Bielema speaks with reporters
November 10, 2008 | Football
After the Badgers moved back to .500 (5-5, 2-5 Big Ten) with a sportid=111&storyid=15648"> --> 55-20 win at Indiana, head coach staffid=559"> --> Bret Bielema spoke with reporters at his weekly press conference on Monday. Bielema addressed the team's injuries, the win over Indiana and the upcoming game against Minnesota.
Click mid=2715"> --> here for the archived video of the press conference of read the transcript below.
OPENING COMMENTS: What I saw and witnessed live Saturday was reinforced by what I saw on film Sunday. I thought our team appeared and presented in a way that they like to play the game of football, Wisconsin style, aggressive, physical, four-quarter game. With a lead at halftime, I know certain things haven't gone our way in the second half, and I really liked the attitude they had coming out of the locker room and put forward for the rest of the game.
Several players did some good things, but we singled out offensively, obviously, David Gilreath we shared as a co-MVP. David had a lot of production, a lot of yardage, some catches, the guy that he shared it with was Isaac Anderson, a guy that plays the same position. Isaac is a guy that, naturally when you come to Wisconsin or you become a college football wide receiver, you and intend to catch football passes. Isaac didn't have one catch on Saturday, but probably played as important a role as anybody in several of the big plays offensively. So hat goes off to Isaac. Ironically, those two both hail from the state of Minnesota, and they're starting wide receivers going into that game.
Defensively, Mike Newkirk and Allen Langford. Lang played some very good games this year, but probably played his most complete game on Saturday. And Mike was very productive in both the run game and pass game.
Special teams-wise, a guy that I was very pleased to see the film on Sunday, Aubrey Pleasant, a guy that a year ago was a starter for us, had had several different opportunities to kind of get down on his current situation in his status but has persevered, continues to give us about 20 or 30 reps from a defensive point of view, but I asked him two weeks ago to step up his play on special teams, and he did that.
Our offensive scout was Chris Cromwell. Our defensive scout, who returned after having been out or held back because of his surgery, Mike Taylor has really done some good things for us. And then that puts us on track with Minnesota this week.
As far as injury update, Eric Vanden Heuvel, we aren't going to be able to get him in the MRI test that we want to get him until tomorrow. He does feel a lot better yesterday than we expected. I haven't seen anything on him today, but there is a chance that he could play this coming Saturday. I know its one that he really wants to be involved with and play, and obviously his last Big Ten football game has an opportunity to be a starter.
So Minnesota is a much improved football team. Obviously, we had a very, very tough game with them a year ago. They're led offensively, their quarterback and their wide receiver are tremendous football players. Defensively, they're playing more team defense probably than I've ever seen out of them, especially pertaining to last year's film versus this year's film. Special teams-wise, they've always taken chances. A year ago, they tried a fake on us. This year, they've tried to capitalize on a couple fake opportunities. Some have worked, some haven 't, so we've got to be on our toes in all battles with that.
And it's a border battle, battling for the axe, and it's a big game within college football history, so our kids are excited. With that, I'll open it up.
QUESTION #1: (Tim) Brewster said yesterday he regards you guys as their biggest rivals. Do you feel the same way about them, and why '
BIELEMA: As our biggest rival' If you polled probably players from the state of Wisconsin coming in, it would definitely be a yes. And as their careers go through here, you even get players from, I'll never forget (Jason) Posiack talking about playing Iowa. I'll never forget certain other players talking about playing Minnesota. So the trophy games get to be very big games for us. I wouldn't label it as biggest just because it's probably hard to weigh that scale. It's more of every game in our conference ends up being kind of a rivalry just because they all matter so much, but this is a special one because of the history of college football and as long as it's been around.
QUESTION #2: Bret, after the game, we were told Eric's injury was a lower leg injury. Can you be more specific on that' And also, being a senior, is he a guy who can get through maybe practicing only one day and being comfortable to play or do you have to see him all week'
BIELEMA: Well, twofold, you know, what I believe I said after the game still stays true. I mean, the initial x-ray that they gave at the stadium there at Indiana was negative. They wanted to get a more detailed test done here today, but because we don't practice on Monday, Eric basically has the entire class schedule today. They couldn't get it worked out so he could get in to that machine tomorrow. Once that happens, we might have some more detailed answers.
But just off of him and his spirits after the game or after or team meeting yesterday, he was very upbeat about the possibility of being a lot better in a short amount of time. And practice-wise, yeah, he would be a guy you would think, because if there's anybody that could do it, it would be a fifth-year senior, or actually a fourth-year senior, who's started as many games as he has.
QUESTION #3: The end around plays with David, was that something that you thought would be a big part of the offense back in fall camp or has it sort of developed as the season has gone on'
BIELEMA: Well, you know, Paul Chryst, it's a play that he's developed and brought along. I believe two years ago the future guy was kind of Travis. We did the same play a year ago, but nothing to the extent of what it was. We just felt David, with the ability he has and how he can kind of read things on the move, it would be a good play for him, and David would be the first to credit, and I saw that he did in all the media things that I read. Really did a good job of some players out in space blocking well for them. Garrett Graham, Mickey Turner, Isaac Anderson, and then, you know, obviously, the offensive line at the point of attack.
QUESTION #4: Bret, there seemed to be some edginess between the two programs before, during, and after last year's game. Do you like that with a rival, is that something you'd actively almost promote '
BIELEMA: Well, it's a rivalry game. It 's a border game. You know, it's probably something that naturally comes about. You know, I've said all along, and you have documented certain teams that I have had affiliations, you know, and coaches that I've been friends with, you lose more friendships or cause more hard feelings during recruiting than any game day. And that 's probably true with every, you know, team across the entire country.
I remember when I was back at Iowa, the rivalry between Iowa and Iowa State, we don 't have an in-state rivalry just the same as Minnesota doesn't. So naturally the first one to probably come about is the border battle between Minnesota and Wisconsin. But you know, I have a lot of respect for Tim and his staff.
Of his staff, you know, on Sunday I always kind of just run through the media guide just to understand, you know, Phil Meyer who was a coach at Iowa State, who's also been a head coach here in the state of Wisconsin. George McDonald is their wide receiver coach, who I have known for a number of years. Ronnie Lee and I worked together. Mike Dunbar, their offensive coordinator, I've had a tremendous amount of respect for back to his days of UNI. It just goes on and on. Thomas Hammock was a GA here that Coach Alvarez brought in, who's a tremendous football coach. There's a lot of ties that make it personal in everything that you do.
QUESTION #5: Bret, you mentioned after the game, getting back to Isaac Anderson, that he saw the big picture. First of all, is that what you were referring to, that his willingness to block and, I'm just curious if that surprised you at all, because I'm sure after missing last year, he was ready to come in and probably make a bigger impact to your offense.
BIELEMA: That's exactly what I meant, and, no, it doesn't surprise me, based on what I've seen this year. Isaac came in and played for us as a freshman. Last year, was a little bit banged up, and asked if he could redshirt, because we were planning on allowing him to play last year and move forward, and he expressed an interest in redshirting and expressed those sort of things. Isaac's dad, Melvin, who played at Minnesota, is a great, great person that kind of weighed in on that decision as well. When I said, absolutely, we can definitely redshirt you and move forward, but then all the injuries that happened last year, I think Isaac, about five games into it, realized I could have been a starter and opened his eyes to maybe that the bigger picture is more important.
And I'll go back to one of our earlier games. There was a pass that we threw to Garrett Graham that needed a certain release by Isaac Anderson to kind of make the play work. And Isaac did it as good as anybody in college football. Now it's a fake release. He's not getting the ball, all he's got to do is just sell it. But because of the way he went about it, the play had success, and our team scored a touchdown, and I pointed out on Sunday's film how important that play was, that role was, and it really caught fire with him. And again, just the way David responded, I think, enforces that maybe even that much more.
QUESTION #6: Bret, you're one stop closer to knowing your bowl destination or being bowl eligible. Do you spend any time going over that at all'
BIELEMA: I don't. You know, I expressed to our players last night that you guys would take us down that route. I know they met with you guys last night and you got them to say a few things. The part that they really do believe, and I know they focus on, they were mentioning Minnesota before I was done with our Indiana post-game talk. And you know, if you ask a kid a certain number of times, does he want to go south or does he want to go north, I mean, he's going to give you a response that you can pretty much write down.
But our kids aren't worried about that. We haven't even garnished enough victories to be eligible. Until we are at that point, it's not even in our, our thought process is, I believe because of this university, because we've been to four straight January 1st bowl games, there's only two teams that can say that right now in college football, they naturally have an expectation for that to happen, and that's a good thing, but nothing is going to get in the way of our mindset for Minnesota.
QUESTION #7: There's been a lot of references made to your sprint across the field for the handshake last year. Do you care to explain what was behind that'
BIELEMA: No. I just, I was excited. That was a very hard fought game. You know, during the course of the year, we had been through and battled through a lot of adversity, and then to go into Minnesota, and because we've been in that stadium so many times, realize that that was going to be our last time to play in the Metrodome, and the way the game unfolded, you know, it was a battle down towards the end. I believe our last snaps were of basically a formation that you just call to run out the clock because it was so close you don't even want to have a fumble exchange issue or anything like that.
I was excited after the game. Believe me, my sprint isn't near what it was in the past. I was really excited to get a victory, get over and shake Tim's hand, and get with our team and celebrate.
QUESTION #8: Forgot to ask, do you anticipate Jaevery McFadden being good to go this week'
BIELEMA: Good question. I forgot about him. Yeah, Jaevery felt a lot better on Sunday. They did the tests that they do after guys have had a concussion, and he fared very, very well. So off of our trainer's words yesterday, they really expected Jaevery to be fine. If he did the, they were going to basically exercise him today and make sure that he didn't have any post-exercise syndromes, if that's good to go, he's going to be good. And knowing Jaevery and the way he loves to compete, my guess is he'll be out there.
QUESTION #9: Bret, from what you've seen on film, you've mentioned Minnesota is improved. I would suppose it starts with their quarterback, (Adam) Weber'
BIELEMA: Well, he was a good quarterback a year ago, but has grown within the system. Coach Dunbar, as I mentioned earlier, has really had a history of having some very good offenses. You know, he was a highly recruited player on our board. We wanted him as bad as anything. We have a young man by the name of Brandon Hoey, who has now taken a medical, was in the same high school as him, so we were aware of Weber very early. And the way him and Decker work together has just been exceptional, and those two are an exciting combination, one we're excited to face hopefully on Saturday.
QUESTION #10: Kind of a continuation on that question. Weber has ties to Wisconsin, and he talked earlier this year about his decision coming down to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Given the turbulence you've had at quarterback, does that loom as a big loss in terms of recruiting or not'
BIELEMA: Well, I don't think as a head coach you can ever kind of go down that road. I was visiting with Coach Alvarez and, you know, in the past, you know, you see guys all over the college football that you have recruited or guys that had been on our recruiting board. And I remember back when Oklahoma lost Ryan Reynolds earlier this year in college football and how that kind of affected their program. Ryan was a kid that we recruited very hard here, who we thought we were going to get, and he opted to go to Oklahoma at the end.
You can't think about what you don't have or didn't have. I have the utmost respect for Weber, and I know we were very close. I know Paul really liked him, but unfortunately we weren't able to get it. But you kind of just got to live in the world that we have now, and, you know, at quarterback, I couldn't be happier with the way Dustin (Sherer) prepared himself last week. The part that, going back home to Indiana and to be able to perform in the way he did spoke volumes about where he is.
QUESTION #11: If I'm not mistaken, at free safety, after that long touchdown pass, Shane Carter played most of the time in the base. What are the plans going forward at that position'
BIELEMA: Well, the part that was difficult on that one, we knew Chris was in the right position, it was a pretty easy read, and he broke real flat on the ball. And I was worried, first off, because he plays on all of our special teams, that maybe he was out of it from something that happened that we didn't even notice. And you know, he had a great response. Chris is a very honest individual, and he just misplayed the ball. He thought it was going to be a line drive, the end of the quarter back had a good open window, and he went with a high ball, which Chris broke differently on. So it was a bad play, but my hat goes off to Shane Carter.
Shane's played a lot of football for us. He's a guy that had eventually become overtaken by Chris, and Chris has started I don't know how many of the last four or five games, but Shane came in and played well. I believe he had 54 snaps, 53 of them were positives and he only had one negative, so it speaks volume about Chris and his ability to go in there. As far as what lies ahead for us this Saturday, it will be about who practices the best this week.
QUESTION #12: Does that also fit the situation with Niles (Brinkley) and (Mario) Goins at corner, because after the game, you said you didn't think that Mario had a good look in his eyes after that fumble on the kickoff'
BIELEMA: You know, from a corner standpoint, Niles has really grown. He probably played his best game on Saturday as well. We didn 't award him with the MVP status, but he did a really nice job on several different plays during the course, both against the run, against the pass. So they 're probably not in the same boat. I'm pretty sure Niles, unforeseen anything drastic happening this week, would start Saturday against Minnesota.
QUESTION #13: How much does it affect Minnesota 's offense if (Eric) Decker can't play or is limited'
BIELEMA: Well, that's probably something that Minnesota can answer better than I. I mean, I believe, I can't remember the exact stats, but I believe Decker has somewhere around 75, 76 catches, and the next leading receiver is around 24, 25, so that's a big difference, but it 's easy to see why he goes to him. He's a very sure-handed receiver. He 's very gifted. He's very confident in what he does and, you know, was a good player a year ago. There was a good contest going on between him and Jack Ikegwuonu last year at times. I know Jack wanted to cover him, so the same thing could be represented this week. I know our DBs are hopeful that he'll play.
QUESTION #14: Do you ever have trouble getting kids to buy into the whole ax concept or does it just happen naturally, or how do you go about it, especially I know Jim Huber used to be kind of a keeper of the flame on that '
BIELEMA: Hubes used to deliver a speech. Ironically, two of Huber's children now work for the Minnesota football office. I saw that in the media guide. Kristi and his son worked there as well, so. But I think the history of the axe and the emphasis on that came about through Coach Alvarez, just the added importance of a trophy game and what it did and what it meant. That was something I first learned when I got here.
When you're coming in from the outside world, you probably have, well, what 's this whole deal about an axe' You know, you got a kid from Texas, a kid from Florida, a kid from Ohio, a kid from Illinois talking about Wisconsin playing Minnesota about an ax, but the ax represents more than just a trophy. It represents a, you know, when you have it, it represents a victory. It represents a victory against a standing rivalry that goes back over a number of years.
We'll inform them of the history, of the different players, the great players, the all Big Ten All-American guys that have played in this game and the results of it. So it's really not a hard sell. It's something that our kids buy into and we may be a little bit of brainwashing, but it gets accomplished.
QUESTION #15: You mentioned the recruiting rivalry between the programs. Is it getting harder to get players out of Minnesota, as Brewster gets more established' And one of the big advantages you've had is Camp Randall and the atmosphere. Do you think when they have a new stadium, will it lessen that advantage'
BIELEMA: You know, those things will all be determined in the future. I know we've had two signing classes that we've had players representative from Minnesota. That's something that we will continue to hopefully do. We have to recruit, you know, our border states, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois as hard as anybody because those kids a lot of times represent everything that we want here. So that's not going to change. The thing that's probably exciting down the road too, I believe that our first, our Big Ten game against Minnesota a year from now will be the first game in the new stadium, so that's going to be another chapter in a great story and the great history of a rivalry game.
QUESTION #16: Have you seen progress out of Dustin in these games that he's started, and if so, in what ways'
BIELEMA: Well, the first off is, you know, we 're able to get a victory against Illinois. We were able to get a victory against Indiana. And you know, those are positive things. He's 2-2 as a starter. How he handles the game, every game has been a little bit different, but I believe on Saturday, you know, after the second half, after the first half, the second half we kind of had a rhythm and a knowledge of what we want to be able to do. He put us in the right calls at the line of scrimmage, not only in the running game, but was able to do some things in the passing game.
I thought our first fourth down conversion, which was a 4th and 7 if I'm not mistaken, was a little arrow route to Zach Brown, and he converted that. So he's beginning to make strides and, you know, if he wasn't making strides, then we 'd have to reassess where we're at. But as long as he continues to move forward, then we can move forward.
