Wisconsin at Purdue: Coach Hazell Quotes

Coach Hazell's press conference had a lot to do with injuries this week, as here were today's quotes:

On the Wisconsin defense:

"They play so hard. They've got two really good marquis players on that defense in my opinion, number 30 and number 7 are really good football players that make good football plays at or behind the line of scrimmage. If you watch the rest of their defense, they play extremely hard. They like to give you the illusion that they're bringing pressure a lot, which they're not but they'll bring one guy off the edge and drop guys. So a lot of times it's a four or five-man rush. It's not a five or six-man rush. But I think they do an exceptional job in terms of their effort and their energy, and knowing where they're supposed to be."

On facing another great running game:

"Oh, yeah, it all comes down to being able to stop the great back that they have, which is, you know, a monumental task. He's a very good player. What makes him so good in my opinion is he is really, really fast in the hole. He's got really good quickness in the hole, but he's also got the top-end speed once he hits the edge. He'll run for two yards to three yards, five yards and all of a sudden he'll hit a 70-yarder. So we can't have them have those big runs."

On the receiver situation:

"Yeah, Danny is out. So what we'll do is start Yancey at the X position. We'll have Posey inside at the H, and then we'll put Trae Hart at the Z and being backed up by Myles Norwood. We'll have Shane Mikesky backing up at the 8th position."

" I think we've got to be really smart as a staff this week in practice being as sore as we are and this late in the season. But you have to get the perfect looks that you need to get. I think that's the balance that we have to find, but there are a lot of guys that have to grow up pretty quickly. Guys that have not played a lot for us, like Trae Hart and those types of guys. They have to grow up pretty quickly."

On Frankie Williams:

"Well, Frankie is going to be a day to day situation. We'll continue to evaluate him and see how his head continues to clear. Landon's going to be our starting safety. I thought he did a great job for us last week, and he needs to continue to play at that level or better and help other guys play at that level."

On the Wisconsin passing game:

"Well, it's always you must have the eye discipline in the back end, because they are going to lull you to sleep. How many times they're going to throw it, you don't know. But when they do throw it, you better be in coverage with your corners and safeties. So that's the concern that you have when they play-action pass you."

On the progress of Austin Appleby:

"He's done a really nice job in the last few weeks. He's done everything we've asked him to do. He took care of the ball pretty well last week. Obviously, he's not perfect, but he continues to drive the offense and his whole mood in the huddle, his tempo and all those things that you look for out of a quarterback, his leadership skills, he's providing that for us."

More on Trae Hart:

" Because he's the guy that we think has the most pop in terms of being able to hit the big play. He's quick, he's got some speed. He's obviously a young guy that doesn't play as the speed that he should yet because he's still trying to figure it out. But if we can get him the ball enough times or a couple times and he can provide some of that energy and fast-twitch, that's why you like that guy."

On Dan Monteroso:

"He's potentially part of the rotation. He's got a little bit of a knee that we have to watch here in the next couple days. We'll evaluate him today and see how much he can give us."

On the growth of Danny Ezechukwu:

"He's absolutely done a great job. He surprised us in the last two weeks of how well he's playing. We had a discussion on Sunday about a week ago Sunday we talked about is he a guy that you move back to end next year? We had the same discussion this Sunday. We said, absolutely not. He probably will stay at the linebacker position because he's settling in so well at that position."

On B.J. Knauf:

"It's still up in the air. We talked this morning about potentially getting him back for the Northwestern game. So we're going to see how well his development and healing goes in the next two weeks."

On what DeAngelo Yancey needs to do:

"We need him to come along and need to be able to have an outlet for the quarterback to go with and go to in all of those single coverages on the back side of our formation. He sits back there on the back side of our formations or four by four formations and one-on-one match-ups, you've got to be able to throw the ball back there to him. We've not been able to do that successfully this whole year. So he needs to step up another level for us."