Ianello Spring MAC Media Teleconference Audio and Quotes

"I am encouraged by our team. We had 15 good workouts, we had a terrific off season and had a good spring practice, along with a good go at it on Saturday. We are fortunate enough to have such a great indoor facility, so we went inside because of the weather (for Saturday's Spring Game). I thought it was a great environment with the band and the fans, we didn't have a turnover in the game. The defense was handicapped by the rules, but I liked how our defense has played this spring and running to the football, but most of all doing the things that (Defensive Coordinator) Ken Cosgrove wants them to do. We didn't have any injuries on Saturday and we are moving forward with two weeks left before finals so we are feeling that we came out of spring and accomplished quite a number of things we wanted to do and we are a lot further along as a football program than where we were last season, and there is no question that we are a much improved team."

Regarding the progress of the offensive line this spring:
"We have a couple veterans on the offensive line with Jake Anderson and Zac Kasparek who have played a lot of football for us. They are both fifth year seniors and are trying to take a leadership role with our team. We also have Adam Bice who was not in spring practice with us last season but was here in the fall so he has a year under his belt even though being a little bit behind with the system, he did a nice job for us. Paul Simkovich is another senior who had some injuries, but is battling for us and to push other players, too. Patrick McCloskey who played last year is playing well also. We decided to move Mitch Straight from left guard to left tackle during spring and he's done a nice job with that. We had a bunch of guys playing different spots, and what I want to get down to in the fall is having a bit more continuity with some players, we built some depth this spring by having guys play multiple positions and with Micah Lio coming back from his injury and four other freshman we will have more depth on the offensive line."

Regarding the analysis of the defense from the the Spring Game:
"One of the things that we didn't do well defensively on Saturday was our base packages. One of the most disappointing things from Saturday was we tackled well all spring but didn't tackle that well on Saturday. We had some deep passes hit on us as well on defense, and we didn't give up that many deep passes all spring so those things we did well during our spring practices, but didn't do well during the game. We are going to look at those things and try to improve on. But overall our performance on Saturday both sides of the ball did very well.

Regarding the progress of UA's three quarterbacks (Clayton Moore, Patrick Nicely, Zach D'Orazio):
"I think we have a good evaluation so far on all three, but we will continue to evaluate all three of them as we move on. So Patrick Nicely will still run out with the first team offense when we come into training camp, but we will still have a competition between all three and won't name a starter until we are prepared based on their performance. I was pleased with Patrick Nicely's development and he showed more comfort in the offense, he did a nice job in the spring. I was also pleased with Clayton Moore's progress. This is his first exposure to the offense and it's different than what he's done before. Zack D'Orazio has been pleasant to be around, and there's something about him with moving the team and making plays. The good news is we are better at the quarterback position than at anytime we were last season and we have more depth and we are really pleased with that position, but that competition will continue to go for a while."

Regarding the NCAA new rule on excessive celebration and taunting:
"I think it comes down to discipline of your players and we are going to have to do a great job with that. I coached Golden Tate at Notre Dame and he would have had a few of these penalties, so I have a few video examples to show the team of what not to do. We will spend time on it, and I know our league will do a great job of enforcing it because we have league meetings in a few weeks and explain how exactly they will call it and what they see. We need to do a great job of coaching the players and tell them 'act like you have been there before'. We spent some time on this before and if you mock an opponent before you get in the end zone it will be a 15-yard penalty, now as far as anything else goes, our team needs to understand the rules and ramifications if they break the rules."

Regarding the running back position:
"We have three running backs right now coming out of spring - Broderick Alexander, Jawon Chishlom and Marvin Staten. All of them did a tremendous job. We are going to battle it out a bit. Broderick has the experience, Chisholm has tremendous talent and Marvin did a nice job for a running back who just showed up. Jawon had a nice spring game, he carried the ball 14 times for a 124 yards and he's a very talented young man. Broderick, I don't think was 100 percent in spring practice coming off an achillies injury last June, so we are hopeful once we get him through the summer of work with our strength coach he will be closer to the form we saw him last spring before he got injured. So we like all of our running backs, and we think we can do what we want them to do. Jawon showed Saturday that when he touches the ball he's got some big-play ability.