|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
PURDUE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 4, 2011Albert EvansJoe HollandDanny HopeDennis KellyTHE MODERATOR: If we could just get an opening statement from you, Coach Hope, on advancing to the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. COACH HOPE: I want to thank them for inviting us. We're a good football team, and we've won some big games this season. We're excited to play together as a team. Give us an opportunity to have a winning season. We're at 6‑6 right now. A great opportunity for our team and our program, and we're grateful for it. THE MODERATOR: Also joining us in the room here are seniors Joe Holland, Albert Evans, and Dennis Kelly. We can go ahead and get started on the phone lines. Q. Coach, just wanted to get your impressions onWestern Michigan. COACH HOPE: I don't know a whole lot about them right now. Just found out about half an hour ago where we were going and who we were playing. Obviously, we played some MAC schools here in the past, and they've done very well. I don't know a whole lot about Western Michigan at this point in time. I'm assuming in the next little bit our video coordinators will communicate and exchange the film, and we'll get right at it pretty quick. Q. For the players, what does it mean to get to a Bowl for the first time since 2007. The question was what is it like to get to a bowl game for the first time since 2007? Joe Holland, start us off. JOE HOLLAND: It means a lot for us being seniors, extends our Purdue career for a whole extra month, which is a big deal for us. I don't think any of us are ready for it to be over, and it's something we've been working toward for a long time. Purdue has a standard of winning. That's why we all came here. We were kind of hoping to re‑establish that standard and continue getting Purdue back to bowl games. ALBERT EVANS: It means a lot to us to get back there. It feels good for us to be back. It's a big deal for us to get in a Bowl game. I'm very grateful for the mini bowls to be able to have that. DENNIS KELLY: This is it for the career. [Inaudible ]. Q. [Inaudible ]. JOE HOLLAND: I was a member of the scout team. We did a heck of the job. We dressed everybody, and I was fortunate enough to be on the field for that great game. To have the opportunity to practice and then watch a game on the field. It was a very, very fun experience. To be able to get that opportunity again, although it was a couple years later, to do this my senior year, it really means a lot because it really was an unbelievable thing. Great opportunity to continue to practice and continue to get better as a team. We're thrilled to have this opportunity. Q. Other than winning the game, what else do you remember about that experience? How do you relay some of that to the guys that have never been through it? JOE HOLLAND: I think particularly with this team, it's just a close‑knit team, and everyone gets along so well. When we have the opportunity to take a trip together and the Bowl, when I went last time, they had a ton of activities set up for us and a ton of things to do as a team. I'm really just looking forward to spend time with my teammates, spending‑‑ doing some pregame activities. And for being one of the few guys that has had the opportunity to go to a Bowl game, just to let them know how much fun you really can have regardless of where you're going. I know when it was the Motor City bowl, we did a couple of events with Michigan and a couple of Purdue events. It was a great time to spend time with the teammates and the families were there. It really was a blast. Q. [Inaudible]. How much help? JOE HOLLAND: It's huge. When you start out in the spring, everything is slow. You have plenty of time to kind of get into things. We've been playing football for a pretty long time now. Even the guys that maybe haven't contributed much on Saturdays that have been doing a great job for us on scout team, they've been kind of reading off cards and trying to be the show team for whoever we're playing. They now have the opportunity to get a lot more reps and to really kind of show the coaches what they got. I know, when I was a freshman, I went from playing on the scout team, during Bowl prep, running with the two nickel group. Those reps I got there during Bowl prep were unbelievable. The full speed reps against sometimes the one offense is unlike anything that you can get on a scout team. It's the next best thing to playing on Saturday. So I anticipate a lot of young guys having a great month of practice and really using this time to their advantage to prepare themselves for next year. Q. [Inaudible]. PLAYER: [Inaudible]. Q. When you guys are watching the selection show. I mean, do you guys know how that works, and do you think of the process? Some of your teammates seem to think it wasn't fair. PLAYER: Watching TV, see where we're going, and we're grateful for wherever we get to go. Q. You get another opportunity, Danny, to kind of get out there and show us. COACH HOPE: We really appreciate the extra opportunity. Had some big games this year, and we've had some high moments. But we still don't have a winning record for the senior class. We ended on a two‑game winning streak. Go into the off‑season. I'm glad we're going to Detroit. I'm excited about going there. It's a great opportunity. I'm looking forward to it. Happy for our achievement that we get to play one more time. I still don't think we're the team we can be this season. We talked about it earlier in the year. I mentioned it several times we were going to be a developing team throughout the course of the season. I thought we'd end up being a pretty good football team. I thought it was going to be a work in progress, and it has been. We sat down as a football team last Friday night before we played Indiana. We commented how it wasn't the end of the season, but in our minds, the beginning of the season. A chance to be successful, get into postseason play. A chance still to be champions and to return our program to a championship standard and step for our team and our program. So we're excited about it, very excited about it. Just what the seniors need. It's great for our football team. Q. Do you anticipate having Ralph Bolden for the game? COACH HOPE: No. Q. Why? COACH HOPE: He's injured. Q. How badly? COACH HOPE: Well, not good news. Q. Drew Nowak is MAC's defensive player of the year in defensive tackles, 12 tackles for a loss, 8 1/2 sacks. Do you think the quality of defensive linemen you've seen this year will prepare you for that guy? DENNIS KELLY: I think so. Every day we play against Kawann Short. We went up against Devon Still from Penn State, who ended up being the Big Ten defensive player of the year, and he's on a bunch of watch lists. We went up against a bunch of great defensive ends from Illinois and Ohio State. As an offensive line, we've seen really good players in the defensive line position. It will be a good challenge and a lot of fun to be able to prepare for. Q. [Inaudible]. COACH HOPE: Yeah, he's got an ACL. Q. [Inaudible]. So what's the schedule. Now that you know what Bowl you're going to, what's the schedule for your immediate future? What's it look like? COACH HOPE: We have several schedules that we put together based on the different Bowl scenarios, and we have to try to incorporate some recruiting in at the same time. This Bowl is sooner, so we'll have to take a look at rearrange some things because it comes sooner. Q. [Inaudible]. COACH HOPE: A little bit. There were three or four bowls that I thought we'd qualify for. I thought there were three or four bowls I thought we'd be great candidates for. We had a good season Big Ten record‑wise. I felt we'd be marketable to a number of bowls. I'm very happy that someone has chosen us. I knew we'd end up in one, but I don't think which one. I thought we were very marketable for three or four. Q. Do you do the marketing? Do you have people that take care of that? COACH HOPE: We have administrations and whole departments in charge of that. Q. [Inaudible]. COACH HOPE: It's been a fun year, and a year it's really hard to pick who you thought would win on any given Saturday. There were a lot of teams that lost close games that bounced back the next week and had to win. So very competitive season, Big Ten play was. A lot of surprises through the course of the year, and really hard to try to pick who the champion would be and who the top teams would end up being when all was said and done. We're excited about our representation in some ways, with the win over Ohio State and Minnesota and Illinois and Indiana. We came on strong at the end of the year with a win against Ohio State and Indiana. That's two really tough opponents. Ohio State is a great problem and Indiana is the archrival. A fun year this year. One that was really hard to pick a favorite on any given Saturday. Q. There's one or two games on the 27th when you play. Just to have the national spotlight for a couple hours and be the only game, what can that do for a program? COACH HOPE: I think it's huge for us. We're going to have a lot of fun with this. Our guys are deserving of postseason play. We're excited about going to Detroit and the opportunity to have a winning season and be together. We have three goals for our football team. One of them is to have fun playing football, to make As and Bs and to be champions. We're having a lot of fun playing football, and we still have a chance to be champions. That's still on the table. And we're working hard in the classroom. We'll see how they do when the semester is over. I think it's a great opportunity for us. We're excited about it. We're going to play on national TV, postseason play. Great step and a great sign for our program. Q. Joe, after the Iowa game, I asked Ralph if getting to the Bowl would qualify the season as a success. Now that you guys are there, is it a success, or do you have to take the next step and win to consider the season an overall success? JOE HOLLAND: I think, after that point in the season, after the Iowa game, getting into a Bowl would be the only way to consider this a season of success because that meant we would have beaten IU. That was a huge game for us, that IU game, to get the bucket back and make the postseason. But like Coach alluded to earlier, that was also kind of the beginning of our season in some way. We sat down as a senior class with Coach at the beginning of the season, and we had the goal of becoming champions. Now we're fortunate enough to be playing in the Little Caesars Bowl with the opportunity to become champions when it's all said and done. I think this is a huge step for our program and something that we're going to take very seriously to become champions and achieve our goal. Q. This is for all three of you. My last question. Have you guys had a Little Caesars Pizza? ALBERT EVANS: Are you talking about the $5 pizza? Q. Can you maybe give us an assessment of their pizza making abilities. ALBERT EVANS: I'm hoping it's a big part of our goal. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|