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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 6, 2010Darryl StonumQ. Daryl, what was the reaction of the team yesterday obviously when you guys learned that you'd be playing Mississippi State and playing in the Gator Bowl? DARRYL STONUM: We was all pretty happy to be able to have a pretty good season and then on top of that play in a January 1st Bowl game. Any Bowl in January is pretty good, and we're all happy with the Gator Bowl. Coach Rod told us a little bit about it and told us about his previous experiences in the Gator Bowl. So we're all excited and we're all pumped up and ready to get ready for Mississippi State. Q. Do you like the idea of playing an SEC team, a conference that has a lot of history and tradition and seemingly everyone thinks of the SEC as the best conference out there? DARRYL STONUM: Obviously. You always hear about the SEC speed and the Big Ten is like slow and just big muscle guys and the SEC is the fast, athletic guys. In 2008 Michigan did a great job against Florida, proving that we can play against SEC teams. So we just want to go out there and prove again that we're not scared of any SEC team, that we'll face anybody they put us up against. Q. How does it feel in general to finally get to a Bowl game and now you can see it, not necessarily the Gator Bowl but any Bowl? DARRYL STONUM: It's pretty exciting. This will be my first Bowl game. I was down there with the 2008 team because I was down there with my All-American game. But to be a part of this Bowl game is special, get Michigan back into the Bowl game running, and hopefully we can keep this going, keep the Bowl game streak going and get Michigan back to where it's supposed to be. Q. What were you guys told about the time off that you have between games? You're essentially looking at about six weeks between the time you played Ohio State and playing the Bowl game. How do you get yourself psyched up for that time? DARRYL STONUM: We kind of want to take this time to heal up. We have a bunch of guys injured and a bunch of guys hurt, so we want to heal, but you don't want to lose your fundamentals, so you want to practice, keep your skills sharpened. You don't want to go too hard but just keep everything tightened up. You don't want to lose anything. But it's towards the end of the season -- but it is the end of the season so we pretty much know all the plays, we pretty much know everything in our playbook, so we're just kind of like sharpening everything, reviewing, going over everything and getting ready mentally more than physically. Q. How are you feeling health-wise? DARRYL STONUM: I'm all right, ankle is holding up pretty good, but I'm still getting treatment, doing everything I can, cold tub, all kind of treatment every day. By the Bowl game it should be 100 percent. Q. How tough is it not playing at Ohio State? DARRYL STONUM: It was pretty tough. We tried our best. They tried to tape it up and do all kind of things, but I just had to get it out. It was my seniors' last game, and I'm pretty sure y'all saw the tweet that I wasn't going to miss this game for nothing, I wasn't going to miss that game for anything. I didn't care how I was feeling, I was going to try to gut it out, and that's what I tried to do. Q. Denard was named the Player of the Year of the Big Ten. Obviously how deserving of an honor of that from you guys' perspective? DARRYL STONUM: It was deserving. He's the only quarterback to rush for 1,500 and pass for 1,500, so that's a great honor, especially for a sophomore. He's only going to get better. We're looking for big things from him his junior year, looking for big things from him this Bowl game. I think he's well deserving. Personally I think he should have still been in the Heisman race. It was a great honor for him to be Big Ten Player of the Year. Q. Did you vote for him for team MVP? DARRYL STONUM: Of course. Of course. I was going to vote for Troy, but they told me I couldn't do that. Q. When you look at Denard, we don't really obviously know how much he's hurting, you know a lot more than us. Do you think we're going to see the guy we saw the first couple of games at the Bowl game? DARRYL STONUM: Yeah, I think you'll see everybody -- everybody played in the first few games against UConn, and at the beginning of the season everybody be fresh, healthy. Denard was pretty banged up a lot towards the end of the season as well as all of us. But this time off, we're doing a lot of healing up, doing a lot of rehabbing, so I think our bodies will be pretty fresh, and we'll be ready to go. Q. Are you guys looking forward to the bunch of practices you get in preparation for the Bowl game? DARRYL STONUM: Yeah, Coach Rod went over the schedule about the practices, but he told us he wasn't going to be too much beating our bodies up, so like I said, it's more like individual drills, like going over fundamentals, going over drills. We're not going to be doing too much banging and scrimmaging and stuff like that. There's no need to beat ourselves up; I'm just going to save it to beat up Mississippi State. End of FastScripts |
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