Northwestern at Purdue: Coach Hazell Quotes

After a week off coach Hazell addressed the media on Tuesday afternoonto talk about Saturday's home finale against Northwestern. Here is what he had to say:

Opening statement:

"After our game two weeks ago against Wisconsin we had a chance to get some rest and get some guys healthy and took the week to let guys rest and didn't put them in any action at all and let them stand on the sideline so we can get 'em back for the final two games here and obviously we have a good, Northwestern opponent coming in on Saturday and I think it's a great match-up for both teams as you look at the personnel and study the personnel, I think we're very evenly-matched football teams and it should be a great time for our seniors in the furnace the last time, so looking forward to Saturday."

On Trevor Siemian getting rid of the ball quickly:

"Yeah, I think you can't give him open-lane throws because he'll find 'em band hit 'em. I think you do have to put pressure on the wide-outs outside, but he does a good job of throwing it down the field with those back shoulder throws, so you have to be careful there as well."

"I think it's very important to mix it up and makes sure he keys sees a couple different looks and we got to do a good job up front with those front four guys."

On learning how to win:

"That's the whole key is to have one or two guys step up in those last couple drives, whether it's offensively or defensively and you gotta make a play, and that's really what it comes down to. Who is going to make the play at the most critical point in time at the end of the football game? That's what matters at the end of the games to finish the games."

On the final two weeks with no bowl game:

"I think it's always good to build momentum going into the off-season but we owe so much to this group of seniors, these 17 seniors that put so much into that program and we want very desperately to go out and do the right things on Saturday so they can experience that success."

On Northwestern's upset at Notre Dame:

"Well, I think the thing that -- you watch that film and the game live on TV, they continue to fight, no matter what the situation was. There was quite a few times where you thought the game might be over but they never gave up. They found ways too make plays. The quarterback, he does such a good job of dropping the ball off, those guys were sinking into deep coverage and he was dropping it off to the back and being very patient."

On Northwestern's offense:

"I think the big thing with Northwestern's offense is they spread you out, and they have a million different route combinations that they make you try to defend all of them and you gotta be careful that you don't try to put too much in your guys' heads opinion so they have all these different combinations, man routes, zone routes, and they do a good job with their front five protecting. They do a lot of turn protection which doesn't let allow people to get to them and like I said earlier, he gets rid of the ball extremely fast, which keeps him protected."

On the Northwestern defense:

"Well, they're an even front, and they play a lot of zone coverage on first and second down, a lot of man coverage on third down with one high safety. Again, they do a good job of rushing with their front four. They don't bring a whole lot of pressure, they might bring a fifth guy in first and second downs, usually in third downs they will. They play well off of each other."

On the freshmen receivers:

"You're going to see those young guys probably more so and we'll put a gauge on it the rest of the week but right now if we were to play today we would start Trae and start Greg, but we will see how that goes throughout the rest of the week."

On injuries:

" The only guy that's questionable right now is Danny Monteroso, he's the only guy that's questionable. Frankie is probable, he's cleared his test and he not does not have any recurring symptoms. We're going to keep him out of contact until probably later in the week. But all those other guys (Ra'Zahn Howard, Ryan Russell) should be ready to go."

On B.J. Knauf:

"B.J. is not available this week."

On Carlos Carvajal:

"He's coming along, I think he's probably three to four weeks away from probably being pretty close to 100%. We're putting him in individual drills, no team activities yet but he's making some significant progress."

On the uniform combination:

"We're going gold-black-black and we were going to go black-black-black but at our last meal I talked to the seniors and they really, last chance potential to wear that gold helmet was very important to them."