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INDIANA UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 24, 2016

Kevin Wilson

Bloomington, Indiana

Wake Forest - 33, Indiana - 28

COACH WILSON: Disappointing to lose but got beat by a team that played very, very well today. So give a lot of credit to Wake. They came in playing good team ball, and they played better team ball than us today. Coached them better, had them prepared.

We lose the turnover battle and some scoring opportunities, had a kicking blunder, field goal blocking -- a lot of things that led to us being short on the stick.

Had a good week of practice coming out of last week, had a good go with a lot of good things today, but too many errors, minus 5 turnover ratio. I think we were second in the country going into today at plus 5 in turnover ratio. So that didn't happen.

Didn't run the ball as well. Credit to those guys, forcing us to throw it a lot. But we got to finish drives, and we got to play a little cleaner. Disappointed to lose. Got a great challenge coming up with Michigan State in the Big Ten schedule, but we're just disappointed not to have won. Congratulations to Wake. They played very, very well.

Q. On injured players
COACH WILSON: He has an injury, back thing. I don't know. He's there. He was with us, was just limited. Brandon Knight came in and played well. Jacob Robinson, fifth year guy, was playing. So we didn't run the ball because those two guys weren't there. We didn't run the ball because we didn't block well. The guys were playing good.

We had a fifth year player, very, very talented player. Brandon Knight. Good defense, good rushing defense. But we did have 611 yards, which is kind of a lot. So we kind of did what we had to. We just didn't take care of the ball and didn't finish drives. That's a credit to them. Bad football by me and our guys.

Q. Can you talk about Richard's picks?
COACH WILSON: Yeah, which couple of times we put him in some tough situations. The first two plays were batted balls and batted in the perimeter. We're down ready to score, maybe go up 14-0 or 10-0 early. Batted ball in the perimeter, little rub-rub concept we're doing.

The second one, I think we kind of forced one into traffic. It got batted up on the pick six.

I think his third pick was a play action where actually he kind of came out wrong, got out of whack, got hit, and the ball came up short.

I don't remember the fourth one. Fourth one was a dig he tried to throw on third and long. They were yelling out the route, and they were all over it. He tried to Superman and throw the ball through a person, which is impossible. Should have checked it down.

And then the last one we tried to wrinkle up a play. We were doing a formation a lot and thought we could get something on them. It's something we do but didn't practice a lot. He actually tried to make a nice adjustment, and we just didn't clean it. So a couple of them were on us.

So made a lot of throws, made a lot of plays. We've got to calm him down. We had a 15-yard penalty on him that cost us a drive. It caused us to punt with about eight minutes. I think it was the four-minute mark, give or take, we had a hold on fourth and one that took points off the board.

I think the drive before, when they scored their touchdown, we had 45 yards of penalties in that drive. If that drive gets held to three points or gets out of there, at the end where it's fourth and one, we're probably kicking a field goal because you're not in a 12-point game, you're in a 9-point game. So we just had way too many errors.

Making nine penalties, a lot of them were critical. First half, we picked up a blitz nice. Flipped to Mitchell on a crossing route, got down first and goal on the 2 yard line, had a holding penalty. After the holding penalty, we get a blocked field goal.

So there's a lot of good football, hold them to 350. Didn't get any turnovers. Turned it over. They were 2 for 2 in the red zone, and we were 0 for 2 as far as scoring opportunities. Just a game where we missed our opportunities. We've got to clean it up.

Q. On Richard Lagow and his emotions during the game:
COACH WILSON: Well, our problem was the referee told us before like you need to calm 21 down. Just a little calmer. My deal was like they came over and said, hey, just he needs to calm down. He's getting a little too vocal. And he was frustrated after the play when he scrambled around and threw it away, and he said something. I don't think it was personally directed at the referee, but because he had been a little, I guess, loose with his mouth, it burned him.

That's the first time I've seen it. When people said earlier what do you like about him, I like he's been pretty steady Eddie, pretty calm. So in the heat of the moment, and he needs to learn and grow from that. We need to work hard to do that.

Q. On Lagow having five interceptions and if he considered bringing in another quarterback:
COACH WILSON: No. He's making plays. A couple of them were real nice. Two were bad. He was forced to dig. One came out the wrong way, and then the last one is kind of on us. He had one bad throw, the one that we tried to throw to Westbrook that the linebacker picked. That was the only one.

If you go through the rest of them -- years ago, Coach Dukes would say, he'd always talk about turnovers, but being a DB, didn't complain a ton about it. We had too many. There's no excuse for that.

So we'll look at why a couple of those balls were bad because maybe was our spacing right or was the window too tight and shouldn't have went there? But (indiscernible) never had that thought at all.

Q. On Redding's streak of games with 100 yards rushing coming to an end:
COACH WILSON: Well, again, not playing with the velocity we needed to. But they continued to load the box, and that's why we continued to throw it. We're not trying to be 50-50. We never tried. If I had a streak of 100 yards, it's more about the line blocking than Devine. Brought in streaks. Everybody looks at that. Where's Jones at?

If we've got other assets, the plays that Westbrook called would have worked. Got to keep our guys in check. It would have been nice to run. We've got to find the run.

You can't be a one-dimensional team. We were too one-dimensional because you are going to get some third and longs if you can't run the ball more than you'd like.

Q. On Mitchell Paige and his contributions today:
COACH WILSON: It was good because he had the hot hand. When you're a senior, fifth year guy, I just appreciate his team spirit and just -- like I actually last night said, you know, a couple of Westbrook's touchdowns, if you're on the other hash, the ball is coming your way. I don't know if you can make the touchdown, but the ball is coming your way.

We play those guys left and right. It's fast. We don't play X and Z. One guy plays on the left side, one guy plays on the right side, and it helps us play faster. Sometimes it's just the coverage. I appreciate him having a good game today. He's had some good ones in the past, but it wasn't enough.

Q. On getting the field goal blocked:
COACH WILSON: Yeah, you know what, he came off too fast. The timing was a little bit slow. We worked very hard on punt and field goal protection here through the opening.

Again, we had some good practices. So, again, I didn't walk out today like I don't like our team or anything about it. We've got to play better. We've got to play smarter. We have a lot of self growing up and group side OD kicking going up.

We'll look at -- because it was about one-tenth -- when you field goal, the widest guy you're beating with time. It was late enough to give that guy a factor.

But also we need to look at, again, the personnel on the spacing because we make it too easy. It was a little slow, but it's worked for us 2 in 3 games.

Michigan State on a hot streak where they block five kicks. They've got a lot of people coming after kicks. We have a punt block less team. I think it's a trend in the kicking game right now that a lot of teams are emphasizing, but we had four or five blocked PATs ourselves last year, where we got them. So I think we've just got to clean it up.

Q. On Dan Feeney not being available due to concussion:
COACH WILSON: You know, he did some activity last week. In our world, it's very -- it's all concussion protocol. When I talked to him, because I didn't know Friday coming off the field, is he en route? No, he's doing some light work and lifting and all that. I saw him walk out of the building. I said, what's going on with you? He told me, I'm getting some recurrence.

I said, let me tell you something. You've got enough banked reps as a good player. Make sure you're healthy. I think some of the recurring problems is guys come back and the primary muscle -- one of the primary muscles of your body, the brain, isn't fully healed. Bottom line, we have a protocol we put them through of pushing them. Sometimes they think they have a setback, and you've just got to calm them down.

If he could have played, he would have played. In the time line, can he play next -- I don't know. Again, we're going to do everything we can to take care of our people, and at the same time, we'll keep playing. But we've got to take care of our people.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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