Illinois Fighting Illini College Football Pregame Quote, 09/09/2019

First off recapping the UConn game, whenever you go on the road you know it’s a little bit of a  tougher situation you’ll be in. Hostile crowd, first time going to UConn, I think we got a little bit of what we expected. Football team wise last week I talked about improvements you normally make from game one to game two, I can’t say that was totally the case with us where hopefully game two to game three we really clean some things up then. But at the same time you never apologize for a win. We found a way, we had opportunities there to put a little bit of distance between us. You want your football team to go through a little bit of adversity to see exactly who we are, and I thought we met that challenge. But we had the opportunity to put a little distance between us and we weren’t able to do that. Offensively one of the primary reasons is that you can’t turn the ball over three times, and some of the penalties that we had were costly, but we will clean those things up, especially celebration penalties after touchdowns or something good happens and you get in a hole based on that. But we are learning, we are growing. Injury wise we had a few players miss time, Reggie Corbin being one of them with the hip pointer. Hopefully we will have him back this week. We have some other players that have missed time that are getting closer to returning. So injury wise we are going to be in a little bit better position. After you leave the UConn game it is always on to the next week and we know what the schedule is and we know that we have a good Eastern Michigan team coming in here, a bowl team, that of course upset a Big Ten opponent last year and played Kentucky strong this past week, so that’s kind of where we are. We need to make some improvements in some areas, all three areas, and to finish up the nonconference schedule 3-0 is where we want to be.

On the defensive lines performance:

Oluwole has been outstanding with his play and everyone is going to talk about him because when you are leading the country in sacks you should talk about him. But there are some other things that have to play out the right way. Our interior play, you mention Jamal Woods, he is a good football player and he is playing the three technique position for us, he’s been active. Little bit more athletic ability in there, he is not the biggest guy but he is quick. But Jamal Milan can be a difference maker with what he can do. He can play either the tackle positions but he is just a force with athletic ability. He has had to fight through injuries in the past, he is healthy now, and with those two healthy along with Lere Oladipo and Deon Pate we have a group of athletes. Tymir Oliver is healthy now so we have some guys who can really get into the rotation.

On how to stop the penalties from the team:

Like everything else, tell them not to do it. I know that is a pretty simple approach but I think as a general rule you know when you shouldn’t do something. Ra’Von Bonner, you know on the road and you see some orange in the stadium and they’re excited and you go over and high five them. But you have 10 other teammates that were excited to celebrate with you there, so he won’t make that mistake there then. Now, like we were taunting the opponent, but a little too much excitement and we will take it over to the sideline. There are some things that are hard to correct but this isn’t and we will put this into that category.

On the teams bounce-back performance after being down 13-0.:

When you are in a game and you make a mistake you can’t take it back. There is so much more football left to go, things happen early on, and every game you are going to have to fight through some kind of adversity. I think it was unique for us as coaches to see our guys down 13-0 on the road to fight back. Good football teams get behind from time to time and you kind of see what you are made of a little bit. We reached down, corrected a lot of those things and got the win.

On the status of Reggie Corbin for Eastern Michigan:

Questionable. We missed him a lot this week, he is a good football player, that goes without saying. We broke a few, and Reggie may be able to take those to the house but we need him back this week. Those injuries are tough to predict how long it will take him and that is the case with him. We are a lot better football team with him.