.png&width=42&height=42&type=webp)
University of Minnesota Athletics
Coach Mason Looking Ahead to Indiana
10/31/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Head Coach Glen Mason talked about this week's match-up against Indiana during his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
Opening statement:
“About the only follow up to last week’s game, my first comment after the game was that the only thing wrong with Ohio State was that they had a lousy field. They replaced it Sunday, so there’s nothing lousy.
“As of today, there’s really no change in any of our injury status. We’re banged up. A lot of college teams are, but I don’t expect any changes there.
“I didn’t tell you about the position switches last week at the press conference because I didn’t decide to do it until afterwards, to be quite honest with you. Sometimes drastic situations take some drastic measures, and that’s why we decided to move some offensive linemen to defense and a running back to defense to give us some size and a little bit more depth there. We plan to stay with those changes, or at least that’s what I’m planning on doing today. If we get a little bit thin and have another guy injured here or there, we’ll do what we have to do.
“This week, we have Indiana. They’re 5-4 and 3-2 in the league. They’ve really had two very impressive come from behind wins, one against Illinois and one against the University of Iowa. They were very impressive with their game last week against Michigan State.
“Right now, if you look at what they’ve been able to accomplish, it’s a tale of two halves, one at the beginning of the year and one from midway on. They’ve inserted a redshirt freshman quarterback who is very mobile and he is running their spread offense very effectively. They have good receivers and they are really meshing right now. They’re clicking well on offense and they’re moving the ball.
“Their defense plays hard and they’re very sound. They’re good in the kicking game and they have some dangerous guys back there. It has to be the year of the return man in the Big Ten. We have faced some outstanding people, if you think back to the beginning of the year out at Cal, and if you think about Michigan and Ohio State and now these guys. There are truly some outstanding people who can get big plays on you.
“Indiana is a much-improved ball club. They were improving last year and they’ve been able to pick it up at least the second half of this year. I think a lot of people would say at this juncture, they’re one of the surprises in the Big Ten, if not the biggest surprise with what they’ve been able to accomplish, especially with the start they got. If you look at their season, they had a couple of bumps in the road early against some non-conference opponents, and I’m sure they’d like to have those games back. They lost to a I-AA team and they lost to Connecticut, but now they’re playing much better than that.
“The way they’ve gone, they obviously have good kids with a good attitude. They have some momentum, they’re excited and they’re hungry. I’m not saying we’re not that, but we’ve been struggling the last few weeks and we’re trying to find a way to get going in the right direction and we’ll continue to work to do that. I’m excited to see what happens Saturday.”
On Indiana Head Coach Terry Hoeppner:
“I didn’t know Terry at all until he came into the league. He’s one of those guys who has been around the block. He’s come up the hard way. He wasn’t born on third base and hit a triple. He came out of the dugout and crawled all the way around and got to be a Big Ten head coach. When you’re trying to put a program together like he has, and they haven’t had much success in recent history, and then also have to endure some personal challenges, I think that tells you a lot about the man and his commitment to what he’s doing and the people in that program.”
On the position switches:
“If you can predict what’s going to happen injury-wise, I might be able to predict if we do anything else.
“I was really pleased with how they performed on short notice. I thought John Jakel did a really good job in there. He’s a physically strong human being. He did a good job and I though Alex Daniels gave us great effort at the defensive end position.”
On moving Alex Daniels back to defense:
“For one, he wasn’t more at running back because we thought the other guy gave us the most advantage. And second, we moved him to defense because, as I’ve stated many times, we have some injuries and a lack of size over there that was hurting us. The last couple of weeks we’ve faced teams with humungous offensive lines and not only were we undersized at the defensive end position, we didn’t have the depth to roll people in there, so it was really taking its toll later on in the game.
“I said from the outset that we were not going to have the depth at running back we’ve enjoyed for a long time here at Minnesota. That was one of the reasons why I took a guy I thought might be able to help us. It wasn’t that I thought he was a prototype running back. After the first game I was getting calls from around the country from guys who though we had a 260-pound Laurence Maroney. I said, ‘He’s 260 but he’s no Maroney.’ I’m not sure it was the best thing for Alex Daniels, but at that time we thought it was the best thing for the team.”
On Maroney’s performance on Monday Night Football:
“He’s a year older. He’s a senior in college - he ought to be better. If he came back for me, wouldn’t you have expected him to be better than he was last year?”
On the Gophers' extended struggles of the offense:
“In the nine previous years, I think you’d have to search pretty hard where we have struggled like we have on offense for three weeks solid. It’s frustrating. The problem with coaching is that it’s not an exact science. You make decisions and try to do some things different or do things the same because you really believe they’re going to work, but you don’t know until you get out there.
“We’re not very happy, but at the same time you look at it and always ask, is it what you’re doing or is it how you’re doing it? I think most coaches would say that more often than not it’s how you’re doing it. It’s all coaching, don’t get me wrong. You hear me say this all the time, but the pure Xs and Os is grossly overrated. How you do it is underrated. When you start talking about how you do it and who’s doing it for you, there’s a big difference.”
On Indiana’s special teams:
“They’re good. One guy averages 20 yards per punt return and they have three kickoff returns for touchdowns.”
On Indiana quarterback Kellen Lewis turning their offense around:
“It’s not just one guy. Sometimes you don’t know how everything lines up and it’s a just a matter of the timing being just right, but what they’re doing right now, he does a good job with it.”
On Indiana wide receiver James Hardy:
“He caught four touchdowns last week. He’s a big 6-7 kid who can really run, but he’s not the only receiver they have. They move him around this year. A year ago he really only played one position so you could stack the coverage against him and some people did that. Now he plays all over.”
On the difficulty of getting out of a slump in the Big Ten:
“In any quality league it’s really tough. When you’re in this process, let’s face it, in every league there’s a reason why some teams seem to win every year and that’s because they have some built-in advantages. In the National Football League, you wouldn’t have the rotation of teams if some teams got to pick first every year. And then you have some teams in a flux and there for a number of years there were some teams below us who were looking and wondering how is Minnesota doing it, how are they winning and getting to bowl games? I’m not saying we were doing anything special, but they are trying to get where you are while you’re not only trying to get to that next level, but you have to stay at the level you’re at. There’s no one sitting around.”
On James Hardy being a two-sport athlete:
“You don’t see it a lot. When you think about the number of kids playing major college basketball, how many of them are showing up on the football field? There aren’t a lot of them. You have the guy who plays tight end in the NFL (Tony Gonzalez) who was at Kent State and never played football there. Great athletes play basketball. I might go out and start recruiting basketball players because it’s easier to make it in the NFL than the NBA.”
