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Opening Statement
Good afternoon. Hope everybody had a good week.
Just start out by recognizing a couple of our players. Great to see Matt Hankins and Riley Moss are going to be finalists in the Thorpe Award. I know Zach VanValkenburg involved with the Lott award. Happy for those guys and wish them the best for a lot of reasons.
Last week you got to meet with the four coordinators. Hopefully that was beneficial and helpful. Share a couple thoughts and we'll get moving on to Wisconsin.
As I said last week, it was a tough loss obviously last time we were out. We have a 24-hour rule. It's tough to put that into action. Probably the best thing that happened to us was getting back on the field Wednesday, having a chance to start moving forward, actually thinking about football again. That was great.
I think it was productive for us overall. Our team needed some time physically to get regrouped a little bit emotionally. Tough seven weeks certainly for all of us.
I think overall as I've been saying, we got a pretty young group of guys. This was important for them to regroup. You think about last year, we only played eight games. A lot of irregular things last year. Good chance for everybody I think to get back, get their feet back underneath them. We've seen some growth and I'm optimistic there's more to follow. That's where our focus is right now.
As we sit here, we're 6-1 right now going into the second part of the schedule here. Obviously, very important stretch for all of us.
You look out there, last weekend is exactly what kind of illustrates what I've been trying to say for the last seven, eight weeks: there's a lot of good teams out there, competitive teams out there, and games get decided on Saturday. That's what it is. Everybody wants to predict them, but it's not that easy.
Again, last weekend was a good example of that. I think that's what we're looking at now. There are a lot of good teams in our conference. It's a five-week stretch. Really that's where our focus is right now. What can we do, most importantly obvious at this point is this week.
Shifting into that, playing Wisconsin, our captains this week will be Tyler Linderbaum, Matt Hankins, Jack Koerner, Spencer Petras, Ivory Kelly-Martin. Riley won't make it. He won't be ready to go. Deontae Craig looks doubtful unless something special happens there. Another week probably with those guys.
Wisconsin is a trophy game. Always starts there. A lot of respect certainly for what Coach Chyrst and his staff have built up there, what they've done, how they've played so consistently for so long. Paul has done a great job since coming back. Went to school there, has been in that program, certainly understands the DNA of the success that they've had.
When you watch his football team, it's what you'd expect. They're a big team, physical team, athletic team. Very aggressive. Play outstanding defense. Offensively really starting to hit stride now. Last week was certainly I think a big week for them.
Just like you'd expect, they want to feature the run. They did a great job of that last week. Two really good backs. Very good up front. Got veteran receivers. Tight ends as good as you're going to find. Really good there. They play hard on special teams, play well on special teams.
It looks like they're hitting stride right now. Really a good football team. It's going to be a big, big challenge for us. Certainly a trophy at stake. That's important.
All in all, just good to get back on the field and start competing again. We'll look forward to that opportunity and challenge.
Our kid captain is Madison Williams, a nine-year-old from Carlisle, nine-year-old and already had 19 surgeries. Really a great story. Glad to have her honored this week as the kid captain.
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