Purdue vs. Eastern Kentucky; Coach Speaks

Purdue’s fearless leader Darrell Hazell stepped up to the microphone today to talk about the upcoming game against Eastern Kentucky. These are always a fun to way to get in touch with where coach thinks the team is at, and it’s also a way for the angry and disenchanted to go nuts in the comments. Let’s enjoy shall we?

First impressions about Eastern Kentucky

Head coach has come from Tennessee. He was a special teams guy there. Studying Tennessee special teams. The offensive coordinator came from Coffeeville. We're studying them. Defensive coordinator was at Michigan a few years ago. That's the kind of team we're studying. These first new games, new staff, you have to make sure you do a good job the first couple series. We watched a lot of film, watched their old film for personnel. We watched the three situations I just spoke on to see what kind of schemes. You really don't know until you play the first couple series.

On the QB for Eastern who was a transfer from Mizzou

A guy that played a lot of football for them last year. He throws it pretty well. You see the other guy that's transferred in from Missouri, who is a really good competitor, plays extremely well with the ball, pulls it down. Those are things you that you note of as you prepare for these two quarterbacks.

On Bentley’s health after his injury from last year

He's going to have a great game for us. He's had a phenomenal camp, stayed healthy. Playing much faster now. His weight is still good, 248, 249 right now. Very physical.

Leadership quality is unmatched to anybody on our football team.

On the health of Da’Wan Hunte after a small injury in practice

Da'Wan is still a little gimpy. We'll figure out how much he can do today and take it day by day.

On the parts of the team he feels good about (fodder for the haters here)

Everywhere. There's not a situation on my team that I'm concerned about. No positions, no attitudes, no work ethics, where their minds are.

A little bit of Markell Jones

Markell took the spot over pretty quickly last year. He's very comfortable. You never have to worry about Markell's confidence. He's a very confident.

Finally, on the mindset of the team and how they look going toward Saturday

We started our meeting on Sunday night. Went out and ran around, threw the ball around a little bit Sunday night. They are like everybody else, they are so ready to go and get this thing rolling because they know they have a good football team. When you have a good team, you want to be out there playing and prove it.

So there you have it. Nothing truly revelatory but at least we know that football is now one day closer to reality.