Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel opened today's Big Ten teleconference with
some words about Saturday's game at North Carolina State.
"We certainly had a tough ball game down in Raleigh, North Carolina," Tressel said. "There were some good things and some things
we really have to work on. Mike Nugent's performance was outstanding, and that's
why he was selected as the Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week. He's done a
great job for us coming through when we needed him and did a great job on his
kickoffs as well. We keep saying he may be the best kicker in the country, and
he's a good one.
"Defensively, we did a good job putting pressure on them for the
majority of the game. I thought their last two drives, we probably didn't
execute quite as much, quite as well as we did at the beginning through the
first three-and-a-half quarters. Offensively, we did some good things from a
field position standpoint, from a no-turnover-type standpoint, but we have a
ways to go in all phases. It was a good win for the conference; anytime we go
out and play one of the BCS conferences and come away with a win, it's a good
thing. We'll try to build on it in this open week."
Tressel was asked about Justin Zwick and where things stand after three
non-conference games.
"I think Justin Zwick, who has had the majority of the reps, has made
some progress," Tressel said. "He's made some big plays, he's made
some mistakes, and I thought this weekend down in Raleigh, he did a good job of
keeping his mistakes to a minimum. He's a first-year starter; he's only had
three starts in his career -- two at home, and one tough one on the road. I'd
like to think he'll keep getting better and better, and we feel good about
him."
Zwick is about to enter yet another first-time challenge as conference play
starts. Tressel discussed whether or not Zwick's performance will be magnified
once Big Ten play begins.
"It is a whole new level," Tressel said. "When you get into
conference play, every down is a battle. Every experience you will learn from.
Every mistake you make as a quarterback certainly will be magnified. Every big
play that you make would likewise make a tremendous difference for us.
"I feel good about the amount of progress that he's made. I think we're
as prepared as we can be as we head into the Big Ten."
 |
|
Mike Nugent |
Buckeye kicker Mike Nugent's performance against NC State has been
consistently praised across the nation. Tressel was asked about Nugent's high
school recruitment and if it was a priority to bring him in.
"Interestingly enough, I had only been here about two days, and I asked
the staff that were remaining how they felt about the kicking situation because
the kicker from 2000 was graduating," Tressel said. "They said, 'Well,
we have one guy (who is) untested.' I said, 'Well, don't you think we need to
get out and get another kicker?' One thing led to another, and we went out and
recruited Mike Nugent, and he became a starter on day one.
"He had a tough freshman year, like many freshmen do, was good by the
end of the year, and then his sophomore, junior and senior years, I think, have
been spectacular. If he keeps up the pace that he's going, he could go down as
one of the finest kickers in the history of our school. So it's a huge
priority."
Nugent had his share of struggles as a true freshman, but he made a huge leap
from being an inconsistent freshman to one of the nation's best kickers as a
sophomore. Tressel said that Nugent was able to overcome the big leap from high
school to college.
"You go from living at home to kicking off a tee to having rushers rush
at the speed that high school guys rush you to living in the dorm, kicking off
the ground, to those people flying at you pretty fast," Tressel said.
"So there's adjustments to be made, and he had an okay year as a freshman.
He got better as he went, it's obvious, but he's a learner. He's a studier, and
he's a competitor. He was a high school quarterback, so he's been in the fray.
He's just made himself a better kicker. Like most positions, experience does
that."
The Buckeyes have been mentioned by several outlets as being the team that
enters Big Ten play as the conference favorite. Tressel was asked if he has been
at all surprised with what he has seen from Big Ten teams so far.
"I think we've seen enough that we can tell that it's going to be a good
league, without question," he said. "Of course, we knew that. I think
we've also seen that a lot of us are breaking in new quarterbacks, and you have
your ups and downs and are probably not as consistent of teams right now, but
again, we had to expect that. If we thought that all of us were going to
step in with new quarterbacks and everything was going to be the same as our
senior the year before, I think we'd be kidding ourselves.
"I think the transition that's gone on our league this year shows some
signs that we're going to be outstanding again. The Big Ten is going to be a
tough battle; every play, you're in the game. I haven't seen film on anybody
yet, but just from the surface, that's what it appears to me."
One of the few teams that isn't breaking in a new quarterback is Purdue, who
has the luxury of returning senior starter and preseason Big Ten offensive
player of the year Kyle Orton manning the controls. Tressel was asked if he felt
Orton's presence gives Purdue an advantage.
"I think if you look at the pre-Big Ten schedule, you would say that
Purdue probably had the most consistent performance," Tressel said.
"They had outstanding performances in all their games. Some of it has
to do with the fact that Kyle Orton is so good. I don't know if you would call
that an advantage that we didn't know about because we knew how good Kyle Orton
was and they had a lot of folks back on offense.
"I would hope by midseason that all of our new quarterbacks are much
older and that we're all more consistent football teams. I'm guessing that's
what will happen."
Tressel was also asked if he felt that the Big Ten race would be a wild one
due to all the young quarterbacks.
"That can happen because the less-experienced guys can sometimes be
wonderful and sometimes do some things that don't help the cause and can create
situations that will make it a little wild and crazy," he said. "I've
always felt that the Big Ten -- it didn't matter who you're playing, where
you're playing, whatever -- any Big Ten team can beat the other. To me, that's
the fun of it -- the fact that it is a little wild and crazy."
The topic of replay has come up quite a bit, and Tressel was asked once again
what he felt about the experiment, which he admitted might have helped OSU
against NC State.
"Going into it, I was in line with the other coaches, feeling as if it's
a good experiment to see if there's a way to make the game better," Tressel
said. "We're always trying to do that within our own programs, and we like
to be leaders in the sport, so I was in line with that, not with any particular
passion that I think replay is the answer to making it a much better game,
because the replay we have in place is not a comprehensive replay. It only
replays certain types of penalties, so I'm not sold that it's the answer.
"From what I've seen thus far, we haven't really been a part of any
replay situations that have changed the flow of the game at all. In our first
two games, there was only one stoppage, and the play that was called on the
field was upheld. In this game we played away from home last weekend, if there
were replay, we probably would have had another interception. But those things
happen, and I'm sure we probably held once or twice that we shouldn't have and
it wasn't called. I'm for the experiment, but I'm not sold that it's going to be
the answer forever."
Finally, a question was posed about what Tressel thought about the
possibility of individual coaches' poll ballots being made public now that there
is such a focus on the results. Tressel gave an interesting answer.
"I don't know," he said. "I've never given it any thought. I'm
not sure that coaches, as I think about it, would necessarily want that being
done because so many times, your opponents are on your top 25. You'd hate to
create bulletin board material where maybe they're not as highly-ranked as they
think they should be, and those kinds of things. We've got enough things that we
do naturally to get ourselves in trouble; I don't know that we need to add one
more."