Opening statement
"It's get-the-Cannon-back week. When you've lost as many games as we have, it's always good when you have a little bit more incentive when you play teams that you have a history with. Purdue, I think they have three wins, so a great opportunity for our guys. Like I said after the game, I feel like we improved in a lot of areas, but of course, not enough. Defensively, we did some good things, but we didn't take the ball away enough. Offensively, those turnovers really hurt us but that's a good football team we played against. They beat us. So, you do move on. We have a few more injuries. Mike Dudek wasn't able to finish the game, and we'll be able to give you a little bit more about him a little later on. We've had too many players thrown out of games. We have to figure out exactly what targeting is for our players and getting the message across to them. It just hurts the team when you lose players like that. A great opportunity this week against a Purdue team that beat us in a tough game last year and have a lot of the same guys back. A great opportunity for our guys to play better ball and eventually get a win, it's been too long."

On Cam Thomas' development
"Coming in playing young players, yes, it's built in that they're going to make some young player mistakes. Cam got a little bit later start than some of our other freshmen did. Cam took steps, he did. A lot of times with a quarterback you just base it on some of the decisions of passing the football. We were able to move the ball a bit on the ground, and a lot of that was him. So there were a lot of things that he did well running the football, but there's no other way around better decisions, better throws in the passing game."

On the return of Dele Harding and Del'Shawn Phillips at linebacker
"They gave us some stability. We've ridden a lot of guys, and that's not ideal either. Both guys came through. Dele Harding is coming off of a shoulder injury and made it through [the game] physically okay and made some plays. Del'Shawn Phillips got better as the game went along. I was pleased with the linebackers."

On the defensive improvement
"I think run defense as a whole has been better. First of all, you can't have any major breakouts. That's where you see the yards-per-carry average go up with big plays. Stanley Green did a good job coming down into the box and making tackles. But, our line was much more disciplined against a very good running football team. It was these types of things that we needed to do. The defensive took a step [forward] this past weekend."

On the development of the freshmen class
"I think the recruiting class was a good recruiting class. The young guys have grown up weekly. We've seen improvement from when they got on campus to the first game to now. The next step is taking those improvements and finding ways to finish games. I've been pleased with our young players. We put them in a tough situation early on and then responding, coming to work every day and going through every thing a freshmen has to do become a college athlete."

On the new football facility construction plan
"Recruiting is a lot about the facility, what's in front of athletes. Once we get our new facilities completed, it's going to be showcased and that has to help the overall plan of how we're bringing our football program back. We're very excited, excited for our athletes to come and train in a facility like this.

"We feel good that will be inside. It's about the people no matter what type of facility you have, but we feel good about the type of training and teaching we can get done in a state-of-the-art facility like this.

"We've done an awful lot trying to improve the situation here for our athletes. Of course, our athletic director [Josh Whitman] is spearheading that charge.

"It means a lot and that's what's necessary to compete at that level. We're not going to have more than what everyone else has, but you do need to keep up. And, that's what we're doing, steadily, constantly improving the situation four everyone associated with our athletic department."