Tressel: Team Developing, Preparing For Bowl Game

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Ohio State Head Coach Jim Tressel talked about the Bucks versus Ducks Monday afternoon in a Bowl Game press conference.

Here’s the transcript from the conference. Click here to watch the entire press conference.

COACH TRESSEL: We need an opening statement or what do we need? Opening statement, okay. We’ve been hard at it, that’s for sure. Been on the recruiting trail for a couple weeks. We’ve had, I think, 16 or 17 guys visit our campus on their official visits and our guys finished their final exams, we’ll find out this afternoon at 5:00 how our grades came out. We’ve had probably two or three padded practices and a couple in shells and I can tell you our guys are excited about playing in the Rose Bowl. They’re excited to turn their full attention this week to preparation for a great Oregon team.

I personally have not seen that much film yet because we’ve been hard at the recruiting and also I had a chance to go to New York City and see Chris Spielman get inducted, which was special to the College Football Hall of Fame, but I can tell you that looking at their schedule, the Pac-10, I thought, was very strong top to bottom and when you play Boise State and Utah as well, they had a heck of a schedule. And obviously scored a lot of points. Saw them on TV a couple times.

Their tempo—it’s one thing to watch the film when I think the cameraman stops in between the plays, but when you watch them live and it’s rolling, they have a heck of a tempo. They fly around on defense and so we’ve got a lot of work to do to prepare and we have a good, solid week this week. We went this morning and we’ll have a lifting/video-type day tomorrow and we’ll go again Wednesday, and Thursday will be like Tuesday, and then we’ll go Friday, Saturday and Sunday and finish up on Monday, hopefully with a game plan set to go before we head home for the holidays, and then we leave on Christmas night, head to Pasadena and get ready for the great week at the Rose Bowl. Questions?

REPORTER: Jim, you said grades you’ll know by this afternoon, is anybody in major jeopardy at this point?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, at 5:00 this afternoon, I’ll know that for sure. I assume everyone’s in major jeopardy until I see—until their things come true.

REPORTER: How’s the health of the team, Jim?

COACH TRESSEL: Pretty good. Haven’t had guys out. Everyone’s been practicing. Jamaal Berry still isn’t back with that hamstring, he’s been on the side a little bit. Aaron Pettrey’s been back kicking a little bit. He expects to be ready to go, which he’s a couple weeks ahead of schedule. I’m trying to think who missed late in the year. Who was out near the end? Jermale Hines? He’s been practicing. Our guys had about 10 days in there where they really didn’t have that much practice, so they seem to be in good shape.

REPORTER: Dexter Larimore, how is he doing?

COACH TRESSEL: Doing fine.

REPORTER: Every year it always seems to be an issue of the layoff, what you’re doing bowl preparation-wise, whether that affects you or not,, is there anything you’ve learned over the years now, any constants that you try to adhere to or any new things you’ve learned in terms of preparation?

COACH TRESSEL: Every team is so different that it varies. I think the mindset that either goes the right direction or doesn’t go the right direction over a length of time probably is more than what you do, more than how much you practice or how little or how much you hit and how little. I think you should hit a lot until there’s one guy hurt and then you hit too much.

So you try to do enough of each. As I look at the little bit I’ve seen of Oregon and what I listen to our coaches who have seen more, they play with great speed, so you better be simulating speed in all that you do. So we’ve got to make sure we do plenty of that, but I think whether it’s what do you do between your bowl game and the opening game because that’s a pretty long layoff, or what do you do between your end of the regular season to your bowl game, I think it’s—most of it has to do with are you getting yourselves mentally prepared and do you understand their systems, do you understand their concepts, what we’re trying to do against them, why we’re trying to do them. We’re not doing things extraordinarily different than we have over the last few years. We’re playing a little bit sooner, we have a little bit less layoff. In fact, our coaches and players feel a little bit cramped. Really, it’s amazing? “We only have this many practices left? I don’t know how we’re going to get—“ So you know, January 1st, be ready.

REPORTER: With respect to the layoff, can Terrelle prepare for this game or can he develop during this time?

COACH TRESSEL: I think both. Hopefully all of our guys, because they do have a little bit more time to work on individual and fundamentals and so forth, whether it’s the young guys who won’t play out in Pasadena or the veterans who have to get ready, you have a little more fundamental time. When you get into the midst of the season, you have two days to game plan, that’s it. So everything’s teaching. Your fundamentals maybe slip a little. So I would like to think everyone can develop, Terrelle included, but also you need to prepare. Now, to me, the little tough thing about preparing for a bowl game is that you have all this time and you have all this film and you make all these assumptions. Well, they have all this time and all this film and they’re going to do some different things. So you’re really not preparing for what you don’t know, so it’s a little bit of each and you’re going to have to be able to adjust in the course of the game because both teams are going to come out and do something maybe a little bit different than they’ve done all year.

REPORTER: You talked about scouting and you might take some time, as you look back on the season, where did you see things that you liked and what did you see that you didn’t like? I know it’s a general question.

COACH TRESSEL: The thing that you never like is when you miss practice time and I liked spring practice because we didn’t have many guys missing. Preseason wasn’t so good because we had a lot of guys missing for various reasons. And then early in the season, we didn’t have as many constant, therefore I didn’t see the improvement that you’d like early on. I thought in the back half of the season I saw a little bit of improvement and a little bit of being able to build on something they learned the week before that they learned the week before, and I hope this bowl practice, so far, knock on wood, we haven’t had people down with this or that. We’re trying to spread out or practices and trying to be smart about how much you hit and how much you do this and that. So far they’re practicing really hard.

REPORTER: What did you see you did well offensively, Jim? Obviously there are some critics out there of this offense and its production. Where did you see you definitely need to make a stride in these four weeks?

COACH TRESSEL: Probably, I guess you can even look at it statistically, particularly in the back half of the year, we did a much better job taking care of the football and a much better job running the football. Therefore, we did a much better job winning, which if you’ll do those things, you look at Oregon, I mean, do they run the football. And that’s why they’re right now one of the premier offensive football teams in the country because if you can’t stop the run, you’re going to be in deep danger. So I think what did we do better? I think we rushed for—I don’t have the numbers, but I’m sure we rushed for over 200 yards a game in the last month or so, so if you can do that, you’re going to have a chance to be your conference’s champion and that we are.

REPORTER: And then what did you see you need to definitely get better at over these four weeks, you talked about the passing game at the end of the year.

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, I think we’ve got to be more efficient and I think we’ve got to strike when there’s opportunities to strike. We had a couple chances in the last game where we could have hit a homerun and we didn’t and I think you have to have that as part of your arsenal because then if you do indeed run it pretty well, you think back to the Oregon State/Oregon game, one of the key play his, although they ran for 103 some yards was the 76-yard play on the third down where they had people in the box and people were out there one on one. You have to hit those.

So I think we have to be able to hit homeruns when people decide they’re going to put X amount of people in the box to stop your run. That’s the balance you like to have and we’ve got to get a little bit better at that.

REPORTER: Talk about how nice it is playing in the Rose Bowl, now that you’ve had some time to prepare and sink in a little bit, what does it feel like that you’re playing in the Rose Bowl, you personally?

COACH TRESSEL: It doesn’t feel much different than most Decembers. Decembers are probably a most demanding month as we have, and none of them are real easy. December is just like you’re flying. There’s not enough hours in a day. We sat for a couple, three hours with our operations people doing the planning for the entire week out there and how we’re going to utilize each moment and trying to find that blend of excellent preparation and great experience for our players being out there and so forth.

Of course you’re involved heavily in recruiting each and every day and trying to find ways to get a few moments to work on football and then be in there practicing and so forth. So December, honestly, if you’re in a bowl game, December’s a blur, so you probably don’t feel much because you’re just going.

REPORTER: What do you remember about the last time you were there?

COACH TRESSEL: At the Rose Bowl? I remember we jumped offsides when it was first and goal at about the three, vividly remember that. We ended up settling for a field goal and then I think we lost by a field goal. But that’s just the coach in me. I remember Cris Carter caught a bunch of balls. I remember we threw some interceptions, but outside of that, I don’t remember much. I remember being busy out there. On the day we went to Disneyland, by the time we got in, kids rode one ride and it was time for a recruiting meeting, I remember that. Coach Bruce isn’t here, is he?

REPORTER: How much responsibility, pressure, I don’t know what the word is, do you feel, does the team feel going into this big bowl game and the last couple of years having ended the way they have? Does it feel any different this year as it has other years, I know you always want to win and there’s always pressure, do you sense any additional responsibility to try to make it happen?

COACH TRESSEL: I’ve never sensed our guys didn’t have a strong sense of responsibility, and our guys work hard and prepare hard and so I don’t—I mean, they’re doing the same. Where are we right now? I think after, I don’t know, five practices or whatever it is, and we’ve got however many more and then four out there, I think we’re doing the things that we need to do.

But there’s no doubt about it, in our guys’ minds, they know we haven’t won a bowl game the last three tries and they’ve known we’ve played three very good teams and I think two of them ended up number one and one of them ended up number two. And Oregon is a good team. They know Oregon is as good a team as any team in the nation. So they know the challenge and I think they also feel or know the responsibility, if you will, to represent their conference because guys want to have a 6-1 bowl record rather than a 1-6 because they’re part of a conference and so forth, but our guys, I’ve never been disappointed with their sense of responsibility.

REPORTER: Against a speed team like Oregon, do you want to try to integrate Saine any more, like in Michigan, where I think Herron had more carries?

COACH TRESSEL: I’m not sure we’ve gone into many games thinking one would have this many carries and one would have that many. We love the fact if those two guys are healthy, that’s really a good thing for us and who knows, they could both have 25 carries for all we know or they could both have 12. So I don’t know that we’ll consciously go in with the thought of Brandon more, but there’s no doubt, when he’s in there and when Boom’s in there, we’ve got good backs.

REPORTER: Jim, Terrelle was dealing with the ankle after the New Mexico State game, it seemed like it really did affect him at Penn State, got a little better over time. How much did that affect what you guys did offensively in November? The tailbacks were more involved, he was a little less involved and where is the ankle now? How will that maybe affect his involvement in the game plan for the Rose Bowl?

COACH TRESSEL: I think for the first two games in November it was something we had to think about. Once we got to that third week in November, he was a hundred percent. He’s a hundred percent now. We’ve got to make sure he stays that way. So if we can go in with all the folks ready to rock and roll and be healthy, hopefully we can create more problems for their defense.

REPORTER: You mentioned preparing for their speed? How do you do that, how do you replicate that in practice or get ready for speed?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, we always work hard to get ready for speed. The tempo that they bring, the number of plays, how quickly they run them and so forth, we try to not just put all that on the scout team because the scout team wears out after a while. So we integrate it really three different ways, one, we do it with the scout teams, we call it exchange teams. We do it sometimes with a kind of a group of the twos go down and really fire off some plays at them and then we do it when we go ones against one where we’ll really go hard on the tempo and that type of thing. They do a good job there. They’re, I think, fairly simple in how they attack you, it’s just hard to tackle them and cover them and do all the things that they do, but they do it so quickly and they do it with a good feeling for what the next answer is. They can say, okay, I know how they’re lining up to our—when we go fast tempo, okay, so here’s what they’re going to do.

So we’ve just got to—we’ve got to give our defense as many of those situations, and it’s nice and hot in that indoor, and our guys have spent some energy now. So far it’s been a good exercise for us.

REPORTER: End of the season, Brewster was banged up, his ankle, and Boren was playing with his situation, and Shugarts, what have you seen, has the line gotten healthier over the last several week and what have you seen in them the last couple days?

COACH TRESSEL: I think they got healthier the back half of the year, yeah, they had a couple ankles or this and that but it was than like they weren’t out there practicing. They’ve all been in there practicing this week. I think you see a little bit more confidence in guys when they can practice and when they can reflect back to the fact they’ve done a good job when they’ve been on the right guy doing the right thing with the proper technique. I think they’re coming along.

REPORTER: Is that what you saw at the end of the year? Did you see a group that kind of knew where they were going so to speak?

COACH TRESSEL: Yeah, and had been doing it together. There’s not much communication that goes on out there and when you can be on the same page and be helping one another and you get to do that all day long in practice, so again, I don’t feel any different than I did back in April. I thought it was critical that we be in there and get reps. We did. Preseason, we weren’t in there together and didn’t. And it took us a while to grow a little bit. Now, hopefully we’ll stay healthy this bowl preparation and through the game and take another step with that group.

REPORTER: This could be a game that can elevate people in the consciousness for next year and stuff.

COACH TRESSEL: Sure.

REPORTER: Terrelle is a case in point. He was preseason offensive player of the year in Big Ten, barely got honorable mention in the post season, have you talked to him about what this game in particular could mean to him and do you sense him wanting to leave 2009 on a high note, so to speak? I know he does, but I mean—

COACH TRESSEL: I sense he wants to leave on a higher note just like our team does. That was a good note that they won the conference outright, but it would be a higher note if you could then go outside of your conference in a BCS bowl game and perform well and be successful and our individual guys feel the same way. I think that the reality that sophomores have is they look at this game as kind of like the midpoint of their career. They’re no longer, even though everyone’s been talking about them as a young guy, this moment is the midpoint of their career and now they’re on the downhill side of their career.

So you’d like to be able to evaluate yourself as, I’ve grown a lot and here I am at the midpoint of my career and I’ve got this thing where. I understand what I need to do and now you’re going to have to do it against a very good team and that’s the challenge of it, but you know Terrelle, he loves to prepare and he gets excited about competition and so yeah, I’m sure he’s excited about what a game like this could mean to him and to his team.

REPORTER: How much does Masoli present as a quarterback?

COACH TRESSEL: What does he present?

REPORTER: In the way of challenges.

COACH TRESSEL: To me, the first thing I always like to check out in a quarterback is does he have a good command of what they’re doing and he obviously does. He knows when to make the throws, he knows when to hand it, he knows when to keep it. And Number two, he does a great job when things aren’t just right, when the play breaks down and all of a sudden you think you might tackle him and he’s an elusive guy that keeps plays going and if he needs to lower his shoulder on a fourth and two in a critical moment, he’s demonstrated that he’ll do that. Physical guy. You can see he loves it.

As I listened to one of the coaches that’s played against him said, it just seems like whenever they need something, he delivers it, and that’s a pretty good compliment.

REPORTER: How much of the offense at the end of the year, as Doug was asking, how much of that was running so much out of necessity to win that game, how much of it was that’s what you like to do, in other words run until or unless someone stops you, or would you like ideally to have more of a balance?

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, I think our tenth and eleventh game we were going to power run or pass. We probably weren’t going to have the quarterback real involved. In the 12th game when we were back to good health, we were going to do whatever we thought we needed to do based upon how they decided to deploy and they decided that they were going to have a whole bunch of folks inside the box for the power run and so we thought we had some chances to hit homeruns, we thought we had some chances to do some of the zone-type read package and that came out that it was good.

So what would we do? What would we like to do? We’re going to go in with the whole shooting match and find out how they decide to play us and I hope we never pound that square peg in the round hole. Sometimes it looks like you’re doing it. So we better be able to run and pass because our offense is going to have to be at its best as is our defense and those special teams, you watch their returns, so we’re going to be stretched in every phase.

REPORTER: You talked about taking care of the ball in November and obviously in the Purdue game you guys didn’t do a good job of that. How much of it was in the game plan going into the week did you maybe take some things out and say we’ve done some things and put ourselves in some situations that led to turnovers, we’re not going to do that or was it more about the decision making in the moment?

COACH TRESSEL: I think some of the plays we’ve had turnovers on we’ve run since and didn’t turn it over. We didn’t take anything out and say, we can’t do that concept or whatever. We just, I think, did a better job of taking care of the football.

REPORTER: As you’ve looked at Oregon’s defense what stands out about it? It looks like in many games they’ve given up many yards but they’ve made plays when they need to make plays.

COACH TRESSEL: They put pressure on you. They do a good job. They bring extra people and they come from all over the place. As I said, I haven’t studied them like, well, not too many people have studied them too much because a lot of us have been on the road but Jim Bollman has probably spent more time in town. As I listen to what he has presented to the group when they’ve practiced and so forth is that they’re a speed team, they have to be a speed team to survive in the spring and preseason. They love to bring pressure. They want to exert pressure on you. And I’m sure they feel that way because if they just sit back all spring and summer, they’re going to have problems against what their team does. They’re going to make you handle the heat and they can run. I noticed in the TV game there in the civil war, a couple of those pass rushers got after it, 58 and 39 or—I can’t remember exactly, but they’re going to bring it to you and see how you handle it.

REPORTER: As a guy that grew up in this culture, another Rose Bowl question, the rotation has sent you other places in other BCS games, championship game, would you have felt something was missing from your career if you didn’t go to this game?

COACH TRESSEL: It’s something that if you coach in the Big Ten or the Pac-10, it’s certainly in front of you every day. It’s a goal that you want to be a part of the Rose Bowl and would there be something missing if you never got to go? I guess so. I don’t think too much about what’s missing. I like to relish in the good fortune we’ve had. But it’s a great feeling to go and go against a team like Oregon and, I don’t know, we’re like eighth or ninth in the country and they’re seventh or sixth. I mean, this is a pretty neat deal and the fact that it’s the Rose Bowl, I think it does add a lot more to it if you’re a Big Ten or Pac-10 coach.

REPORTER: Jim, have you had a chance to run across Chip Kelly much?

COACH TRESSEL: I met him for the first time in my life the other night, we were at the national football foundation banquet and one of your fellow media guys, can’t remember his name, I shouldn’t do that. Wait a minute. From ESPN was standing there, chit-chatted as I was really headed out after the program and he introduced me to him and I said, Chip, I’m not sure I’ve ever met you, great to meet you. And he said, no, we’ve never met. And he’s much younger than me so he can remember better. But we’ve never met and we got to spin some I-AA yarns and talk about that and talk about—both of us talked about how we’re looking forward to getting out there.

REPORTER: What’s your impression of him? He seems aggressive.

COACH TRESSEL: From a coaching standpoint, offensively they get after you and defensively they get after you, so I would say that that would be a fitting label that they’re an aggressive put pressure on you group. As an individual, he didn’t seem that, but we were both in tuxedos and we were probably both on our best behavior. He didn’t take me down and pin me or something, so he wasn’t that aggressive. He seemed like a good man.

REPORTER: What’s a good I-AA yarn? Going to places that are hard to get to?

COACH TRESSEL: No, we were talking about, hey, isn’t this amazing, it’s New Hampshire against Youngstown in the Rose Bowl and we were laughing a little bit about, who’d-a-thunk-it, that type of thing.

REPORTER: Have you submitted your list of players for the NFL scouts?

COACH TRESSEL: I’ve sent in about 10 of them, yeah.

REPORTER: Can you give me a list of any of the guys?

COACH TRESSEL: I’m sure you can guess who. All of them are starters. I haven’t sent in any of the guys that are back-ups and don’t have film to be studied and we haven’t gotten any of the letters back on it. I’ve gotten a little bit of early indication and shared it with the kids. We tried to do that before they went home for Thanksgiving with the new rule with the December 1 agent thing and all that, so the NFL was good and got us some early things that way the kids could get home and talk a little bit with their folks.

REPORTER: Have you had discussions with Heyward about it?

COACH TRESSEL: No.

REPORTER: Not till after the game or—

COACH TRESSEL: Oh, no, usually what we try to do is before the kids break for practice, if they have any more data they need, we’ll try to get on the horn real quick, what would be the latter end of this week and the first day or so of next week before they head home, if they wanted, but we haven’t had any discussions.

REPORTER: In regards to recruiting, what’s the target number you guys would like to land in this class? I know things can change with guys leaving early or transfers.

COACH TRESSEL: Sure. In the 20 range.

REPORTER: Low 20s probably?

COACH TRESSEL: No, like 20. The lowest 20 you can get.

REPORTER: Jim, do you grow tired about hearing about the bowl record the last few years or is it easier for you to rationalize because you know who you lost to and how much of that do you use as motivation during this preparation time for these players?

COACH TRESSEL: You know, I get more weary when they talk about what we have done and pat us on the back than I do anyone saying something that we haven’t done because it’s the truth. If you get tired of the truth—I get a little bit queasy, though, when they start talking about, you guys have done this and done this and done this and I know we’ve done nothing in 2010, haven’t won a game yet and here comes 2010, that’s what we’re working to prepare for.

No, I don’t get tired of hearing it. If someone said something that wasn’t true, I suppose you would be tired of hearing it. If they said, hey, you’ve lost nine straight bowl games, you probably want to correct them on that. Hey, it’s only been three, or four, I don’t know. Three?

REPORTER: Do you use the truth as motivation during the preparation time?

COACH TRESSEL: Half these guys have maybe lost one bowl game and some of these guys were part of a winning bowl game. So, no. It is what it is. As I’ve said to you before, lots of things we don’t have to bring up because we’ve got a cavalry of people that bring them up for us. So we can just work on breaking the film down and go from there.

REPORTER: Can you talk about what a good job Kelly did to get his team back on track after the calamity of the first game?

COACH TRESSEL: It’s always difficult to deal with personnel issues because of how you feel about all your kids and when they error, it hurts you as much as it does anyone. And obviously they circled the wagons and game up with what they thought was in the best interest of the young person and everyone else involved and some people agreed with it, some didn’t, but they—you have to do what you think is right and obviously their team responded because the team had been pretty extraordinary and I think if your team’s not on board with what is going on with maybe some individual personnel decisions, you might see that in your overall play and you can’t say that you’ve seen that.

REPORTER: Can you talk about LaMichael James?

COACH TRESSEL: 21? Number 21? Fast. He’s hard to bring down. Just a freshman. I mean, he’s explosive. I forget, I heard someone talk about the number of plays over X amount of yards he’s had. He’s one of the system because you better watch the quarterback and you better watch the quick throws to the receivers and you better watch the downfield throws and you better watch the homeruns and by the way, you better stop those tailbacks.

So he’s just a good part of it. It’s not like any part of their game you could say, well, we won’t worry as much about that, we’ll go stop this. Well, you better stop him, the quarterback, et cetera, et cetera. So he’s been an explosive guy for them and obviously when they were missing their starter, he stepped up and took advantage of the opportunity and now they’re back to full strength with two or three guys that can carry it.

REPORTER: You talked about the guys being responsible—

COACH TRESSEL: He’s not a big guy, but he’s fast. Our guys aren’t big guys either, but they’re pretty good and he’s a good one.

REPORTER: You talked about the guys having a sense of responsibility, the players, how do you keep them from sort of going negative with that, not panic, but they don’t kind of just obsess about that responsibility? Are they so insulated from it—

COACH TRESSEL: I don’t know about insulated, but they’re focused in on what they have to do and they’re really engrossed in their offensive or defensive responsibility or their special team responsibility and they don’t—they don’t have time to sit around and think about all that stuff. When they’re in the film room, they’re in the weight room, they’re doing all those things. Now, when they get some time to kick back and they’re watching TV or whatever and someone says something about it, do they get a twinge? Sure, why wouldn’t they? But they don’t obsess. They don’t have time to obsess.

REPORTER: After some movement in the coaching landscape, have any of your assistants interviewed? Was there permission asked to interview any of your guys?

COACH TRESSEL: We had one of our guys interview to a job that’s already filled, so you know he’s not the one, but outside of that we haven’t.

REPORTER: You mentioned their running backs and they’re good individually, but how much of the fact that they’re different makes them that much more effective?

COACH TRESSEL: There’s a little tempo change. One’s got to be 245 pounds by the looks of him, and good. He’s a 1000-yard guy. So you’re going to have to handle the tempo difference. I’ve always been one that has liked having that kind of thing, Keith Byars or Beanie and Pittman or whoever, I’ve always liked to give that additional problem to a defense, so I think it gives an additional problem to the defense.

REPORTER: Looking into your running game in the end of the year, do you attribute that mostly to a better scheme, better blocking, better running by the backs?

COACH TRESSEL: I think we improved across the board. I don’t know if—we didn’t do any different schemes, if that’s what you mean. There’s only so many things you can do. You can go this way or down and pull this guy or you can go straight ahead. There’s not many ways you can block differently. So we didn’t do much of new schemes, but we got better at what we did, and maybe we recognized better what our guys could do and maybe did a little bit more of this or that. I don’t have a self-study in front of me, but I think we just improved.

REPORTER: On that self-study, from Terrelle’s standpoint, after 12 games, where did he change or improve most compared to where he was coming into the season?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, his knowledge in general is just tremendously better. I think his ability to adapt. He had one set of circumstances in a whole season and then entered a season with a whole different set of circumstances, so you have to adapt. Made it more difficult to adapt early on because the same guys weren’t in there to adapt with, but once we got a little bit better at understanding who we were and guys were in there doing it, I thought he did a good job of adapting to what we needed to get done. So I guess I would say knowledge and, oh, what’s the right word? Probably where you can—adapt was a pretty good word. Adaptability.

REPORTER: Everybody has team goals but they also have individual goals, how does he think about how he’s played in this regular season when you’ve talked to him? Do you think he feels pretty good about it?

COACH TRESSEL: I’ve said to you guys many times, he’s an extreme perfectionist, and so the only way he would have been happy at the end of the regular season was if we were 12-0, completed every pass and he scored 94 touchdowns and threw for another 100. That’s just him. I think his ability to adapt and study it and learn what we need to do better and all that has grown, so he’s not going to beat himself up that we’re not 12-0 and he didn’t throw 94 touchdowns, he has the ability to look and say, okay, here’s what I need to do better. I’m sure he feels like he’s had some progress, but not near as much as he would like to have at this point and going forward, he wants to get much, much better.

REPORTER: He was second team all Big Ten by your peers, the coaches, was that the play, do you think?

COACH TRESSEL: I think it was because Boom was missing so much. I don’t know how many league games Boom missed, someone might know here. Three, four, at least half the Big Ten season, so half of those coaches didn’t play them and then we didn’t play two teams, so now you’ve got six out of 11 teams that don’t know Boom from a head-to-head standpoint and B. Saine was in there pretty steady the rest of the year, so I’m sure it was a little bit from that standpoint. I think when we get our statistics sent to us, they’re all games and Big Ten games. I’m sure the Big Ten coaches and media and everyone else look at a little bit more of their decision making based upon what did you do in your conference because this is an all-conference team and Boom wasn’t up there in that list.

REPORTER: Did you go into this list not knowing who would emerge at this spot?

COACH TRESSEL: At running back?

REPORTER: Well, normally you don’t have a committee, you have a guy.

COACH TRESSEL: We’ve had committees, I mean, Pittman and Beanie were a pretty good committee.

REPORTER: I just wondered how that played out, if you went in thinking one thing and another thing—

COACH TRESSEL: No, we thought both those guys would be good. Didn’t know about the young guys, how they’d be, probably were pleasantly surprised with the way Jordan came along. He was healthy and if you’re healthy you practice and if you practice you learn. So he stepped in there. So we were certainly hopeful that Boom and Zoom would come through and I think they did. One more question before we turn you loose on the other crew. Is Lori not here? Xia, do you have a question?

REPORTER: No, but what kind of things are you going to do when you go out to the Rose Bowl considering half of these players have never been to California and this is their first time going to the Rose Bowl?

COACH TRESSEL: There are some neat things planned for them. We have a chance to go to Lawry’s Steakhouse which is always the traditional beef-eating contest that the Rose Bowl has. They get to go to Hollywood Improv. They get to go to Disneyland.

REPORTER: How many rides?

COACH TRESSEL: That was the coaches that only got one. Players probably had lots of rides. Coaches won’t have many this year either. ESPN Zone is a big deal out there. They’ll have free time where they can get a chance to run around and we’re staying almost the whole day after the game because we’re not in school.

In the past we’ve had some jump on a plane because school had started or we were four days into school or whatever so we’re not leaving until about 7:00 at night on the 2nd, so our guys will have the evening after the game plus virtually the whole day the day after the game, the 2nd, to do a little bit of exploring and whatever they do there, Santa Monica pier or, I’m not sure where we’re located, I’m not sure where our hotel is. I’ve been in places a little different than L. A. the last couple weeks. I guess I can’t say where I’ve been, that’d be illegal. But anyway—

SHELLY POE: Home Depot. The Home Depot Center.

COACH TRESSEL: Home depot Center is where we practice.

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