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OPENING STATEMENT
Good afternoon, everybody. Appreciate you being on here. Talk a little bit about last Saturday's game and then move on to Friday night for our next opponent. First of all, very pleased with our effort, team effort. It was a good team win for us. Want to start out by congratulating Charlie Jones. He did a great job. Great to see him recognized by the Big Ten as special teams Player of the Week. And Taylor, he did a great job too. So special teams was certainly a big part of the victory.
Overall the team really prepared well last week. They were focused and they carried it over to Saturday, which is always a good combination if we can do that, and we played good team football throughout the entire 60 minutes, which was good to see. Something we haven't done a great job over the full extent of the game. So a lot of good things out there. We played fairly clean, protected the football a little bit better, good complementary football. We did a good job in the red zone and came out with touchdowns instead of field goals. So that was an improvement certainly. And as I mentioned, the special teams I thought were pretty good overall.
All that being said, we saw plenty of things on Sunday that we can improve upon and need to work on, and for us to have a good season that's going to have to continue. It's got to continue each and every week just like every team in the conference. So you can see the work that's ahead for our football team. And now we have to get ready for a good Minnesota football team as well.
Our captains are the same captains this week: Chauncey Golston, Nick Niemann, Tyler Linderbaum, Mekhi Sargent, and Keith Duncan. We will get two guys back. Austin Schulte is starting to work back. I don't know how much he'll play but he'll be available to play at least on Friday and he's a good veteran leader for us. And then Jack Campbell, a little younger player, he hasn't been able to play yet this year, but we'll return. We'll be careful how much we work him and play him but it will be good to get him back in the rotation at least at linebacker. So happy about that.
This is a short week. Last week was a little bit distorted with Tuesday being off but this one is a short week calendar-wise. So we got to turn the page quickly after watching the tape on Sunday and get right on Minnesota.
Floyd was in the weight room so I think that was a good reminder just that this is a rivalry game. Every game is important. Every win means a lot but it's just a reminder that this one typically is very hard fought and nobody owns the trophy. You get to keep it for a year, or this time maybe less than a year, a day less, but nonetheless it's a one-year rental, so it's up for grabs again Friday. We're going to have to work hard to get it and that, especially when you consider what we're playing Minnesota. They're a little bit like us. They had a tough loss a couple weeks ago, ball off the goal post. Kept them from being, at least extending the game. And then last week they really looked good. They played a great game at Illinois.
They're a team that we're familiar with and I'm sure they're familiar with us. Their staff is well established. They do a great job coaching their players. They're a very veteran team offensively and very explosive team offensively, and they're good at every position, big and physical up front, including their tight ends. Their quarterback has just done a great job the last couple years. He's just an outstanding performer and just an impressive player. They're strong at running back and their running back was the Big Ten player offensive Player of the Week this past week, so that doesn't come as a surprise and they have got an outstanding group of receivers and Number 0 is as good as we'll see, maybe as good as anybody in the country. So they're very, very talented offensively, very experienced.
Defensively, they had some losses there. They had a lot of veteran players last year, but they have got some guys back that are still playing extremely well and they have got a bunch of guys that are really playing hard, giving great effort like we saw from them last year as well. And the same thing about their special teams. They had some rotation with the specialists, but their core guys are just really working hard. That's representative of their football team. They had a tremendous year last year. Took everything for us to get the victory in last year's contest and I'm sure this will be very much the same. It will go right down to the wire and we're going to need to have, finish off this week and have a great week of preparation.
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