Postgame Press Conference From No. 1/1 Ohio State vs. Bowling Green – Ohio State Buckeyes
10/7/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 7, 2006
COACH TRESSEL: I’m sure as a coach nothing’s ever as good as you’d like it to be and I would categorize this just that. I thought we did some good things and made some progress in some areas, and then I’m not sure, perhaps in others, but hopefully if we can learn from our video, and I thought we had three excellent days of practice and thought we progressed there and did some good things. And decisively, sometimes when you go down and score early in games like this, you lose a little bit of your edge, and I don’t know if we did or we didn’t, but I thought we did some good things, but everything from this point on is Big Ten football and it’s what it’s about. And our guys have a goal of being very, very good, so I think today was worthwhile, but not wonderful. David, have you got an opening statement?
PATTERSON: First I would just like to give credit to Bowling Green again. They came out and they gave us a good game. They were a tough team and they played physical up front. On the defensive side of the ball, I think there are still some things we can improve on. I was happy with the overall effort of the guys on the D, and once again, I just had a great time and enjoyed watching our great offense.
PITCOCK: I think Bowling Green was definitely prepared for us. They scouted us well. They were showing us a lot of different looks. I think defensively we were making mistakes and we weren’t executing well. I think this week we need to work hard on our fundamentals, gap and stuff like that, and we were able to hold them to seven points, which is always what we want to do.
DATISH: Thanks to the defense for stepping it up and getting us some turnovers, flipping the position for us and holding them to only 7 points. I think most of the time we do that, we’re going to be successful. The offense, just had a feeling of not necessarily disappointment, but just an empty feeling a little bit. Every win’s worthwhile and satisfied, but we felt we probably could have done a little better out there and now we’re looking forward to playing in the Big Ten. SMITH: Hats off to Bowling Green. They came here and did a great job of playing us physical. The guys up front never gave up through all four quarters. Defensively we did a great job. Anytime you hold a team, like Quinn said, to seven points, that can’t express enough how great they did. Offensively we still have time to make some things up. There’s always going to be some areas that you need to improve on. I talked about it a lot. You can never be complacent in anything that you do. We can always improve, though.
REPORTER: Coach Tressel and David, Kirk Barton went out on the second play, looked like a foot injury, and David (Patterson) had to be helped off, what’s their status?
COACH TRESSEL: I think Kirk will be just fine. He had a little bit of a foot procedure this week and didn’t get as much practice as he would have liked, and we were only going to play him two or three series anyway and just kind of had a little pain in there, and we just thought that it would be better to let it settle down, but I think he’ll be just fine. And as far as David goes, I think David will be just fine. Probably for next week, quite honestly, it will be day-to-day, but in the long run, David will be just fine.
REPORTER: Coach, could you talk about Troy’s day of three touchdown passes today and, Troy, could you talk about throwing a touchdown pass to Small and how that felt, your relationship with him? Coach, if you could start on that.
COACH TRESSEL: Anytime that you can strike through the air from out, I was especially pleased with the last one because we had had a couple homerun opportunities in the last couple games and didn’t connect. We need people to know that we’re going to go deep, and Troy threw the ball vertically and Teddy ran a good route, and people need to know that that’s part of who we are and who we need to be. And those other ones were just good decisions and part of the base route that was called, and Troy did a good job of making decisions today, stepped up when he had to, escaped when we had some breakdowns, and put the ball where it needed to be, and I thought he had a very solid day.
SMITH: Anytime a youngster gets a chance to make a play, gets an opportunity to even be in a game, I think it’s a credit to him. Watching him get into the end zone and him expressing himself earlier in the week and telling me how much he wanted to get in the end zone was — it shows his drive and love for the game. I think the staff made a good decision putting him in the game and the line gave me time up front and he made a great play on the ball.
COACH TRESSEL: Ray did say all week he was going to score. He did, that’s true. He’s a soothsayer.
REPORTER: Jim, it looked like maybe — this is for Troy as well. It looked like he was limping a little bit in the third quarter and adjusting, and then Troy came back, were you hoping to let Justin finish the game or did you put Troy back in because Bowling Green scored?
COACH TRESSEL: Oh, no, I wanted Justin to finish the first half because I wanted him to go down and try to throw his way down for us to score again. But we had no intentions of going with anyone other than our first unit first time we get the ball.
REPORTER: Jim, how do you feel the special teams’ play was, the field goal block at that point in the game?
COACH TRESSEL: Well, that was huge. I can’t remember exactly what the score was, 7-0 maybe, or coming up with that, that is big. Keeping them a little bit disappointed that they had done some good things and we turned them away, it was good to see them punt to us the one time, and I think we got a 15-or-so-yard return. And I think you have to be thankful for when they don’t punt to you, I don’t know what their net punt was for the day, but it couldn’t have been too much, so our drive start analysis will be pretty good there.
I thought Ryan Pretorius did a pretty good job getting some air under the kickoffs, and we wanted to get a little bit more hang time from that standpoint. I thought he did well. Plus I thought Aaron Pettrey’s stroke was very solid on his extra points and looked like we did a lot of things well.
REPORTER: For Coach and players, are you guys glad that a week like this is out of the way? You talked a little bit about this during the week, that you had to leave Big Ten play and jump into a nonconference game in the middle of the season; are you glad this week is over and you can get back into the Big Ten now?
COACH TRESSEL: Speaking just for me, yes. The Big Ten is what it’s all about for us, and you get your Big Ten focus on and then all of a sudden we’re out of the Big Ten. We have to watch all those other teams play in our league, so I’m happy to get back, especially when you’re going against an opponent like Michigan State coming up, you know what kind of ability they have, so, yeah, this is exciting.
PATTERSON: For me, I was just very thankful for us getting another chance to just play in Ohio Stadium. I’m a senior and it’s very rare that you get an extra chance to play in Ohio Stadium, so I just think me and the rest seniors and the guys on the team are grateful for that.
SMITH: I second that.
PITCOCK: Third that.
DATISH: Fourth.
REPORTER: Quinn and David, Coach talks about making progression. From your standpoint, what did you learn from today defensively? What did this team progress with defensively today?
PATTERSON: Well, I think we took another step towards our goal of just creating more turnovers, and I also think when you get so many different looks from a team like Bowling Green, I think it just helps our defense tremendously, because they do so many things, it’s kind of like playing maybe two different teams because they have different identities, sometimes they can be a power run team or they can be a spread offense, throw the ball down the field, and when you play a team like that, it’s a great opportunity for our defense. You get different looks and you study different things and I think it will help us get better this week.
PITCOCK: As Dave said, it’s a great opportunity to absorb all this knowledge, and a week of preparing, it really makes you prepare for many different teams we may face later on in the season, you see the spread and then they get back inside. We’re seeing new formations that we haven’t played against all year, so you really get to experience everything. They were a tough team. They were a lot more physical than we thought and that’s just how they play. They’re a very good team.
REPORTER: Doug, for not having Barton in there, was that any factor in some of the holding calls? And then you guys had some times when things didn’t look too sharp.
DATISH: You know, Kirk is a starter, he’s a great player, but on the same start, Schafe came in there, and he’s been a starter in the past, and we practice rolling guys in and out all the time, so I have to take my hat off to Bowling Green, they did some stuff that confused us and they played hard and did a good job.
REPORTER: I know you weren’t here for this, but in 1998 Michigan State had a pretty big upset of an undefeated Ohio State team, do you think that’s something you guys could talk about? I don’t know if any of the players remember that game at all.
COACH TRESSEL: We always talk about the history of a series that goes way back. There were some huge games there in the early ’70’s that we’ve talked about in the past that had a lot riding on them. So we always talk about the history of a series. Most of us weren’t here, all of us weren’t here, maybe Jim Heacock, I don’t know if Luke was playing at that time or what, but I think that’s part of our history is that that is the one lone loss on a great team, so I’m sure it will be brought up in the context of the series.
REPORTER: Troy, could you just talk about the long touchdown pass to Ginn and also can you imagine what it’s like for a DB to be on him all day long? It just seems like you’re always playing with fire.
SMITH: If I was a DB, I’d just stay deeper than the deepest. If you stay deep, at least you’ve got a chance to try to tackle him, because he’ll run past you. He’ll run past you with the blink of an eye. The play call was just that, try to get a deep strike and try to get something going, try to get something generated. The guys up front did a great job with protection because that route had to — it took a while for it to get developed. They did a great job with stopping the defense and I just try my best to get the ball out there to him because he’s so talented and gifted with so much speed. You try to get it to him in stride so he doesn’t have to stop and get a defensive back a chance to break on the ball.
REPORTER: For Coach Tressel or any of the players, I was curious how you guys felt the new field held up today?
COACH TRESSEL: The sideline was extraordinary. You better ask these guys.
PITCOCK: I thought the field was a lot more durable. In past games, I was slipping and falling, tearing it up. I think with the sod being newly laid down, I think it’s going to take some time to even it out, but other than that, I’m happy with the field so far.
SMITH: I thought it was good. Like he said, there was a lot of little divots and stuff like that out there, uneven spaces, take some time to beat it up a little bit, fall on it a little more, run some more deep ball routes, we’ll be okay.
COACH TRESSEL: It was pretty. I thought the color was nice.
REPORTER: Auburn lost today, do you keep up each week to see who’s below you, who might be creeping up in the race?
COACH TRESSEL: I didn’t know Auburn lost, but who did they play?
REPORTER: Arkansas.
COACH TRESSEL: I guess you take notice, because I have a ballot in the USA Today coaches’ poll, so I have to be very focused on doing that job well, and outside of that, the only team I care about is Michigan State.
REPORTER: For Troy, third down and 25 there in the first half, you rolled to your right, rolled to your left, and we saw a little bit of the old Troy running the football there for the first down. Just talk about that play and what you saw and how it developed, did it feel good running like that for the first down?
SMITH: It felt all right running like that. I haven’t run like that in a long time, and I had a lot of guys joking with me when I got to the sideline, but stepping up and trying to make a play and keeping the drive going, that’s what playing football here is all about, regardless if it’s third and extra long or third and short. Anytime you get a chance to make a play for your team to keep us in it so that we can get touchdowns after touchdowns, that’s our focus.
REPORTER: Coach, after Bowling Green opened the third quarter with that long drive, how important was it for you guys to get back on track with that drive and how important was Pittman’s running on that drive for you?
COACH TRESSEL: That was real important. That was an impressive drive, six, seven, six and a half minutes, something like that. They did a good job. And we needed for sure to keep the football for a while because that’s — we didn’t need to put our defense back out there. And the best way to do that is with the run, and we came out that drive with the intentions of pounding it at them a little bit, and I thought our guys did a good job of that.
