The Lions' Pride

- I thought that we would have played better against Illinois. They practiced three times last week, had the weekend off, and practiced in pads on Monday. It's been a tough season for these guys. I'm hopeful we're going to come out and play with more enthusiasm, but we'll have to see.

- I think we had some enthusiasm before Illinois. We don't have a 'laugh meter' or 'enthusiasm meter' on the field. A couple of things happened yesterday that the kids seemed to be a little bit more relaxed, but we'll see.

I asked the staff about playing teams that had coaches fired. Michigan State let a coach go in the middle of the year when we played them. Nobody really knows how they're going to react. Nobody knows what the new coach is going to do. I know his background, but I haven't spent time with him like I did Brewster. I don't think we can worry about that. We have to worry about Penn State. We have not made some plays that would have made us more competitive. I'm more worried about us than I am about anybody else. There's nothing i can do about what they're going to do with their coach. I can look at the players, the personnel, but I can't tell you what the relationship will be with the team and the new coach.

I'm an idiot. Replied to the wrong thread... here are the Paterno updates:

- The big thing is playing well, as far as I'm concerned. A lot of things can happen in the game. We need to play better, with more enthusiasm, and until then we're going to struggle. 'I'm not looking to get into a situation where we must - gotta win this game. We've got to play better period.'

- The offensive line may be a little more maligned than it should be. 'We debated making a couple of switches, but after looking at Illinois we decided against it. I challenged the team, told them that some of them are going to have to make plays. We really have not changed much.

- On the Rutgers situation-

Greg Schiano called, he told him to hang in there. It would be different if it was something they could do about it, but it's happened. Dr. Sebastianelli then called Schiano and talked to him a little bit about it. Adam T. had some great doctors, he's a lawyer now and he's getting married in about three weeks. Each one of those things are different. It will be tough for him and the team. I just encouraged him and told him to hang in there.

- On Sean Stanley-

'Next question, I'm not going to get into that nonsense.'

- On the assistants bickering...

'My assistants are great, they're doing a great job.' 'We've been together for crying out loud, don't imagine things.'

Rob Bolden is at that stage where he's a guy where he's going to have to make some plays, too. He's played enough football now where he's got to start making things happen. I think he's done about as well as you could expect. Iowa and Alabama are as good as you're going to see on the road, and Illinois played really well. Our problem was defense against Illinois.

Couple of quick hitters from earlier in the press conference:

- They don't expect much out of Eric Latimore the rest of the season.

- They don't plan on switching D'Anton Lynn from corner to safety.

Of course it's not a must win game. When you answer to noobe and you aren't held accountable to anyone or for anything, no game will ever be a must win.

Ron Zook said the PSU game was a must win, Joe said it wasn't. Hmm, notice the difference in the 2 teams play and coaching.