys.

End of FastScripts...

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