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PLAYSTATION FIESTA BOWL: OHIO STATE VS CLEMSON

December 28, 2016

Malik Hooker

Glendale, Arizona

MALIK HOOKER: Malik Hooker.

Q. As good as Deshaun Watson is, one of the things he does is turning the ball over a lot. He's got 15 interceptions. You're opportunistic. You look at this as a great matchup for the defense?
MALIK HOOKER: We haven't really paid attention to how many turnovers he's had this year because we know he's still a Heisman-candidate quarterback and one of the better players in college football. So really that doesn't really mean too many things, because at any given moment he can go out and make a play for his team.

Q. Coach Meyer repeated for days you're not strong Malik, you're not strong. What did that mean and how did you react to that?
MALIK HOOKER: That means that not everybody is performing at the highest level that we're supposed to be performing at. We take that as sort of an insult, because if we're not performing at the highest level that means we're capable of losing the game and that's not something we want to do.

Q. Does it get you guys to refocus?
MALIK HOOKER: It definitely humbles a lot of us and makes us focus on what the objective was for the season which was winning the National Championship. If you don't win this game, then we're not capable of doing it. So without this game, we're not focusing, then we're not going to be able to play in the National Championship.

Q. Can you go into your decision not to go into the NFL draft?
MALIK HOOKER: Honestly I haven't been thinking about that. I said I was coming back, just simply so everybody knows that I'm not really looking at that decision right now. So I'll probably sit down and talk with my family maybe after the season, sit down and talk to my coaches, and we'll go from there.

Q. When you were coming out of high school I think you were a top 50 basketball recruit. What made you choose football?
MALIK HOOKER: I felt it was a better path for me and before I made my decision, talked to my uncle, my coaches and my family and we felt it was a better path for me to take to be successful in the future.

Q. What schools were offering you basketball scholarship?
MALIK HOOKER: I didn't even look. I committed early in my junior season I didn't have a chance to look at it.

Q. People feel you're here sooner than expected. (Indiscernible)?
MALIK HOOKER: I never really bought into that because we was with each other -- most of the guys playing is from the class of 2014. So you know we knew each other and we've been through the hardest part of the program with each other. So people saying we was a young team, we never really bought into that.

Q. Do you think Deshaun Watson is going to be the best quarterback you faced all year?
MALIK HOOKER: Probably, I think he is. He's capable of throwing the ball 65 yards with ease and he's capable of running the ball as well. So I don't think we have seen many quarterbacks this year that has the fundamentals and technique that he has. So, yeah, I definitely feel he's one of the better quarterbacks we've seen this year.

Q. What have you guys done differently to prepare for him?
MALIK HOOKER: We really haven't done nothing differently. We're just hands-on, the way we approached the game this week. We just took a lot more into studying film and technique and stuff like that on the field but we really didn't change too much how we approached it.

Q. Clemson's Jadar Johnson made it pretty clear they're not impressed with J.T. Barrett. You see him every day in practice. What do you think about that?
MALIK HOOKER: I didn't pay too much attention. J.T. is our quarterback. He's one of the leaders of our team. I feel like he's one of the better players on our team so really didn't pay no mind to no comments like that.

Q. Did you make anything of that material, do you use that?
MALIK HOOKER: No, we just go out there -- we control what we can control. We don't pay attention to comments and stuff like that. Because at the end of the day it's not going to make us better.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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