Player Quotes

Here are some quotes from Coach Lynch and some players following yesterdays game from iuhoosiers.com

Indiana Head Coach Bill Lynch
Opening Statement:
“It was a good win for us. I have a lot of respect for Akron as I said to many of you on Monday. I thought they came in and played a very, very good football game. I thought it was, in a lot of ways, a well-played football game. There weren’t a lot of turnovers on either side. We tried to knock it loose and we couldn’t and we took care of it ourselves. There weren’t a lot of penalties. The kicking games were pretty solid, so it was a well-played game.”Ben (Chappell) continues to play well. Our receivers certainly made some big plays. I thought Darius (Willis) really ran the ball hard against a defense that wasn’t going to let us run it. They had a lot of guys in the box, but I thought he ran the ball well. So I thought it was a good game on offense. “Defensively, we knew they were going to make some plays and score some points. We’ll take a 35-20 win and finish this part of the schedule undefeated and get ready for the Big Ten.”

On the tight end play:
“I think it’s something that’s been building as we’ve gone through camp really. We always knew Max (Dedmond) could be a good receiver, but Teddy (Bolser) gives us something a little bit different because he can get down the field. When a quarterback like Ben (Chappell), who is so smart and sees the field so well, and he knows that he’s got that guy as one of his options. On a lot of those throws we’ve got four guys heading down the field or sometimes five. I’m on the sideline and I don’t know where he’s going to throw it. He finds the open guy. The tight end isn’t necessarily his first option, but he sure finds them.”

On the defensive play and tackling:
“We’ll watch tape and we’ll see. Part of that was when you play against a good offensive football team. They’re physical up front. I thought their backs were good. I think their quarterback and receivers were good. They did a good job of mixing it. We’ll see after we watch some tape. I thought we played with good effort and good energy.”

On the tight ends helping in the red zone:
“It certainly gives us a lot more options because it becomes a tough matchup for a defense. I thought Matt Canada and the offensive staff did a nice job of putting together a gameplan. They had some things down there in the red zone that were effective. It was good to score touchdowns. That was something that we talked about. There were three things when we went into camp that we talked a lot about and one obviously is taking care of the ball. We’ve done a good job there. Third-down conversions, the last two games, we’ve done a pretty good job there. Then in the red zone we want to score touchdowns and not settle for field goals. We weren’t great against Towson or Western Kentucky, but tonight every time we were down there we were able to score a touchdown.”

On going for it on fourth down:
“It was right at that cutoff point. Generally we go into the game and talk to the kicker based on wind and all of that. I wanted to get to the 25 tonight to kick the field goal. I think both of them were right around the 30 or 31. Going for it on fourth down with Ben (Chappell), I feel pretty good about it because I don’t think he’ll take a sack.”Where you get in trouble going for it around the 31 is when you take a 10-yard sack and give them the ball at the 41. Ben’s smart enough, even there, he isn’t going to waste. He knows giving the ball up there isn’t bad. We have a lot of confidence in Ben and certainly, he made two really good throws on fourth down. Tonight, we were trying to get to the 25. It can change game by game based on wind conditions.”

On Ben Chappell’s consistency:
“He’s becoming a very, very good quarterback. Now that we get into Big Ten play I think more people will realize it. He makes such great decisions, but he puts the ball on the money now. He also gets you in the right protections. We have very few really bad plays and a lot of that is because of him. We had one really negative play where we had a little breakdown in protection and he got hit and fumbled the ball and Darius (Willis) went and fell on it. We may lose a yard or two on a run play, but we don’t have a lot of negative plays. That is sometimes as important as the positive plays that he makes. That’s why he’s really a great quarterback.”

Mick Mentzer On putting more pressure on the quarterback:
“We have been stressing to the defensive tackles especially since we are a year older now to put more pressure on the quarterback and not just be getting blocked on plays, that’s another thing we are focusing on every day.

On getting prepared for Michigan and Denard Robinson:
“We have to be fundamentally sound. We have schemes that can shut them down, we just have to run them and tackle. We have to make tackles, can’t miss any tackles.”

Ben Chappell
On Terrance Turner today:
“Terrance played great. He had that great catch when they zero-blitzed us which was huge. That touchdown was great, we had that play well-designed.”

On the tight ends scoring so much early in the year:
“Max made a great play staying alive on his play on the sprint out and Ted’s a great football player and he made plays.”

On why the tight ends were successful tonight:
“It kind of went to the contour of their defense. And we felt like we had that play. He made great plays, went one-on-one with their safety and beat him.”

On his comfort level in the offense:
“Yeah, it’s definitely a comfort. I know me personally, I am upset if we don’t go and score. I feel like we are pretty good and we can go score so that is our goal every time. When we have the ball it’s about execution and not turning the ball over.”

On the red zone success:
“The tight ends made a couple good plays down there and it was positive. That was one of our goals coming into the season and I think we did better on that today. And we didn’t turn the ball over so that was also a positive.”

Ted Bolser
On tying the record of most touchdowns by an IU tight end:
“I had no idea what it was and my brother asked me a couple weeks ago, but that is something special and tying it is only one thing and beating it is another.”

Tandon Doss
Respond to someone different stepping up every week…
“(On Bosler) Yeah, he is awesome. He’s doing everything well and making some tough catches.”

Respond to come back on fourth downs.
“We have to keep pushing forward and we are getting a lot better with that and taking advantage of opportunities and hopefully we keep on doing that.”

Respond to challenging the blitzing from Akron.
“They were playing a lot of man and we believe if you want to match up that you are not going to be able to stop us. We have great receivers and we have a great quarterback so just hope to keep playing like that.”

Darius Willis
Respond to younger guys out on the field playing.
“We have a lot of young guys getting a lot of playing time and progressively getting better and the leadership is coming up and we are going to be asking a lot more out of the younger guys this week in practice. We are going to have to get better in all three dimensions of the game.”

Respond to how he felt the running game went this week.
“The offensive line was able to open up a lot more. One thing we worked on in practice was being more patient and the key is the offensive line and they did a great job.”

Akron Head Coach Rob Ianello Opening Statement:
“We had some chances here tonight. The final measure for improving for a team is in the final score- we haven’t improved enough.”

On the team improving from last week:
“The difference in how we played tonight and how we played in the second half last week is night and day. And that’s what I was hoping for.”

On Patrick Nicely:
“I thought he managed the game very well. He made the growth tonight that you hope he would have made from Gardner-Webb to last week.”

On the second half:
“I think we had some guys grow. Our defense only gave up one score in the second half and we really did some things much better and our adjustments at halftime were good. We had some chances to get them off the field and then go get some points and we just didn’t get it done.”