Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/88446
COAChSPEAK |EXCERPTS FROM BILL O'BRIEN'S WEEKLY PRESSER How did the players look in prac- tice after the bye week? I thought they looked energized, and they came back with effort, good atti- tude. It's a good question because right now there's no question that Iowa has the momentum, because they had a fantastic win over a very tough Michigan State team in double overtime. Our team needs to under- stand that it's one thing to have a bye week, but it's another thing to be playing a team like Iowa. And we've got to try to go out here and practice and be precise and practice hard with great effort every day and try to equal out that momentum. I thought yesterday was a decent start. In recent history for Penn State it's been difficult to play at Iowa. How do you approach places that are difficult to play at on the road? It's a very difficult place to play, as are most of the places in the Big Ten. It's going to be an electric atmos- phere. The crowd noise is definitely going to be a factor, so we've got to make sure that we deal with that in the right way. So we've got to prac- tice with crowd noise and make sure that our players do a great job of communicating – offense, defense, special teams. But it's not going to be anything like what it's like on Sat- urday night, so hopefully we can just give them a picture of it. Then when they get there Saturday night, they have a better understanding of how to deal with those things. But it's a very tough environment, and [Iowa is] playing well right now. It's a very tough football team. It's not going to be easy. How did you handle the bye week not only for the players, but for yourself and the coaches? What did you use the time for last week? We practiced Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. They were shorter prac- tices but intense practices, and they were practices that involved [learn- ing] in our offices, in our meeting Tim Owen rooms, coachingwise about our self‑scout, trying to get better at some things and maybe trying to break some tendencies on some things we had been doing. I thought the players came out with really good effort in all three practices. We gave them obviously a little extra time to concentrate on their academics. Hopefully they got caught up on classes that they were a little bit be- hind on because of their football commitments, and then over the weekend a lot of these guys were able to go home. For the coaching staff, again, a lot of people ask about your bye week and having days off. Well, you never have a day off during football sea- son. You're either getting the team ready to play or recruiting or what- ever it may be. But I took my wife out to dinner on Saturday night and had a nice dinner, but that was about it. We were all working and trying to get ready for Iowa, do some self‑scout and do some recruiting. It's a pretty busy time for the coach- ing staff. Curtis Dukes made some com- ments to his local newspaper about not getting enough carries. Do you have any comments on that and is there any disciplinary action coming from that? Nah, it's a free country. Curtis is working hard, and he's a member of O C T O B E R 1 7 , 2 0 1 2 13 the football team who just continues to work hard. Kyle Carter and Allen Robinson are on midseason award lists, while a guy like Michael Mauti is not. Because there's no bowl game to play for, do you put any extra importance on winning these indi- vidual awards to put Penn State in the spotlight? I think that's a good question, and let me just say first off: I don't think any of these guys really care about individual awards – I will say that about these guys. These are a bunch of competitive guys who love being a part of a team. They're team players. So I'm sure that they would tell you we just want to win because that's what they're all about. But I do think that there's a cer- tain amount of ridiculousness that a guy like Mike Mauti or Gerald Hodges or Jordan Hill, those three guys defensively aren't on – I don't even know the awards, guys. You'd have to sit down and explain to me the awards, but if there's a line- backer/defensive lineman award, I can't imagine there's that many line- backers or defensive linemen in the country better than those guys. And I'm telling you, Glenn Carson has had a heck of a year. ... I don't know how the awards work, but for those guys not to be on award lists, I don't know. B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M SPEAKING UP O'Brien says "there's a certain amount of ridicu- lousness" in the fact that Michael Mauti, Gerald Hodges and Jor- dan Hill aren't on the midseason watch list for the Lombardi Award.