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Pastimes : College Football: Nits, Gators, Bruins, Vols - Whoever! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nittany Lion who wrote (5098)	11/27/2001 1:18:10 PM
From: MythMan	Respond to of 11146

Joe Paterno press conference recap -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. The improvement on offense can be traced back to a few things. The OL has stayed healthy and they understand their assignments better. The WRs are catching the ball better. The offense has more confidence in the things they're doing. Most importantly, the offense is not making the dumb penalties and turning the ball over at crucial times. 2. The team talked about why they were losing game early in the year. Joe told them about things they could do better and a lot of those things were mental. Joe told them they just needed to go out each day and get better and eliminate some of the dumb things they were doing. After Michigan, the players had a chance to evaluate themselves and saw that they had some talent and could be good if they worked at it. 3. Since UVA has so many PSU connections, it does affect the way you gameplan a little. Joe named George Welsh, Al Golden, and Bob Sherman as connections. Joe has known Al Groh almost since he was born because he knew Al's dad from high school. There's a closeness about playing UVA, which leads to pride and wanting to do well against them. You look at yourself and try to eliminate predictability. They will make some changes so that UVA has some new things to deal with. UVA having an extra week off bothers Joe more than the PSU connections at UVA. 4. Teams are not letting PSU run the ball much, so the offense is forced to rely on the passing game to make big plays and win games for you. Defenses are much more aggressive than they used to be because there are CBs who are capable of handling people by themselves, allowing more people to help out against the run. Joe has been saying that since the beginning of the year. 5. UVA is a good defensive football team. They're strong and they fill gaps well, so the passing game will have to be effective again this week. 6. The coaching staff looks at the LBs on film each Sunday and looks at who made plays and who didn't, and that determines who will get the most snaps the next game. Derek Wake and Tim Johnson getting hurt didn't help the LB situation. Toles, Stewart and Mitchell are smaller than you like, but they are fast and can handle pass coverage well. Shamar Finney has been the solid guy in the middle. 7. If the team wins on Saturday, it would be great for the squad and be a tribute to them that they stuck together in the face of a lot of criticism and made something of themselves. It's one of the great thrills of coaching to see a team face adversity and learn some things about themselves. PSU will have to play the best game they've played all year to beat UVA because they're such a good football team and he's told the squad that. 8. Joe never felt that he was losing the team because the players could see how hard the coaching staff was working to get them to where they wanted to be. Joe praised his coaching staff for their hard work. 9. Antoine Womack has a great combination of speed and power. He's in the same league as TJ Duckett and might be a step faster in the open field than Duckett. 10. Joe had looked at tapes of UVA during the summer to get a feel for their personnel, but he spent more time looking at tapes of the NY Jets to get a feel for Al Groh's philosophies. Joe has seen tapes of the last 4-5 games UVA has played and doesn't know if they're doing anything different now than they were doing earlier in the season. 11. Joe felt very bad that the team had not done better than 0-4 because he didn't feel it was representative of the hard work that the team had put in. Joe felt the team had had some mental lapses. He wanted them to understand that they could have been 3-1 or 2-2 and they should set a goal to win every game for the rest of the season starting with NW. He told them to have some pride in themselves and set some goals. Joe said his talking doesn't get games won. There was a sense of pride and frustration and he wanted the players to put the frustration behind them and learn from it. 12. If someone told Joe that this was his best coaching job, he would say thank you, but that's not how he looks at things. Joe said the assistant coaches really deserve the credit because they deal with the techniques everyday. He said he doesn't do that much, so the credit should go to them. 13. The team has some aspirations to get back into a bigger picture than they're in now. Joe just wants the team to play better this week than they've played all year. If they win, fine. If not, they're not going to pout about it, they're going to start planning for next year. 14. Having an NFL background does give Al Groh an advantage because he's seen so many schemes. That's why having the extra week off scares Joe. 15. Joe joked that they're thinking of starting Tony Johnson, then answered that Zack Mills will probably start. If both QBs have a good week of practice, Mills will start. If one doesn't perform as well, then they'll have to think about it. Joe's not worried about that. 16. Al Golden is a good young coach, and Joe knew he would do a good job as a coordinator. However the Cavs' defense is the same one that Al Groh ran with the Jets. 17. The differences between this year's team and last year's team are the continuity of the OL and some kids are more mature like Bryant Johnson. However, he feels that last year's team did well to come back from 1-3 to 5-7 and a couple of those losses were very close. 18. Joe's not looking at this game as a playoff game. He just wants the team to play as well as they can and see what happens. 19. Bruce Branch has come on the past couple of games and played really well. Earlier in the season, Joe felt he was playing too tentatively and told Bruce about it. Since then, he's turned into a very good CB. The play that MSU thought was pass interference was not, it was a big time play in the clutch. 20. Joe was told he should apologize to Lamar Stewart for ripping into him on the sidelines. He said that he thought Lamar was taunting Smoker but was then told he was just concerned about his health. 21. Joe thinks the players will be focused this week. They know what they have to do. 22. Joe has told the team that they can't wait around until the second half to start playing good defense. You can't count on someone to win the game for you in the last minute. That concerns Joe and he's told the players about those concerns. They could have lost the game Saturday because they took a couple of dumb penalties late. They could have beaten Illinois if they hadn't horsed around when they had chances to put them away in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. 23. The team came out of the MSU game as healthy as they have been all year. The only people who will miss this game are the ones who have been out for a while already. 24. There was no chance in Joe's mind that this game would not be played at all. He didn't look at UVA's schedule. He just told Tim Curley to schedule them when it was convenient for both teams. If he had known that UVA would have an off week, he might have asked to schedule it for another week. 25. Joe has never believed that one game can help/hurt your recruiting. Joe believes that you can't be a used car salesman. You just show the kid the opportunities available at Penn State and tell them to find the school that's best for them. He tells them not to listen to Joe because he raised 5 kids and none of them listened to him, so why should a kid he barely knows listen to him? 26. Chris Harrell played nickel back last week but it hasn't been decided that he'll do that again this week. Joe wanted to make sure that Bryan Scott wasn't being overused, so he told Tom Bradley to get someone else in there as the nickel back. 27. Joe did watch the interview with Sue on ESPN Gameday. Joe has known Beano Cook since about 1954 and the first time they met, they almost got into a fist fight over a player who ended up at Notre Dame. They're friends. People get too uptight about Beano Cook and Lee Corso. It's showmanship. It's like Phil Grosz who has to tell people that a quarterback is the greatest thing and if Penn State doesn't get him it's bad because he wants to sell magazines.