Nick Hill Press Conference Transcript

Head coach Nick Hill met with the media Monday to discuss last week's loss at South Dakota, the upcoming game against Missouri State (tickets here), the quarterback situation, and much more. Below is a partial transcript.

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OPENING STATEMENT

I'm looking forward to getting back out there, just to get the bad taste out of our mouth. The best medicine is to get back out there on Saturday, but you have to go through a week of preparation. You have to do the things you need to do to play well on Saturday. I'm proud of our guys and the guys we have in our room and the way they come to work every single day. It's tough to go on the road and get beat 42-0. There were a lot of good things on the film. The one thing that I've never questioned with this group is their effort of their attitude. They're great teammates. You can see the makeup of our team; on one of the pick-sixes, Jonathan Mixon ran about 85 yards. He gave everything he had. The game was out of hand, and he's diving out of bounds, hitting the wall at the half-yard line, just trying to get him out of bounds. Great effort. That's why I know these guys will come back and give us everything they have this week. We have a lot to play for. We have a three-game season to get to 7-4. We feel like, in this league, if you win five out of six and you win your last three, that will put you in the playoffs. Our guys know that, and they're motivated by that. You can't win three in a row if you don't win one in a row, and our guys know that, too. This is the biggest game of the season. Our playoffs start right now. We have to get to work and find a way to get one here at home and have a great week.

Can you provide an injury update on QB Sam Straub?

Sam will be out for the remainder of the regular season. He has an MRI at 1:30. Right now, it's a broken bone. It's 4-6 weeks for that. They want to take an extra look. There are ligaments in there that may require surgery. We just don't know yet.

Tell us about QB Tanner Hearn.

Most people wouldn't say this — he threw four interceptions (after Straub's injury at South Dakota), and he has to take care of the football — but he did a lot of good things. We got into the red zone five times with him. We weren't able to punch it in. Some of that was because we weren't able to run the football. We had to get out of some personnel groupings when Jaylon Graham got ejected from the game, and Jake Varble wasn't in. That hurt us in the run game when we got tight. So we weren't able to help him out. We were putting it all on his shoulders, throwing the ball a lot in the red zone. He did a lot of good things. I'm proud of Tanner. He's from Orlando. Everybody on the team was excited when he got in the game. You could hear the defense and his teammates get excited when he pulled it down on the zone read. He's an athlete. He can run the football. He can make plays happen. He's definitely a little bit different than Sam, but you saw him make plays outside of the pocket. He extended plays with his feet. He's a good kid. He's been here now for three years. He came here as a competitor. He wants to play. He came here to be a good football player, and that's what you expect out of your backup quarterback, to be able to go in there and win games, and we feel the same with Tanner.

How is Tanner's confidence?

He proved to himself that, 'Hey, I can do this against a good football team on the road.' I met with him yesterday, and he will have a lot of confidence. His teammates came in, a couple offensive linemen, and said they had confidence in Tanner to go do it. They see him make plays in practice all the time. He had a good spring ball. He's had a bunch of reps. Now is his time to go out there and prove it.

What was different Saturday, allowing three sacks, which was as many as you'd allowed all season combined?

Two of them, Tanner ran out of bounds on a scramble. If he throws it out of bounds, there's only one sack. I don't think anything was different. None of them were sacks where protection was bad and they sacked us for a 6-7 yard loss. They were all outside of the pocket, and Tanner just ran out of bounds on two of them behind the line of scrimmage. The protection was good, really about as good as they have always been.

The defense only allowed 280 total yards. What did you like from them?

If we were going to come back (in the second half), the defense did all it could do. (South Dakota) had 30 yards of offense in the third quarter. If you're going to make a comeback in the second half, (USD) couldn't do anything. For the entire second half, they had 81 yards of offense. I thought our defense played a good football game. There were a few things early in the game with a couple misfits in the run game where they broke off a couple big runs. If we have that shored up, they wouldn't even have (280 yards). Our defense came away with some confidence. It's 42 points, but if you watch the film or were at the game, that wasn't the feel you got. One drive was 70 yards of penalties. That was a killer. We had penalties called three times on 3rd-and-10-plus. That's a tough pill to swallow sometimes.

On Missouri State and quarterback Peyton Huslig...

(Huslig) has been good all year. We're in there watching the film, and (Missouri State vs.) South Dakota State was a battle. Illinois State was tied at halftime (with MSU). Western Illinois was down to the very end. They had the lead in the second half. Against Missouri, they had the lead in the second half. Really, other than North Dakota, they have played well on offense in every single game. They give you fits. They do some different things. They do some triple option type things with (Huslig). He's a really good runner and a good enough of a passer to beat you. They're catching some teams because they do a few different things that you don't see on a week-to-week basis. You have to prepare specifically for them, and they fit his strengths. He won a junior college national championship last year. He's a good player, and I'm telling you, they're a good football team. Just like we were able to win a couple, they've had a couple close ones that they didn't win. They could easily be sitting here at 4-4 like us. It will be a battle on Saturday. Coach Steck does a great job with those guys, and they're well coached. It will be a tough one for us.

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Players Mentioned

Jaylon Graham

Tanner Hearn

Jonathan Mixon

Sam Straub

Jacob Varble

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