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INDIANA UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 4, 2015Kevin WilsonCOACH KEVIN WILSON: We've got 24 guys right now signed. There's technically a spot if we want it. That's really not in anybody's hands right now. So we've got one that could have went somewhere or we could have offered. We didn't down the stretch. We're kind of holding one. Our track record the last few years, one year it was Matt Dooley and Stephen Houston after signing day. Those have been decent guys. Then the following year it was Tim Bennett. The following year it was Nate Hoff that was a decent player this year. We had sites on Danny Cameron last year. Our thing at the end, there's a couple of guys we could have went on. But just looking at needs, we just are calculating holding that. We'll see if we use it. We could use it for walk‑ons. We could use it for a senior transfer, if there's one of those cats. We're not going to ‑‑ there's no rush to do that. Most of those guys that came around April, May. So we're kind of sitting on one. It's a good class of 24. I appreciate a lot of the effort of a lot of folks, because for us to do what we've done the last couple of years of recruiting takes a lot of people; whether it be our in‑house recruiting guys, like Jeff Sims who was here that moved on to Garden City College as head coach, but Cody Rager is running that program down there for us, people at the hotels, the food, our hosts, you name it. There's a lot of people that make our recruiting efforts go. It's a collective effort. A lot of professors helping us academically. Support staff. We kind of do a day in the life when a kid comes in. You guys have seen how the building works. We run them through academics, into the training room, into dressing out to locker rooms, just how this building functions. Just it takes a lot of people. The recruiting efforts is a lot of people and we appreciate that. I think Jay Lowder, our graphics guy, probably and Brent and Joel, who do our videos, branding of our stuff, behind‑the‑scenes guys. We took a secretarial spot a couple of years ago and turned it into a graphics spot. That's big with these kids. You show me a picture, show me my image, and brand me as a recruit. A lot of people go into this. Excited about the class. I will say going forward, we did put five more walk‑ons on scholarship midyear when we had seven guys leave midyear. We added our two transfers, we had five more spaces. So we have guys on half a scholarship for half a year, Mitchell Paige, Andre Booker, Sean Damaska, tight end, Tyler Lukens, one of our offensive linemen. And I'm missing one. Who's my fifth one? Andrew Wilson, running back. So we were able to go the max and still with our early graduates we were able to get some midyear guys. I want to recognize those guys. Those guys' scholarships will be used in the next recruiting cycle. Those kids are doing a good job. But we signed 24. The two midyear guys from UAB. There's ten guys from midwest, four from our state. Isaac James, Brandon Knight, Jacob Robinson, Joe Belden, but four in‑state guys coming from great programs, all of those out of central Indiana. Three Ohio guys. We've always gotten two, three, four, five out of Ohio. Two out of Chicago. This is the first time in my time we've got someone from St. Louis. It's good football, Coach McDaniels from St. Louis, we've got good ties. Coach McDaniels in his time, there was a good contingent of St. Louis players. So it was nice to get DaVondre Love. Within five hours we got ten guys from the midwest. Travel down south like we've been doing. I think the last couple of years, we've taken four or five from Georgia, four or five from Florida. The last two or three years it's kind of been that way. This year was two from Georgia, not counting the UAB guys. Hawkins is from Columbus Carver. Two Georgia natives and five kids out of Florida. I think last year it was four, the year before that was five. What was new this year, we took three guys out of Maryland, the DC area, the DC metro. We took one junior college player, Camion Patrick, and a young man from Texas. The class of the 24 kind of follows what we've done the last couple of years. If you look at it, for example, when I go through and pull up some of those ‑‑ you guru guys that rate all the guys, if you pull up conference, it will list 14 teams for all those years, even though 2002 there was 11 Big 10 teams. Nebraska was in the Big 12. But they will rate all teams. Our last three we've been somewhere rated between 5, 6, 7. Previously there's six 14s, two 13s, two 12s and one 11. Our average is 13.36 until the last three years. So we've gotten three years of recruiting better talent, longer bodies, better bodies. It's guys that are actually, "more wanted by other schools." The previous four recruiting classes we signed the 2011 class, so the '10, '09, '08, and '07 class, those guys had 28 players that their only offer was Indiana, if I can believe what's on the sites. 27 guys that were offered non‑BCS level, and 26 guys had a BCS level other than Indiana. This class of 24, I think the majority, you can do your own research, I think it's not quite a hundred percent, but it's close, three years of competitive recruiting, and that's not me, and that's not our staff, it starts with the administration. Their commitment, funding, giving us the ability, the resources to see kids, getting kids on campus, first‑class visits. Treating kids the right way. They supported them, academic, the weight room guys. Our team has become awesome recruiters, and how they connect and sell our brand and sell our product and sell our vision. So, again, it's on paper a good class. This paper needs to transition into Ws. The best class on paper is that one that has one spring under its belt. We just started our second winter workout with those guys. They're still green in the developmental stage. We look forward to developing what appears to be some better talented guys to work with, a better starting point. Also in the class, as far as your needs, when you're signing 24, 25, you're signing a little bit of a balance to me, across the board, not maybe taking one of everything. We did some point of emphasis. We took four offensive linemen, three defensive linemen, so seven bigs in the class. Big bodies. The four linemen is pretty critical. You're getting to a point we played freshmen years ago, you like to take O linemen, not into red shirting. But sometimes it's nice to get a winter‑spring development. There are four O linemen, I think we've got some good linemen going into junior and senior years. You don't want to wait for a lineman to graduate and get another left tackle. You kind of like to develop those guys as you would a quarterback. You want to groom a guy for a little bit. I think the guys we've got at offensive line, Brandon Knight and DaVondre Love, it's D‑Love, because I call one ‑‑ two big tackles. Brandon is an extremely athletic tackle. Very ‑‑ he was our top guy we went after that we thought we could get. Very fortunate to get him in state. Great story on his visit. Huge ties to another school within our state with his family. And on the visits the coach is always anal, everything has to be perfect on the visit. We're doing campus tour. I'm doing the tour guide. You're my guy. As we popped in and around the campus, and grandma was getting in our big golf cart, I accidentally ran over her foot. And she screamed a little bit, but that shows that even when you break grandma's foot and give her a big hug, they're going to be Hoosiers. We always send a little direct message about that. But Brandon Knight at offensive tackle. Very, very athletic. Going to get bigger in the weight room. Just going to need some ‑‑ liked the way he played, his energy, very impressive. DaVondre Love is a bigger guy, will probably be right tackle, Brandon at left. We'll figure it out in time. But he's as big as a house. He's as big as anyone we've got. I think he's more proportioned than Dimitric Camiel, but 6‑7 and long like him, 290 pounds, 300, very big frame, very proportioned well, the right way. Two big guys to work with. Brandon Knight will be more athletic, and Love more a road grader. Two inside guys. Hunter Littlejohn, might look at him as center or guard. We get some centers that are getting to the end of their time. Could see him at one of those inside three positions. A guy we liked a bunch, a fellow Ohio native, Simon Stepaniak, who was our top target at guard. Coach Frey when he started he wanted Brandon Knight and Stepaniak in those top positions. Excited about those two guys. Love and Littlejohn complement the O line. D line, we've got two in‑state guys, with Joe Belden out of Avon, and Jacob Robinson out of Westfield. Joe will probably start, he could play starting inside as an athletic kind of nose guy. We'll see how his body transitions into nose, or even consider him as an offensive center. He starts on the D line as an inside guy. Jacob Robinson, Brandon Wilson, these are standup bandits or they put their hand on the ground. Jacob, heavily recruited, as was Brandon Knight, several Big 10 schools, after committing, continued to pursue him. Brandon Wilson, sitting in Florida, Gators and Tar Heels called, see what he's doing, pretty highly‑touted guy, playing basketball, excited about Brandon Wilson. He was committed to another school before we got him. We got four guys in the mid skill area. Tight end Austin Dorris, who played quarterback in his class, we had him in camp last year, liked him, offered him immediately after camp. Very athletic. Very good, comparable to Fuchs and Bolser. An athletic guy, will need to get bigger in the blocking side of things. Scored a boatload of points. Was their player on a tremendous high school team, on the West Virginia‑Ohio state line. At inside linebacker, we've got two mid skill guys. That would probably be the position that was maybe recruited least, because we felt no different a year ago. You're sitting here playing freshmen and sophomore linebackers that are pretty good, getting recognized for All Big 10, this or that. In the linebacker world, it was difficult to go get some we wanted. We didn't take as many as we might have liked, but we liked what we've got and we'll compliment that with our in‑house walk‑ons. We got Reakwon Jones, very athletic, strong guy. He told us the other day he benched 400 pounds. He was at 380, was trying to go past his father as a 400‑pound bencher. Athletic linebacker out of Panama City, Florida. Very intrigued by Reakwon. Great kid. And Omari Stringer has been with us, he'll play outside as our field outside backer, young man out of Chicago, Omari Stringer. The other mid skill guys, one true quarterback, Austin King. Austin coming out of Georgia. Plays in a style of offense that's very prevalent in that region; you spray it, it's gone. You can see him distribute the ball, make all the throws you want, great touch on the screen game. Flares to the tailbacks, stepping in the curls, quick games, making the dig shots. Great command presence, good body language. I think he'll be a quality, quality quarterback for us. In the skill positions we've got a lot. Two running backs, three quarterback athletes, four more receivers, four more DBs. If you look at that, basically we've got 13 guys that are skill oriented. I think the area we've improved in the line of scrimmage as an O line, as a D line. I think we've gotten better as a linebacker, but we need to be better defensively in the perimeter. Our receiver play needs to pick up. Those were big areas of emphasis. Jordan Howard, on the recruiting rankings, he and the other transfer give you zero ranking, for what's that worth. But as a recruit, probably the biggest target we went after, it was all luck when we got him. We looked into it, they had a great running back. We didn't know it. He's here, he's doing well. He's a big, different back. But we're excited about him. Again, he was, I think, second in the nation in carries. He had two fumbles, 300 carries, so he's dependable. 900 yards ‑‑ 880‑ something as a freshman. So very excited about Jordan Howard. We added late Devonte Williams. He is a very, very dynamic player. Came to us early, actually wanted to commit last spring. I don't know if I want a running back. We continued to recruit him. About two weeks left, he was always Coach McCullough's top running high back, he loved the speed he brought, thought it would be a nice piece to complement his room. He was always Coach McCullough's target. But as we looked at it, wasn't sure if even if we got Jordan, do we need receivers, defensive backs, do we have other needs? Two weeks left, we started looking around, who is the best player on the board, he became a lot better. Especially watching his senior tape, I didn't watch it until after the new year a couple weeks ago. We judged him as a junior, what I liked when we put the senior tape on, the DB coaches said, We need to take that guy because he's a very dynamic player. We like Devonte as a speed like, Jordan as a proven guy at running back. Three guys as quarterback. We'll start Donavan Hale at quarterback. Bigger kid. His frame says if he's not a quarterback, he might be a tight end or an outside linebacker. He's pushing 6‑4, 215 now. He's going to be a Chris Covington size kid. A very comparable body, very raw. I got to work with the quarterback. He's coming off a meniscus surgery. I think someone put out it might have been ACL. It's just a four‑ to six‑week meniscus deal. He'll running here by the end of the month and training him. We'll start him at quarterback and see where he goes. I can see him playing a lot of positions. A little more big skill than small skill because of his body type. Mike Majette and Isaac James, Mike is a DC kid out of northern Virginia, Isaac out of Carmel up the road. Those are two guys that were defensive back, punt return, kick return, wild cat quarterback, tailback, slot receiver, wide receiver, whatever coach wanted them to get the ball. I see them starting on offense, because they're good with the ball in their hand. Whether they're back catching kicks or playing slots on bubbles or reverses, or playing inside or outside receiver. They could play defensive back. There's potential need that they could go there. We'll probably wait for the summer to figure it out. We're recruiting as offensive players because they're good with the ball in their hand. So see those guys as potential slot guys. Big receiver, we've got four guys, two high school guys in Nick Westbrook and Leon Thornton, both bigger, 6‑1, 6‑2, with Leon, 6‑1‑plus, and Nick pushing 6‑3. Nick led the state of Florida in receiving yards, 1,800 yards. We were worried that several other schools contacted him late. He committed early, fell in love with the school. Was our top guy. Great student. Very fortunate again. He didn't waiver, but we were worried about people coming after him. Leon Thornton, very dynamic kid out of Chicago. Won a couple of state titles, quality program. Very dynamic, very explosive. Two older receivers, the UAB transfer Marqui Hawkins, who is 6‑2, 210. And I'm very excited today about Camion Patrick. He's a three for three guy. Didn't play his first year at junior college. He'll be like Stephen Houston, he'll have three years. He should graduate here the first of May, we'll try to get him in here for May and get him in the summer. I saw him practice the Thursday before the Ohio State game. I flew down to see those guys at a workout, then I saw them play their national championship game. I think he's a really dynamic, high end, big time, Big 10 player. He's going to be real good. He better be, because I think he's special. In the back end defensively, Jonathan Crawford, outstanding safety. Continue to be pursued by several power 5 conferences after committing. Big kid, 6‑2‑plus. Push 205, 210, about 185 now. Big frame, physical guy at safety. Jameel Cook, another safety we took late, very physical kid out of Houston. See those two guys at safety. Start Tyler Green, a lot of people had him listed as a safety. He's a big 6‑2, he's long, he's narrow, got great hips. We're going to try him as a big corner. He can flat‑out run. Great feet, great change of direction. And the last one we have penciled at corner, who is a hybrid athlete, is Andre Brown. We told him all along he'd be a corner, he wanted to play corner. He is very comparable to Majette and Isaac James, hybrid corner. A lot of good skill guys we like. 7 big guys on the front end. A little bit of mid skill. Some nice big guys. Decent here in the back yard as we start. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: I said to our staff, I thought we'd get a little small. Smaller you go you think you'll get speed. I was talking to a coach of another sport here and was asking, talking about recruiting, he says, We need to be bigger and faster. If you're like us, if you get big, you start getting slow. If you get the faster guys, you start staying you're small. It's hard to get the combination. I do like the length of these guys. I think there's a lot of athleticism. I think Camion Patrick in person is very comparable to Latimer, except I think he's more fluid and smoother and transitions faster. I think he's going to be really good. It's nice he's big, but I really like his maturity. I think Hawkins is going to be a bigger guy. I think that's why Florida he was moved to defense. There's a chance he moves to defense here. He was here playing receiver. He was moved to safety in Florida. And we'll see as we go through spring where those bodies transition out. We're looking at Tyler Green as a corner. We need size in the perimeter. We have guys in transition, but not big enough to make the play. You saw the other night in the Super Bowl a bunch of one‑on‑one great competitive plays, that's where the game is going to. I think we still struggle in space, our ability to make plays. When the offense is good, we have good space players. Our defense has struggled due to the lack of good space. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Well, yeah, again, if you're taking the smaller guy, he needs to be unbelievably dynamic and have great hands. If you have average hands ‑‑ you come down, I think (inaudible). There's some dynamic stuff. I think you like a guy like Isaac James, who is thicker and can run through trash. And he can get you 6, 7, 8 yards. I see those guys hitting the slots, and they are 185, 90‑pound kids, they're going to be bigger than those guys. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: And they might not sign with you, just because they committed doesn't mean they're coming. To me if a guy is committing, starts shopping around, you can call it soft commits. If a guy is taking visits, he's not committed. You can get mad and pull your scholarship. To me, what we try to do, our recruiting process, like I had a kid tell me two weeks ago he wanted to commit. I said, I don't want you to commit. I need you to come in and get a good education. You committing does nothing for me. That says you're coming. I need you to do something when you get here. We want to make sure they do it for the right reasons. I think kids commit too early. Too many coaches pressure guys. We don't pressure; some guys do. They try to get a guy to fold his cards. We always look at it if, we want you we're going to ‑‑ we try to build relationships, but when you say ‑‑ I mean, to me, and it's kind of tough. And it's kind of amazing how a kid can go and take other trips, and that's fine, if the coach pulls the scholarship back, that's bad business. To me, I like early signing day, because trust me, a lot of these guys that have offers and some assistant coach blowing smoke about an offer. When comes time to write the check, I'd have some checks that wouldn't be sent in the mail. And that guy sitting there is whatever day, Where's my scholarship. You would be surprised if there was an earlier signing day, it would cut out some of the ‑‑ I'm all for it. I want to do it the first day of August. I'm for moving up the recruiting calendar. There's arguments from a lot of Big 10 people, we should have official visits in the summer. It's beautiful up here, unbelievable greenery, everything is awesome, flowers blooming. Come to Bloomington in June versus January. Every Florida kid comes in January loves it. I do like ‑‑ I like inking them up. Whatever we do, do I want to send that scholarship, if that kid didn't sign he didn't commit. He grabbed the bird in the bush, he's got one in the hand, but he's still looking around. It's a little bit of a dynamic. A little bit of a free for all. Why you have bags under the coaches' eyes, sitting nights on the telephone. As a 53‑year‑old coach do you want to be direct messaging, 11 o'clock at night, what are you doing, thinking about you. Sending that love out. Need you here. Let's go. I'm all for the early signing day. But the administrators, we're talking about it. But when you say early signing day, you'd be surprised some kids maybe wouldn't sign. Some of our commitments might not have signed just waiting to see what else happened. Trust me, there's still a little shopping around. As a coach you do it, as a recruit they do it. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Strong question, because I think it's not just the smarts ‑‑ one, there's pressure to play that position. So that guy is under the gun, you can't hide. I played offensive guard. You can hide a bit. When you're out there and the ball is in your hand, when you're used to handling pressure. Coach Walker or Coach Mallory, typically in high school the best player touches the ball as much as possible. So I think Austin Dorris has the frame and body to be a great tight end. I had a kid who was a quarterback in high school, who was an all‑conference offensive tackle. So I just like the fact when you call smarts, I call it he's the guy. And he's got to be accountable for his performance on a weekly and daily basis. It's a good six of those guys that play that position. Again, you look at their body types and skill sets, a see a DB or two, a receiver or two. One is going to be a tight end and the other one, if he's not a quarterback, might be a tight end. The only thing ‑‑ I think the game has changed, but I would have told you ten years ago in recruiting, that we signed more tailbacks than we have done. The game is played more to receivers, but it used to be everybody handed the ball off and you signed three or four tailbacks, convert them to corners, to receivers. Now with the spread offense there's probably more train receivers than used to be. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Covington is going to be limited to spring. So we're going to keep him at quarterback, he's going to be limited. He's running. He's doing the majority of everything. But they won't be contacted through spring. He can't have contact, which he would need if he's back on defense. Zeke will be back on defense. We're going to start ‑‑ we have one quarterback in his class, and Donovan is going to start transitioning him to maybe ‑‑ but I will say this, anytime we've recruited someone, we've had several meetings recently, that we will not have a kid play another position unless the kid understands that that's good for him. If he says it's good for the team, that doesn't work. If it's good for him, it's good for the team. And every decision we make on that kid buying in, that it's good for him. And we'll see how it evolves. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Well, you've got to. (Inaudible.) Five classes, if you red shirt, you're playing with four years worth of guys or five. And all those guys were nationally rated between 30 and 50. But they're playing top 10 football. And we've got a couple now that have to get us in that 30 to 50 range. We still have to develop and we still have to coach. And we've got to go play. That's a part of the whole thing. Right now, this morning, before signing day, we had a 6 a.m. team workout. Our team leadership, our team development, team morale, we've got to develop these guys. I don't think we'll ever be at a place, I don't think a college team is out of developing what they've got. I think we're starting at a higher point. You're starting with a better body, more potential to take that body and make that into a better player. To me that's what you want. We've got to keep fighting that battle. Now it's just ‑‑ to me, the next is embrace competition. We need those little things to be successful. It's easy to get close. But there's little things we need for execution to be good. And hopefully enough depth. We're getting there. I think we showed we can do it. For us to be the program we need to be ‑‑ you can take those rankings, and skew it and make it look worse than it is, better than it is, it's a better starting point. We've got to take them and four years down the road, we've got to make them into a man, and what they need to be. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Well, first of all, you're selling a great product. You guys need to go on the road and walk around the facilities, walk around some campuses. The first year, and again, have we gotten better? I don't know. The first year, we got hired, we put together staff, it goes dead, and you have three weeks. And you can look at some schools, you've got three weeks, it's tough. That's like right now every visit, every time I went to see a committed senior, I was tying it into seeing the good juniors. The first year I was begging guys to come here, please come. I know there were other guys in Dayton, Ohio, didn't have time for them. So that second year to me, we had basically a year to recruit guys. But as we recruited our second year, saw Antonio Allen as a 10th grader, and we have a relationship, and as the relationship goes on, we sell the product. To me the key missing ingredient is us getting the Ws. We need to be consistent that we they'd to be. Other things, quite honestly ‑‑ our coaches work at it. I work at it. You go get it, I go get it, let's go get them. We're going to show you as much love, energy ‑‑ I've had kids say, hey, they can't believe that's me shooting a message to them. I'm sitting there talking to the kid. We work hard to give us the resources to see kids and we go see them. When we go in there we're showing love to a kid. We've been starting on the '16 class, and the feedback from certain players is they appreciate the attention we're showing. Sometimes it takes time to build relationships. But as we travel to Georgia and Florida ‑‑ and it's easier to bring more kids out of that region. It's a very, very positive sell. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: It was more just as young as the team was, we needed an extra week in the weight room. We had a nine‑week cycle from the first day to that spring break Friday. We'll be testing that week. Right now we just started week four, so we're in a three‑week, what we call a winter ed program. We'll come off that. They're lifting, lifting goes into a little more football applicable running. We'll take a spring break. We do a spring practice before, we now backed it up a week. That's going to take us somewhere ‑‑ we're going to do a spring game on the 18th. We've had a clinic. We'll practice the next week. I'm going to try to do something around the Little 500 races, where our kids can be part of the Little 500, and be part of that wrap‑up deal. I think when we talked earlier I said the 11th was the spring game. And some guys sent me a message, he already bought a ticket. If you show me your airplane ticket and show up on Saturday practice, you can stand by me and call every play. I owe somebody. I have a personal invitation to a fan, because I think I said the 11th, because I had my Saturdays off. We'll be on a lifting cycle starting in recruiting, staff development, staff leadership stuff right now. Come off of spring break, we'll go spring ball for five weeks, the fourth week is the 18th, we will not practice Easter weekend. We'll give our guys Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. Other than that we'll practice Tuesday, Thursday, Saturdays, and take that into somewhere around the Little 500 week. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: They're doing it now. Like, for example, Nate, if the snap is over here, I don't know how far I'm jumping to get it. He's throwing, he's dropping. He has limitations with certain lifts, things he can do with the left side. Chris is probably about 85, 90 percent. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: It's their choice as a team, as players, whether they want to buy in, get it. When they do, they sell it better than a coach. When we do our recruiting visits, we spend very little time with the coaches and very little time talking football. As much time as we can, showing the campus and academics, go hang out with the team. And let those guys be the salesmen. As coaches we have our roommates, this is where you're going to live. See if you like it. A lot of guys get enamored, get passionate, and love something. But our deal is see if you like it here. If you like it here you're going to stick here. When you get impressionable, you love something, all of a sudden you can get funky about something, and get negative. We want kids to experience the great place, and see how much fun our guys have. Our visits are set up with a lot of time for our team. And our team sells our product very extremely well. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Yeah, he did over the weekend. He told me he was coming. To me that's ‑‑ that guy is ‑‑ I think that guy is a really good ‑‑ seen him twice in person, more mature. A football junky kid, wanted to talk ball 24/7, loves it. And in this day and age ‑‑ it's hard, you guys do an awesome job in covering things. I made a call a week ago to a running back that was a bluff because I was trying to keep action off someone. And a couple of guys took the bluff, which helped me. I wanted to hide, I was going to see the other guy. For example, this one kid was being recruited by Auburn. They pressured him to commit, because we're all juggling business. It's hard, recruiting 15 years ago, you can have a dude in a small school, best kept secret ever. It was awesome. That's why all the flipping is going on. There's a bunch of guys sitting back in the office, they have a bunch of computers, pull up his video. Tell coach to go by and see him. And it's information overload, makes your recruiting very, very hard. That being said, too, you better be sure you evaluate the right guys and get on them. It's tough. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Well, I don't know if it changed theirs. It did not change ours. We've been selling Big 10 east. If you're a kid it's where you want to play. From day one we said this is going to help our recruiting, get better players. You go to ‑‑ go down I‑70, you want to play in the Eastern time zone. I appreciate Ohio State having success, Michigan State, Michigan, Penn State. Now, the west has won as many championships, and there's a lot of great football teams in the western bracket. But the east has some marquis teams that helps our recruiting. And them having success did not hurt. I don't think that ‑‑ maybe it helped some commit. I don't think so, but I can tell you we sell our brand very, very proudly. And we think kids want to play in our division. And we sell a great school. We sell who we play, you want to play those guys. And we embrace that in a positive way. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: Those are great questions. To me, you just want those guys to work hard and let it play out, because you have flexibility. One of those reasons why it's not bad playing freshmen, a kid like Kenny Mullen, a senior, they get hurt in game 4, they get the year back. I'm not adverse to playing Austin King, I don't want it to be mop‑up duty. Because now Danny Cameron could come in as mop‑up duty. And we're not talking Covington, not talking the two freshmen. We have a group of 6, we'll have eight of them. We'll figure it out. If it's worth red shirting those guys, we will. It would be nice to red shirt Zander this year. By the end of the year he was good to go. This year, I think the key with that, though, is just what we do in the spring with Covington and it's hard to develop the third. We had that last year. In the summer ‑‑ it's hard, the eight‑hour rule, in practice, to get a third guy reps. We have to figure who is the second, get him the right kind of reps. Chris Covington, I was trying to see, I don't know, we're seeing if we could ‑‑ he's got a chance to get a red shirt medical, but it's not a for sure deal. That's the Big 10's call. And we've actually looked at that. But he actually played past the time. Q. (Inaudible.) COACH KEVIN WILSON: In fairness to the kid, it would make sense. By a letter of the rule, it's not the letter of the rule. Player welfare. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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