Post-Game Quotes * Northern Colorado at Purdue, Sept. 6, 2008

Head Coach Scott Downing

On Punting

"We were off rhythm because we had some snaps that were coming back low and that didn't get us on time. Literally, we shanked a couple. You're talking about a redshirt freshman punter, his first game at Ross-Ade stadium and nerves got to him a little bit. Now that we've been here, all of our young guys have played. Not only our punter, but our kickers and long snappers and all the guys on offense and defense. Now that they've played, they can utilize that as a learning tool and go forward with the rest of our season."

On Offense Controlling Time of Possession

"The thing was, we kept their offense off the field. When we gave Purdue a long field, our defense was able to give up some plays but still able to hold them out of the endzone. When we gave them the short field, they were able to put points on the board. I was pleased with the way our offense was able to move the ball against what I think is a good defense. Their coaches do a great job and I think our coaches, both offense and defense, did a good job of preparing our team for the game. We've got some areas we've got to clean up, but we'll get them cleaned up. We've got a bye week now before we open up at home against Texas State so I think we'll use that to our advantage and come out and play 10 games in a row.

Emotions of Coaching Against Mentor Joe Tiller

"Obviously I wasn't really worried about Tiller tying Coach Mollenkopf's record. I think he's one of tbe best coaches around in the country and certainly deserves any accolades he receives here at Purdue. Hopefully for him, they go on to win the rest of his games here and finish on a big-time high note. I know he'll get the record and be all by himself. Jack Mollenkopf was a great coach and Joe Tiller is a great coach as well. It's exciting to come back to Ross-Ade and see a lot of old friends and all that stuff. It's always good to come back to where people welcome you back and they did. I hope they looked at our team and said they played hard and they played well. I hope they were proud of our effort as well.

On Waggener's Debut As Quarterback

"I was impressed with the way he came out and ran the clock. We didn't have any clock troubles, we didn't have to call timeout because we couldn't play in or he couldn't get the play run; those kinds of things. He did a great job for his first time out in our uniform and he was what he was. He was what we thought he was and that was a big-time quarterback coming from a place from Florida. There was a reason he was at Florida: he's good. He's accurate with the football and I think our receivers today, they stepped up their game because these are good defenders that Purdue has. They (the receivers) made some catches that, quite frankly, maybe a year ago we wouldn't have made and now they're stepping up and growing up. I think when you have a quarterback like him, just like Curtis Painter, everyone around him plays better because they know he's the quarterback. Everyone knows Brian Waggener is the quarterback. The same thing happened when Drew Brees was here, and Kyle Orton and all the great ones. Everyone plays better, no bones about it, the quarterback's the straw that stirs the offensive drink.

Defensive Coordinator Cody Deti

On Defense Playing Well

 "First off, I want to congratulate Coach Tiller. I've got a lot of respect and admiration for him. I'm very excited for him tying this record today. On our end, our kids were mentally prepared, I think, to come in here and play the game and I think that's the number one thing we had to do. We tried to get them convinced for two weeks now that if they just played hard and compete, they could hang in there. Our goal was to make them drive the football. We knew they'd make some mistakes. It was their first game, we knew a receiver might not run the right route or make the right cut or a lineman might not make a block so our goal going into the game was make them drive the field. When we got the long field we were okay and obviously we were very disappointed when we got the short field. We didn't perform quite as well as we could have at times. That was our plan was to make them drive the field, plain and simple, and the kids executed well in certain phases of the game."

"The biggest thing was they scored on the second drive of the game and our kids stayed into it, they didn't get down. We've had a tendency the last few years if the other team scores we go in the tank and they stayed into the game. I think we had some success early in the first half of the game. I think the biggest thing was them staying positive and believing that whatever play was called they could go out there and compete one-on-one.

How Do You Prepare For a Player Like Curtis Painter?

"It's funny, we didn't put a lot of stock into who we were playing against today. Our biggest thing was to try to play harder than the man across from us, because I think their psyche was a little different from ours coming into the game. We lost 11 games last year and they've been to 11 bowl games, so I don't know if they took us lightly or not, so we tried to elevate the way we played. Do your job, let people do their job and we'd be in spots to make plays. We didn't really put a whole lot of stock into Painter or the tailback to whomever, we just worried about doing our own job today and at times it worked and at times it didn't. He's (Painter) an excellent player. I'll tell you what, he threw some excellent balls on the fades, hit a couple of seam routes on us and he's an excellent football player and they're going to be a good team this year because of him."