Courtesy: Jeff Harwell-Zips Sports Photography

The following is a transcript of head coach J.D. Brookhart's discussion with the media from today's weekly press conference.

On the loss to Ohio State...
“I’m still looking at the tape but we had opportunities in the game to win. We didn’t take advantage of them. We did some very good things defensively but we had four plays that really hurt us, had they not gone that way your looking at a 5-3 or 3-2 ball game. We should have done some things differently and we didn’t. I think it was a good effort, I think we got better and I think we learned a lot. The sad part is we had the ball near mid-field four times and weren’t able to do anything with it. Teams like Ohio State with that talent level to get five turnovers and to be in that position, you have to take advantage and we by no means did. I looked at it carefully on film and the blame is spread about everywhere. On a team that’s the way it’s going to be. We look at it a lot of different ways. Sometimes special teams have to score, sometimes defense has to score, and obviously offensively we needed to have more impact than we did. It’s not something we’re proud of. In the end, I thought it was a game we had to stick around and play well defensively, do some things in special teams and have a chance to win it and we just didn’t take advantage of those opportunities.”

On the inexperience at quarterback ...
“Inexperience was part of it but we knew it would be tough to run the ball against them. We probably should’ve run the ball more but guys were doing things they normally don’t do or are coached to do. The shallow route that’s suppose to be ran into a hole and sitting down decides to look back at the quarterback and thinks he’s scrambling so instead of stopping he keeps going, or a wide receiver who is suppose to go sit at five yards drifts to nine yards and now gets covered. Guys were doing a lot of things like they had to overcompensate because we were playing Ohio State and they didn’t need to do that so it changed the execution. The crowd noise played a factor into, youth played a factor, all the things that shouldn’t play factors, did. We didn’t have the talent level to overcome those offensively. I believe we counted 15 critical errors, 8 of them were on the third down. If we didn’t have some of those critical errors I think we would have been able to move the ball. I felt like we pressed way too much.”

On the difference in the second half...
“There were a couple things, a coverage breakdown killed us, not seeing a cross key, the way we would have had a blitz and forced them to hit a field goal instead of a touchdown. They had four mistakes that cost them about 107 yards defensively. They played extremely well; they had 14 points that really we thought could have been three.”

On the noise at Ohio Stadium...
“The noise affected us. I thought they did an unbelievable job. Anytime we double counted, the crowd came back for the last ten seconds on the clock. It disrupted us and made it hard.”

On the offense...
“There were some things we could have done differently offensively. Certainly we could have forced some more runs. I think in the end we only had 14 rushes; we could have taken some shots down field. We understood the kind of game that we thought we had to have and so we were a little too conservative for it, maybe too conservative.”

On the defense...
“With the returning starters and how much they have played you certainly rely on them a lot. A lot of those guys are also playing special teams. They’ve done some good things.”

On special teams...
“We are getting better. I think it’s become really important to the players. You got guys that want to be on things or ask to be on them. There is a pride that is being developed. I thought the punt team did an outstanding job. John Stec fixed things we needed to fix and was spectacular. The coverage unit had big plays, forced a turnover. They got us a little bit on our punt returns because they came out the first game of the year wearing a shield punt and came back to the old fashion spread punt. On the kickoff return we had some major errors I thought really hurt us from having some big plays there.”

On sophomore punter John Stec...
“We were talking about his get-off so much and stepping into the ball that he became a three-step punter when he was stepping into it and stepping with his off foot instead of what should’ve been a two-step into it. We changed his block point, backed him further away from the shield and he improved his get-off times dramatically. He fixed himself and had a great week of practice.”

On playing Indiana next week...
“They are a very complete team. On special teams they have an All-American kick returner that scares you, he returned for four touchdowns that I’ve seen, a punt returner that scares you and averages about 18 yards on a return. Offensively, they’re scary. I think they are back and much improved. They have one great receiver, a quarterback that can throw and he can tuck it and run, a big kid, athletic. They will spread us out so we have to be on our game defensively. They are going to play fast and they are going to play hard.”