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PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 2, 2010

Danny Hope

THE MODERATOR: We will start with Coach Hope.

Q. Danny when you look at this Wisconsin team, what are the keys to slowing their running attack down?
COACH HOPE: You have to do a lot of things right. Obviously, you'd like to be able to outnumber them in the box some. That's always the first thing that you would like to try to do against a team that runs the ball really well. You have to play physical all the time or play it as physical as you can all the time because they don't slow down. They gain momentum as the game goes on.
They're really good up front on the offensive line, exceptional size. Their execution part of it is just really good. They're great at the runningback position. So you have to do a lot of things right. You have to have a plan, a scheme that can help you some.
But a lot of it has to do with fundamentals and technique over and over again, details of your assignment. They're going to manufacture some just because they can execute very well.

Q. Going into a game like this, you know what Bret Bielema is going to do. They're going to run the ball, line it up, try to pound you. Is it a matter they're so talented and that's why they have so much success?
COACH HOPE: They're also very patient, as well. If they are running the football and not having great success with it right away, they keep coming back to it, give themselves a chance to be successful. So they're really good at what they do. They hang their hat on it. They don't veer off the path.
You have to accept the fact that they're going to make some hay. You watch them play against the best teams in the country, Ohio State, Michigan State, great football teams. Sometimes those teams execute well, get some hits in, and other times they're getting (indiscernible) out there. It's just the same.
You have to go out there and realize you're going to take some punches and you're going to land some punches. They're going to come out and do what they do, they're going to make some hay.

Q. With your extensive background with offensive lines, just how good do you think this Wisconsin O-line is and what impresses you about that group?
COACH HOPE: Well, they're really good at what they do. They play very well together. They have good size. They're really big. They don't have guys that are big and overweight. I think they carry their weight very well. To have 310, 20, 30 pound guys, they carry it really good. They run good and they're aggressive. They're very good at what they do.

Q. Can you bring us up to date with Justin Siller? Do you expect to have him back on Saturday? When he's able to come back, is it a case where he'll definitely get a shot under center in your mind just because of what he can give you?
COACH HOPE: It depends on what happens with him this week in practice. Obviously whenever he's ready to go, we're going to try to get him ready to try to play some quarterback just because of where we're at numbers-wise and depth chart-wise. It's just whether he'll be ready to go this weekend or not.
Kind of the same boat we were in last week with Rob Henry. We thought he might be able to play in the game at quarterback, that he might be able to throw it. I didn't think he'd be able to throw it that much, I thought he'd be very limited, but he might be able to play. Just have to wait and to see on Saturday.
Justin is the same way, for different reasons. We'll have to wait and see on Saturday whether he can go fast or not. But he's getting better and certainly take time to get him ready. The next couple days (indiscernible) and can go.

Q. Now that we're into November, have you made up your mind about Ralph Bolden? Will he redshirt or do you know yet?
COACH HOPE: Looks like he's going to redshirt. I don't think he's ready to play. Maybe towards the very end he might be really close. Chance it could jeopardize him. Right now looks a lot better than he did a couple weeks ago, but (indiscernible). Goes through drills, gets some ball handling, catches some balls. Nothing with any direct contact or where he has to do a lot of change of direction. Full speed change of direction is a better way to put it.

Q. Can you talk about Wisconsin's quarterback. He has been very efficient, and the problems he presents.
COACH HOPE: He's a really good player. The best thing about him I think is he doesn't make many mistakes. He does a great job of orchestrating everything they're trying to get done offensively. They have a fantastic package run game-wise and also play-action pass-wise that uses formations and movements. He does a great job with the ball handling, getting the run game going at the right looks. He does a great job checking the plays, orchestrating their offense. They have a fantastic running game that takes some pressure off of him.
What he does is he completes passes and he makes plays and he doesn't make mistakes. He's a veteran, accomplished quarterback that's won a lot of football games. The percentage of games they've won with him as the starting quarterback is significant. He's very good. Very good quarterback.

Q. The two runningbacks they have obviously with Clay and Wright, how are they different? What problems do they present?
COACH HOPE: Obviously, one is a big, strong, physical back that you can run him to the line of scrimmage anywhere and he can knock you back and run through arms. He's tough to get down on the ground. You have to get a lot of people around him to tackle him.
Wright is a very fast player. He can make you miss. He's a little bit different in space, a tight player. They're both great players. They're an unbelievable combination that you have to defend at one time. No wonder they're good at what they do with two guys like that in the backfield. Outstanding runningback duo.

Q. Wisconsin's defense, I know the offensive line obviously has a reputation for being physical. Seems like their defense is pretty physical, too, isn't it?
COACH HOPE: Their whole football team is physical. They've hung their hat on being a physical football team and becoming an even more physical football team year to year. They're a very physical football team. They're really big and physical. They're all put together real well. They do a great job of out-executing their opponent a lot of times, which is simple details of fundamental football. They're big, physical, fundamentally sound, very tough. That's why they've won so much. They're also talented. Fast guys at their runningback position. Their field guys are exceptional, as well.

Q. Danny, I know you have one of the best defensive ends in Kerrigan. What did you think of J.J. Watt of Wisconsin?
COACH HOPE: They're similar in some ways. It's funny because we've talked about it, too, around the office because the offensive side of the ball, that's what we're looking at. He sure is a great player. He's significantly bigger than Ryan. This guy is really big. He's two, three inches taller, I believe. 30, 40, 50 pounds heavier, 30 or 40 pounds heavier. He's really big and physical.
He's a guy that's big and strong enough to go down and play inside and be very successful in there. So they move him around some. Slows down being able to run the football away from him. He's a really good player. Similar how they go about the game where they're both big, tough, strong, physical, really good players, but guys that have great motors and play hard the whole football game.
They're similar in some ways. But both of them are very outstanding players at their position.

Q. Thinking back to the game last year, I think Wisconsin came out with the power running game. Do you have to prove that you're able to stop that?
COACH HOPE: Well, stopping it and slowing it down enough to give ourselves a chance to be competitive are two different things. Nobody has gone out on a consistent basis and shut down their power running game, their very strong running attack that they have.
We think we've made some progress. This time a year ago we were at the bottom of league in run defense. I have to look, but I think from watching us play, looking at the film, they're the greatest challenge we've had all season long as far as facing a running game, a running attack. But it's something we're working hard towards and somewhat geared for defensively. Great progress as a football team stopping the run.
We'll have to do a lot of things right. They're going to make some plays, and they're going to make some hay. They're a really good football team, run or pass, that we feel like we've made some progress and we can do some things that can give us a chance to compete.
I think we've made some real progress defensively. There were a lot of plays in the game last Saturday where our defense was on the field and we won those plays and we won those drives. I believe maybe 8 out of 14 drives we were successful defensively. Manufactured a couple medium-sized drives against us. There's still some room for improvement.
A lot of things we look at on film, the players are looking at, are taking steps to get better. I think we keep getting better on defense. I think our front seven are starting to improve every week and have a chance to keep getting better.
We're optimistic we can do some things to slow them down, but we won't stop them.

Q. Wisconsin has had some success in this series in recent years. Could you point to some factors that point to that?
COACH HOPE: The success they've had in the series as of late?

Q. Yes.
COACH HOPE: I think they've had great success in their program before Purdue did. Had a head start. Coach Alvarez was there. They had a couple trips to the Rose Bowl. They built on that. They became a strong football team. Particularly when I was here the last time, '97 to 2001, we competed with them and played very well.
I think they were really out in front of a lot of other schools, not just maybe Purdue, but a lot of other schools in the Big Ten, a lot of other schools in the country, from a recruiting standpoint. Coach Alvarez I thought really got them ahead in the recruiting race a little bit, sooner than some other schools did. I think that really impacted the program a lot. They've done a lot of great things to build on to and springboard their success and their momentum.
They're one of the top programs in the country I think the last several years, and certainly are one of the great teams in the country this year.

Q. Coach, I wanted to clarify. You're not certain what the situation is with your quarterback going into this weekend?
COACH HOPE: That's right. Same as last week. Still won't know until game time. This time last week we thought that Rob Henry might be able to pass the football. Medical people thought he might be able to pass the football. Felt pretty good about that. We weren't sure how effective it was going to be so we weren't counting on that a whole lot, maybe just a little bit. We thought he would be a good runner for us. Go out there and do some of the things we had been doing: spreading the field, running the football, featuring Rob some as a runner. That made good sense to us, thought it was a good plan.
Rob couldn't go. Got us out of sync some. Put Sean Robinson in a tough situation coming into the game where we were already behind a couple of touchdowns.
So we're in the same boat again this weekend. We'll go ahead and assume that Sean is going to be the guy and spend a lot of time getting him ready to go. We did last week, too. But we spent a lot of time getting Rob ready to go with ball exchanges and reads, all that, without anybody tackling him. We'll spend more time with Sean.
Don't anticipate knowing about Rob Henry till later in the week. We're going to prepare like he's not going to be ready. If he was, we'd love to have him. But I still think he has a ways to go, the injury does.

Q. It's one thing when you have a situation like Robert Marve. You knew he was out, you had a bye week. It's another thing when you're not sure as you go through the week. How difficult is that? What kind of a different challenge does that present when you're not sure you're trying to put in a game plan and you have to have multiple guys ready possibly to start?
COACH HOPE: Well, it's a heck of a challenge. We were kidding around last week about being out there on Sunday, teaching the snap counts going into the eighth game of the season, being facetious a little bit. It's been that way for a while because we can't get the right guys reps long enough to get into a groove or a sync. We started out with TerBush and Marve getting most of the reps and Henry getting some as we go into camp with Marve and Henry getting a lot of reps, Marve getting most of 'em, and Ralph along the way. All of a sudden you got Marve out, then Keith Smith out, Siller out. It's the way it's piled up that hasn't allowed us to get the same guy in a groove or rhythm in the quarterback spot. As soon as Marve got some experience, started having efficient drives, really started to gain some momentum, then he gets hurt. Then we get Rob in here. He starts to figure it out a little bit. We get a package together for him that fits within the system, good enough at executing that would have given us some time to work on him in the passing game, then he gets hurt.
The timing of it's what's difficult. You're so far down the depth chart, the guy you're starting out with is not quite as far as along. If you look at the past weekend, Notre Dame lost their starting quarterback, lost to Tulsa at home. The head coach was talking about how tough it was to go out there and make it happen with a number two guy. The same thing happened down at the University of Miami. He gets knocked out of game, they lose to Virginia. This game this weekend against Illinois, they were up by 20 and had their number two guy in there and it wasn't going quite so great and they got him out of there because they got him out of there because the ball game was still on the line at that time. That was a number two guy. We're talking about number three, four, five.
That part is really difficult and is really a challenge. But you have the right guy. Rob Henry is the right kind of guy, we were successful with him. Sean Robinson is the right kind of guy, and we can be successful with him. He has the ability and the want to get it done, all the intangibles. It's the timing of it that is difficult with all these guys.

Q. What has been more message to your team the last few days? Do you have to actually remind them they maybe still have some things to play more despite the way the last couple games have gone?
COACH HOPE: Obviously, you don't have to remind them. They're an unbelievable group of young people. Obviously there are some things you want to make sure you get a handle on. One is when you have a lot of difficult things that happen, there's some reasons sometimes for things to be difficult. All of a sudden you start falling behind on the depth chart, you have to get things realigned, you get out of sync some, you get behind in some games, things don't go your way. So there's some reasons things can be difficult at times.
But we can't allow those things to be excuses for us not expecting to win. Doesn't matter who we put out there, even if we have to go to the fourth guy, third guy, whoever it is, we'll get you in position to make plays. We have to expect you to make plays. So you can't sit around and feel sorry for yourself, that's for sure.
They've done a great job with it. A lot of our team is young. They're really enthusiastic and a lot of it they understand is growing pains anyway at their positions. Of our top 44 guys on our football team, 21 of them are freshmen, true freshmen or second-year freshmen. That's a really young football team. A lot of these guys really aren't (indiscernible) because things aren't going their way, it's just part of learning and being new to them.

Q. Is there anything you've seen in the last couple of weeks at all that's a silver lining in terms of player development, anybody in particular that's grown that's kind of stood out to you?
COACH HOPE: That's a great question because we still feel good about our chances to win. We're going to have to be able to manufacture some offense and we're going to have to be able to throw and catch a lot better. That will make a big difference to our football team. We can do that because we have a guy that is a good passer. Didn't get it done so well in our game the other day. Our offensive line has been together some now. I think they're pretty good at pass protection. So we have the potential to go out there to throw and catch. That has to happen. Our team can certainly focus on that right now.
But we've gotten better across the defensive front. The same guys that are playing at the defensive tackle spots now are the same guys that were playing in their first college football games six, seven weeks ago. They'll have their greatest challenge this weekend, everybody out there a good percentage of the plays. But we've done a better job of lining up, taking them across the defensive front. Our linebackers have been more active. We have had some success against the run. We didn't defend the zone read the other day and that impacted the football game. But even with the offense being inept a lot during the first half, we only ran three plays in the first quarter, we still had a chance to be competitive with a really good Illinois football team up until halftime. That game could easily have been 14-14, or 7-0. So our defense did some really good things. Shut them down and had a lot more good plays than they had bad plays.
I think out of the 12 or 14 drives, I think they were successful 8 out of 12 drives I think was the percentage on it. Pretty good percentage. Some of the plays they could have made out there that would have created more three-and-outs. I think they had half a dozen or several three-and-outs. That's pretty good.
I think our defense has gotten better. Still have some ways to go. I think that some of our runningbacks are healthier now and we have a chance to be able to go out there and run the football, even though we may not have the services of Rob Henry. Young guys are playing really good. Will Lucas is playing really good right now. Ricardo Allen is playing really good right now. They're two of our better players on our football team. Gabe Holmes is doing a lot better, playing good. Really like what we're seeing out of our young guys.
There's a lot of silver lining and we still think we can win. We're going to have to execute better on offense to give ourselves a chance. In order to have a chance to win, we may have to play better on special teams to create some edge for us, then obviously be successful on even more drives defensively. It may take that. But that's okay.

Q. What is the standard for whether or not a defense is a success for you?
COACH HOPE: If you get them off the field and they don't score. The coaches told me they did well in the game on Saturday. I know defensively we felt like we had several three-and-outs. I think we had half a doesn't three-and-outs. 10 tackles for a loss, three sacks. We thought we were successful 62% on third down. 14 possessions, we were 8 out of 14. That's more than half the time, that's more than 67% of the time. Not that far off from being 10 or 11 out of 14, which would have been exceptional. When you're out there for 40 to 60 minutes and the offense is not getting anything done, we think they did a pretty good job at times.

Q. You had some success putting the two punt returners back there. Can you talk about that, why that worked.
COACH HOPE: Well, it was a good plan for a couple reasons. Number one, it was a really windy day. Didn't know where the ball was going to go. Their punter is really good. He has a big leg. One of the better punters in the league. Regardless of where they're at on the field, he can punt it away from where your return guy is at. He can punt it far away from where you're lined up at. All of a sudden you negate your chances for a return.
With two returners back there, we have a chance to field the ball if he was trying to kick away from us or also have a chance to field the ball if you got a bad one in the wind.
So I think it helped us some in the game. We don't do that all the time for a lot of different reasons, but the change-up.

Q. When you went back and watched the film, how did Ryan pull up?
COACH HOPE: He did pretty good. He has to take care of his gap more. He'll look at some of the same things that Bruce, Brandon Taylor an Panfil were going through earlier in the season. First they were lining up, the offense was coming at them. That happened early in the season. Not a very physical football team against Toledo. Young guys trying to figure it out early in the season. Then they get to where they come off the ball and take them on better, but they lose their depth control some. Pretty soon they come up and take the ball off of them of pretty good, do a better job of taking care of their gap. Pretty soon they take them on and take care of the gap pretty good. Pretty soon they come off and make a play. It's just that progression you go through. He'll probably go through some of that progression. But he's a come-off-the-ball guy pretty good naturally. The way he got after us in individual drills against our top offensive linemen and individual drills and scout teamwork, all year long we thought, Put this guy in the game. He's reckless, comes off the ball hard, disrupting the front, has a great motor. He'll have to learn how to handle it in a game against really good players. I think he did some good things. Came off the ball hard, came after it. Got a good motor.

Q. Obviously at this stage of the game, you guys weren't going to win, but how important is it for Sean for that touchdown?
COACH HOPE: I think it was huge. It was some big plays, some drives, some success. We walk away from the game, even though the score wasn't good, still feeling like if we could have executed a few things better, particularly on offense. There were some plays called there that we didn't execute, especially on the read run stuff. Should have done something different than what we chose to do. Give ourselves a little bit of a chance to be successful. We walk away feeling we really weren't all that far to compete against a really good football team. We did a lot of good things in a lot of different areas on Saturday. Don't have any question about that.

Q. You were able to move the ball a little bit when you had both quarterbacks in there. Is that a look you want to use in the future?
COACH HOPE: Well, if those guys are your best play-makers, you can give yourself some advantages, that's a plan we'd like to be able to possibly come back to down the road. Going into the season, we thought it was a good plan with what we had personnel-wise with Robert Marve, Justin Siller. You see what a great runner Rob Henry is with the football, to utilize that before some of the wheels started coming off from an injury standpoint. There's a great potential to do that. It's not our base, our bread and butter, but there's certainly some potential for that, particularly if those guys of your better play-makers. If they're not your better play-makers, you wouldn't use that kind of stuff.
The future we'll see. That part of it fits into the system, into the master plan in some ways.

Q. Where did the idea come from?
COACH HOPE: Well, a lot of people are doing that, with the wildcat stuff. Saturday, for us it was a chance to have both those guys in the huddle and still be able to have (indiscernible) in the run game. That allowed us to manufacture some offense.
Starting off fast against this bunch was important. That didn't happen. Two weeks in a row the exact opposite happened. That makes it a lot tougher, a lot tougher.

Q. Is it tough to really get a rhythm going offensively when they controlled so much of the clock in the first quarter?
COACH HOPE: You can't get any rhythm if you're not out there. You have the incident that put them back out on the field again. You can't really control that. Yeah, it was really tough. As the game progressed, you're still trying to figure out who could go and who couldn't, so it took us longer to try to figure it out. We had a couple of drives in the course of the game that was encouraging. But one of them got negated as a result of a penalty on Antavian Edison. Again, we had a chance there. We were still in the ballgame and hadn't done anything yet offensively. We drove down there and that happened. There was another time in the game, we drove down there, didn't get it on a fourth-and-short, what it was, two or three, whatever it was. Really could have been there if we executed a little bit better. Should have handed it off or pulled it or pitched it is what the deal was on that play.
So there were some plays that were there if we could have executed with some of the new people this were in, as bad as it was, we still would have had a chance to compete. There's still a silver lining, there is.

Q. Any update on Albert Evans and (indiscernible), whether you get them back this week?
COACH HOPE: I think Albert will be ready to go. I don't think (indiscernible) will. I think that will mean more playing time for Normando Harris. He is a good player. A little more comfortable with him. It was hard to try to teach him what to do secondary-wise because he was on the scout team a week or two, teach him all the special teams stuff. Now he's more comfortable with some of the base stuff secondary-wise. He's a guy that can run and help us.

Q. If you have Albert back, just getting that experience back there, the last two games, the receivers were kind of running free, will he help in that area?
COACH HOPE: He will. You hope that he would be where he's supposed to be on a more consistent basis. That's been the case a couple of times.
Sometimes it's not just on the back half. We had a couple man breakdown coverages the other day where we do some zone blitzing, sometimes the lineman has to drop off and look up a certain guy, run with him, or the linebacker has to pick up a certain guy on a certain route with a man combination and wasn't in the right spot. It's not always just back in the back half. You would think that Albert would have a chance to be where he's supposed to be at on a more consistent basis because he's played a lot more.
Sometimes we're in the right spot, getting better at being in the right spot, the ball is thrown, and that needs to happen faster. All you need to do is get a really good player a step and all of a sudden a smaller gain turns into a bigger gain. That's been happening some out there. Albert can help in both of those areas.
It's also a game where having another safety is a good thing because what they do from a run standpoint, you're going to need some guys. Another good, healthy player is good.

Q. After watching the film of Sean, it's clear that a lot of his passes were way off the mark. After you looked at the film, is that a mechanical thing on his part or something else that was happening?
COACH HOPE: It's a little bit of both. A lot of it has to do with him being new, not setting your feet, being in rhythm from a timing standpoint. That affects the mechanics part of it. If you have a pass play called, it develops in front of you, and the reads are open, you don't go to them right now when you're supposed to, all of a sudden the reads start closing on you to a little bit, you start holding onto it a little bit, you have to run further to try to make a play.
It's a combination of both. A lot of that's experience. You go back and look at the tape, Should have just stepped up and threw that there. He'll see that and get a lot better in a hurry. He will. He's real competitive.
As far as the guy that's way willing to come over, if it's a guy that wasn't s mature as Sean, he's very mature, he's really driven, he has a lot of inner strength, I don't have any question about that, but he's really, really committed. If he was an immature freshman, didn't have some of the same intangibles, we could be in some real trouble. This guy can come over and make a commitment from a maturity standpoint to become a quarterback we can win with. He has some things about him. He got thrown to the wolves a little bit quick at this time in the season.

Q. Last game you used Al-Terek some as a receiver. Is an option moving forward so maybe you don't have to burn some redshirts on freshmen wide receivers?
COACH HOPE: It doesn't have anything to do with other personnel other than trying to get some of our better players on the field more. Being behind a little bit offensively, we haven't had as many plays. Then we've also lost some size at the receiver position when we lost Smith, Cortez has been out some, Justin has been out some. Al-Terek is a little bit bigger than some of the other receivers. He catches the ball really well. We can do some things with him as a runningback and receiver. It's a chance to get him on the field more and try to get some of our play-makers on the field. We've lost play-makers. I count. You don't hear much about Lindsay, but we thought he was one of our better tight ends, first or second better tight ends coming out of camp. You start counting play-makers, you talk about eight of your top play-makers on offense. Al-Terek and Carlos, they have to develop, take steps, be better to have a chance to win. This is an attempt to make some of those things happen.

Q. In light of what happened at Notre Dame with the tower collapsing, what's your procedure with that, when you put up the towers, just kind of take us through your mindset with how you guys handle that.
COACH HOPE: Obviously, I won't elaborate a whole lot on that. We have a manual and guidebook here for all events that deal with all the protocol that you can check out through the athletic department, okay? Gives you guidelines on everything we do. There's a standard. So you can get that out and check it so I don't misquote it. That's what I would do.

Q. Would you like to see permanent towers on your practice field so you wouldn't have to use the scissor lifts?
COACH HOPE: Haven't given that a whole lot of thought because the scissor lifts are good. But there's some limits on them. Then you can move them around. Your permanent towers are permanent things that people can run into. That's another issue. How many of those can you put up?
Again, we don't have any safety issues here with what we have from a filming standpoint. On the indoor facility, we have the catwalk. If we have any question on the weather, we don't have to lose a snap. They can get up on the catwalk, resume practice, never miss a snap of video. We have an outstanding facility of what it takes to develop a player here, so we don't have to take that chance, and we don't.

Q. You were talking about how physical Wisconsin is. When you came off the bye week, that was a point of emphasis for you, helped you win two games. Where have you been in that physical standpoint the last two games?
COACH HOPE: We're doing better. I think our linebackers have came down field and been more physical on their run fits. Sometimes you have to take on blockers. We're not where we need to be at. If we don't come down and do a lot better this week, we'll be in trouble. I think we're more physical. We missed some tackles the other day. We didn't tackle well. We've done a better job tackling this year. Anytime you play against really good football players, our people may miss tackles too. We missed some tackles, got outside of what we've been teaching. We have done a really good job focusing on two or three different types of tackles. From a teaching standpoint, had done a pretty good job this season of executing those types of tackles, made us a better tackling football team. I thought we went in there and got outside of what we were teaching, they are draped across some guys when we should have been wrapping down low and didn't tackle as well. They had some good players. Their quarterback was a good player in space, good quickness, set his runs up. I thought that was a difference maker in the game. We didn't tackle him as well on the zone read. A couple of times we got out of position. They have a fast guy, we have a fast guy, we can't catch up with them in time. Sometimes we're not at fast.

Q. Talking about it today, just the execution part of it. After watching the tape, how close are you to executing? Is it one guy missing his assignment more often than not or several guys missing assignments on plays?
COACH HOPE: Well, on offense it's not the same as defense right now. Offense keeps having to start over. On offense, there was a lot of plays where we didn't get it done based on execution or decision making. You look on every play, there's a plus or a minus on the play. If there's a plus, who made a good play, what happened. If there's a minus, where was the breakdown. We did it on every play. We can look and see where there's breakdowns at and try to address those issues in practice.
For example, if you're setting the defensive front wrong against certain looks, different front, that comes up some, you want to work on those in practice. We ear mark those. There's a breakdown. It's not the same on the offensive side of the ball as it is on the defensive side of the ball because we have to keep changing quarterbacks in the middle of game and it's not how we prepared going into the game with those quarterback. We go into the game thinking Marve is going to be the quarterback, he gets hurt, Henry comes in, we fall behind. Same thing happened a couple weeks ago, thinking Rob is going to be the quarterback, may not be good enough to win the game, but really set us back. Same thing happens on this game. Not the same on the offensive side of the ball. I think we're getting better defensive. In everything we do, we need to make more plays plays when we're in position. We had some guys in the backfield. They're good players, too, on the other side. We had some guys pressing the quarterback, we do well sack-wise, but we could have more sacks. We had guys in position for tackle for losses. We need to have more tackles for loss, make more plays when we're in position to make plays to make steps defensively. We need to get ourselves in position to make plays offensively and cash in some.

Q. What kind of progress has Gary Bush made and how important does he become to you at the receiver position?
COACH HOPE: He become as lot more important to us now because he has speed and usually knows what to do. His progress in the beginning, a lot of it had to do with a lack of physicality because he wasn't big and strong when he came here. He's always been a good worker, a guy that has good speed, but didn't have the Big Ten size about him when he came in as a freshman. Came in underdeveloped as a high school football player, AAU basketball player, top track athlete in the state of Florida. Hadn't spent any time at all in the weight room. He was really under developed from a strength standpoint.
He's gotten bigger and stronger. As he's made some plays, he's gained some confidence. So now it looks like he's running his routes faster with a little more confidence. He's gotten behind some people we haven't connected on. We've gone deep to him a couple times, he's connected. He dropped some early in the season. It was important for us to get some balls thrown to him and have him catch some so he could get those behind him and move on. I think he's gotten better. I think he still has a lot of improving to do from a size and strength standpoint for the next couple of years that will really improve him as a player. I think he's starting to play faster and play with more confidence right now, because we really need him to, because he's a good skill player.

Q. With Werner, is rest going to help him to get him back in some capacity in the near future?
COACH HOPE: I think we'll get more out of him this weekend. I thought going into last weekend we might be able to get something out of him. He wasn't able to go through anything through the week. That's not usually a good Sunday for Saturday when you can't go Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. We get out there, it's not quite right. He's limited.
So I think that he'll be better this week and go play more to help us. We certainly need him out there as a player, particularly as a senior leader, that's really important. Thank goodness we have some other good players. Will Lucas and Beckford, Holland are playing well, but we'd like to have Jason out there playing as well.

Q. With the injuries, have you had to scale back your practice intensity at all at the risk of further injury? What kind of effect does that have for preparing a physical team like Wisconsin?
COACH HOPE: That's a great question. You're always looking back saying what could I have done to have prepared them better. I think that's your job as a head coach. I think it's also your job as a head coach looking at today to say what can I do to get better today. I talk to the coaches about that all the time. There were some things we needed to get done better, do a better job of in the game last week. I make a note of those things, a lot of things.
Again, I want to make sure the coaches find a way to get those things done and put those things in practice and have a chance to get those things done on the field, as well.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much.

End of FastScripts

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