On recruiting
I know it's a little late with the end of the year wrap-up for the football season. But you probably understand how important it was for us to get on the recruiting trail as soon as we possibly could. We've been hitting it every day since. Things have been going well. Of course we can't talk on specifics or anything like that but I feel like we are about where we want to be at this stage of the recruiting process. We have possibly some early guys, that could possibly be coming in. We have, of course, signing day February 1 coming up also. We'll be talking about that a little bit later on.
On the season
"Three wins aren't enough. The plan, of course, was to win more games than that the first year out but it didn't work that way. You're coming into a new situation you have to kind of see where you are. The only way to do that is to let things play out. To be able to get two Big Ten wins, though, is a start. We know have to get a lot more."
On the seniors
"We lost some good plays, some seniors that won't be with us anymore. I think we will be seeing some of those guys later on playing at the next level."
On spring practices
"Spring ball, this year, will be earlier. We will think about February 14 or so, somewhere in there, we will start our spring practices. So we can't wait for that to come up."
On recruiting St. Louis
"St. Louis is a big area for us too. From going on the recruiting trail, I think it's pretty neat when you walk into a school and see a lot of Fighting Illini colors, uniforms, people that have gone to our University. So that's an area that we will continue to hit hard and we've gotten a good response from."
On the most enjoyable part of the year
I think just being around the guys, just getting back into the college game. It's no fun losing, believe me, it's no fun at all. It's miserable when you lose and it should be miserable. Everything else about the year, establishing the culture of how we're going to win football games, what's expected, interaction with the players on a daily basis, traveling with the guys, coming back from a tough loss, celebrating a win, game day at Memorial Stadium. Just so many things to look back on fondly as we go into the future.