Coach Mike Riley first addressed injuries. Players that will not play Saturday include Luke Gifford, Chris Weber, David Knevel, Kevin Williams and Kevin Maurice. The players returning from injury include Freedom Akinmoladun, Michael Rose-Ivey, Nick Gates, Daniel Davie and David Sutton.
Coach Riley also touched on two things that the team wants to do well on Saturday.
“I think that if we can continue a little bit of the recipe that we had last weekend which was a good, clean football game. We had one penalty by our team in the whole game. We had no turnovers and one sack.” Riley said. “Identity wise, I guess the one thing I would like to say is defensively just be a little sounder on some of those things that hurt us.”
Coach Riley also spoke of concerns he has going up against Northwestern.
“I think Northwestern is a good, well-rounded, well-coached football team. They play good defense, they threaten you with a number of different things offensively.” Riley said. “I think you just have to play really sound football against them and then you have to find a way to get the edge to beat them.”
Coach Mike Riley elaborated on his relationship with Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald. “I go back a long ways with Pat…I have a lot of respect for him. He is good for college football. He does it the right way.” Riley said.
Saturday’s game against Northwestern kicks off at 11:00 a.m. (CT) at Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Nebraska. The game will be televised on ESPN2/WatchESPN.
