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PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 27, 2008

Joe Tiller

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. (Asking about Kory Sheets)?
COACH TILLER: His shoulder. He's had his shoulder that slips on him every now and then. It did that. It didn't come out all the way. That's good news. He's in the locker room and he's improving now. He'll be sore this week, but hopefully he'll be back.
I don't anticipate missing anyone. Pender hurt his back, too. But he'll be back, so I think we're okay.

Q. Joey played in the first half. Were they doing anything different to get in gear offensively or defense having problems with certain things?
COACH TILLER: I didn't think they did anything different. I thought they executed extremely well. We couldn't get off the field defensively. Offensively, it looked to me like we were going to get caught in a ping-pong game and we had to match their scores every single time.
When we went down there we moved the ball pretty well. Then we went down there on the fourth down, we go four and don't make it. That's huge, you know.
But I didn't think they did anything different. I thought they just executed better. The fact that particularly their first drive where they made a lot of that yardage with big chunks of yards. I think it's different.
I think when you're making three or four yards a play versus 14 yards or 24 yards a play, I think it's different. Because when you get it in big chunks, the whole team picks it up, you know? When you're working for it, everybody's working and not thinking about big plays. They're thinking about just trying to make the plays.
Thought momentum really changed, obviously. We needed to match it offensively, and we couldn't do it.

Q. Are you glad that this is your last game at Notre Dame?
COACH TILLER: No, Coach Weis invited me to come back as a guest coach next year, so I'll probably be here.

Q. It seemed like a lot of the plays in the passing game for them (no microphone)?
COACH TILLER: Well, there were some good catches, you know? I liked their receivers. You know, I like all their receivers. The guys make some plays on the ball. And gee whiz, they caught a couple of balls out of bounds that were phenomenal catches, too.
So I think when you've got a quarterback that's getting the ball this close to the receivers, you've got potential to make big plays particularly with the talented receivers. And I thought the quarterback did a very good job. He's much improved over the quarterback we played against a year ago.

Q. Can you evaluate Curtis' play today?
COACH TILLER: I thought he played better this week than he did last week, And that's what we ask of him. We wanted him to get better. You know, I thought he had a couple of errant throws that certainly could have helped us. But for the most part, he was on the money.

Q. Could you evaluate how your line and your quarterback handled Notre Dame's blitzing of pressure?
COACH TILLER: I thought we did pretty good. How many sacks did we give up? Did we give up sacks? I don't know if we did or not. Yeah, how about that? I thought our guys did pretty good against the multiplicity of blitzes. We prepared hard for it picking it up.
A lot of that has to do with the quarterback, too. Because whether you turn your protection to one side or the other, depends on what he wants and the direction he's going to go with the ball. So he did a good job with the audible checks, and our front did a nice job.

Q. Coach, what are you going to learn from this game that will help you make the most out of your season?
COACH TILLER: Like I said to the team, let's finish what we start. You go on the road, and it's a great environment to play in. So personally I like coming here and playing. I wasn't playing, but I enjoy coaching here.
You know, I think it's a real test for your football team if they can measure up in an environment where, obviously, everybody's against them. So you've got to pull together and execute.
I thought we executed our no-huddle offense. We weren't quite as quick as we wanted to be. I think we were quicker this week than we were last week. So I think we continue to improve as a team offensively.
Defensively, I don't know if we need to take more chances or what, but we can't have a team control the ball that much against us and expect to be successful.

Q. Can you talk about Desmond Tardy's performance, and what he showed you today?
COACH TILLER: Like I said from the start this season, Desmond Tardy, he's a senior. It's his day and he's finally responding. He played pretty well again today, and we hope he continues to do so.

Q. Last week you said you figured you wanted to throw 60 times, you came awful close today. Was that a carry over part of the game plan coming in?
COACH TILLER: That was part of the plan coming in because of the pressure package, you know. Your team that's going to blitz as often as Notre Dame does or like Central did last week, they're going to really, really push the line of scrimmage.
So unless you're going to disclosure formation up where you can get more halves or more bodies, you're going to struggle running the football.
So we came in saying our primary goal in this game offensively was to execute our sport. Short passing game felt like we treated it just like a run. If we made four or five yards on a pass, we were okay with that.

Q. The kick-return game has been real good for you. Today the ball took some crazy bounces to Sheets back there. Ended up two or three times with poor field position. Was that just him mishandling it or was the ball take something crazy bounces?
COACH TILLER: Well, I think they kicked the long short one a couple of times. I don't know if they were intentionally trying to squib the ball along the ground or trying to drive the ball deep. Sometimes the kicker misses the ball or sometimes that's the way he wanted to hit it.
But I thought there were a couple of kicks that were extremely difficult because you had to play them on the bounce, and that puts you out of rhythm a little bit. Otherwise, I thought, you know, I thought Kory made a poor decision on one. He backed it up with a great run, so I guess it didn't matter too much.
But, overall, I thought that we did some positive things, and some things not as well as we've done in the past.

Q. You mentioned the defense couldn't get off the field. Just kind of comment on their running game. This is a team that struggles running the ball, and like you said, they seemed to get yards in big chunks tonight?
COACH TILLER: Yeah, well, they ran the ball good against us. So they may have struggled early in the ballgame.
You know, I think I could be wrong. I'm not in the Notre Dame locker room day-in and day-out, but I think that, you know, they had a really good balance today. And I think invariably if you're throwing the ball well, you know, particularly off the play-action pass or what have you, you've got a chance to run the ball pretty good. And vice versa, if you're running the ball pretty good, you've got a chance to throw it pretty good. And I thought they had really good balance both running and throwing the football.
You know, there's no big secrets out there in college football today. We're playing undermanned at the linebacker position. We've got one linebacker who played for us last year in Joe Holland who was recruited as a safety, and you don't even put a third backer on the field. We're trying to get one on the field in Golding, and I think that will help us down the line.
But we played an awful lot of nickel defense. And if I'm coaching against a team that's going to play nickel all the time, I'm going to run it. At least I'm going to run it more than I normally run it.

Q. Were you surprised that you weren't able to get a lot of pressure on Clausen? I think you guys really almost only had him a few times?
COACH TILLER: Yeah, I thought we'd knock him down a little bit better than we did. I thought he did a nice job moving in the pocket. He took off a couple of times. Avoided pressure when we did knock him down. I thought he did a good job.
Just, to me, he's maturing as a quarterback and he's making better decisions. I think that accounted also for the fact that we didn't get the pressure on him like we'd like to.

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