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COACHSPEAK | EXCERPTS FROM BILL O'BRIEN'S WEEKLY PRESSER Mike Hull said that he feels like the team's back is against the wall. Do you feel the same way? That's Mike's opinion. Obviously he's entitled to his opinion. I think what he means by that is that we're coming off a loss, so we need to come out and play well. We talked about that yesterday. We've had an up-and-down year. We obviously haven't always coached the best or always played the best, but we've done some good things, too. In our four losses, the four teams that we've played have a 30-8 record. When you play a schedule like that, you don't have a lot of margin for error – whether it's coaching or playing. We have got to come out ready to go and try to play mistake-free football and play as good as we can. So, I think what Mike means, is that we've got to regroup and come back ready to go against Purdue. Can you evaluate the performance of two younger players: Eugene Lewis and Nyeem Wartman? Eugene has practiced hard and he has a lot of ability. He's only a redshirt freshman, so he's got a lot of time left. He's got three years left here. I think everybody expects redshirt freshmen to jump in and play right away. In some cases it's hard to do that. You have to learn the plays and you have to perform well in practice. I would expect Eugene to play more on Saturday. Eugene is a great kid. He practices hard and he's improved. He certainly has, in my opinion, a really good future at Penn State. Nyeem has played well at times this year and other times hasn't played so well. He's made some plays for us, and at other times he's missed some plays – just like any young player would do. He's a guy that played against Ohio [in week one] last year and then was hurt. He was able to get a redshirt year, so he's a redshirt freshman. He's a guy that's only going to get better. Nyeem will continue to play for us and he'll continue to get better. N O V E M B E R FRESHMAN PRAISE Bill O'Brien provided updates on various freshmen during his Tuesday press conference. He said quarterback Christian Hackenberg had "one of his best practices" on Monday. Tim Owen We have a lot of confidence in both those players that they will get better, and they'll work hard at it. Adam Breneman got a lot of snaps at Minnesota. How far has he come since the start of the season? He's definitely improved and I thought he played very well against Minnesota. I thought he blocked well and I thought he caught the ball well when it was thrown to him. He made some big plays for us in the game. He's another guy [whom] I think is a young player who has a really bright future here. He's a great kid, practices hard, practices hurt. He's had some ankle issues and foot issues this year, and he's practiced with them and done a nice job. Hopefully he'll keep contributing over the last three games and we can continue to try to get him the ball and help him in that area, too. I've got a lot of confidence that he's only going to get better. How are your true freshmen, in particular Christian Hackenberg, handling the later part of the season? 1 3 , 2 0 1 3 14 I think that every true freshman definitely hits a wall. Everyone does. I think that the ones that are able to climb that wall – so to speak – are the ones who are able to come out and focus on football, even if they are not having such a great practice or they don't feel very well, or maybe they had a tough exam schedule that day. I think when you look at a guy like Hackenberg, I thought he had one of his best practices [on Monday]. Here's a guy who's 18 years old. Like I've always said, everything that he sees in college football, he's seeing for the first time. I just thought that [Monday] in practice there were things that started to click for him, so let's see what happens. It's a little bit colder [this week], and [Tuesday] won't be an easy practice, so hopefully it continues to click for him. I would say in some regard it's the same for all the freshmen. We feel really good about our freshman class. We had a great developmental scrimmage [on Monday]. Some guys really stood out in that scrimmage, so we feel good about the young players in our program. SEE O'BRIEN PAGE 16 B LUE WH I T E ON L I N E .COM

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