Head Coach Greg Schiano
Opening Statement: Thank you. Well, what a difference a week makes. I'm not going to say it's not disappointing because we had our opportunities, for sure. We were unable to do some things that we had to do to win this game.

They're a good football team. They're not a fluke, 17th in the country team. They're a really good football team. They tackled extremely well tonight.

Seven takeaways last week, none this week. They had three that led to 17 points. Two of them inside our 25 yard line. That's very hard to overcome. But it's where we find ourselves. We're running out of firsts. We had our first win together. Today we had our first loss together. I do love the way they compete.

I love the way they keep straining, as we say, keep chopping. Certainly not one ounce of giving in. It's about winning and losing, and that's what we're trying to do.

We'll build this thing the right way. I believe in our guys. They stuck to the plan throughout. But certainly it's disappointing.

Q. Was there a common theme or common issue with Noah's three interceptions?
GREG SCHIANO: Well, two of them for sure. His arm got hit, right? That's why the ball went in almost an end-over-end trajectory. Those are hard when you get hit throwing the ball.

It's usually a combination of things. Protection wasn't good enough. We got to have a clock in our head that we got to get rid of it. I didn't have the get-off times, we track it, but I didn't ask for them.

Really we'll fix that in the course of this week. That was really the common theme, was the arm got hit. That's encouraging if you can protect. They weren't just throwing to the other team. We got to protect better. We got to make sure we understand that clock in your head.

Q. Some of the penalties, is that just early season stuff that can be cleaned up or something more to it?
GREG SCHIANO: Yeah, it's probably early season. We actually won the penalty battle. Not that you like winning with eight. Yeah, I guess it's early season. We have to stop it. We can't do it. I don't think there's ever an excuse for penalties, right? Do what you do legally or don't do it. That's easy to say.

Guys care so much that they want to make the block, right? As the guy is getting away from them, they reach out and grab. You have to trust that your skill guy will make him miss. If you lose him, he'll make him miss. Don't worry about it. If he doesn't, we'll line up and play another down. But it's not going to be worse than that penalty that marches us 10 yards from the spot of the foul.

Those are things we got to get better at. There's a long list of that. But, yes, that's something regardless of what our opponent did we need to do better.

Q. Two games in, what do you think about the offense so far? It seems like a couple drives aside, you've been pretty stagnant the last two weeks.
GREG SCHIANO: I'm not ready to go there. I think we have to become consistent. We do some things to move the football at times that are exciting. At other times...

That's a good defense, as you saw by the result today. Michigan State is a good team, too. We played two good teams.

I think you all know this, but every week you play in the Big Ten, you're playing a good team. So get ready. If you're not ready to play at optimal level, it's going to be hard to move the ball, hard to stop them, hard to be effective in the kicking game. This is the top of the food chain. We have to learn how to live and perform at the top of the food chain.

Q. I know last week you talked about what you learned about the team in the win. What have you learned about this team in today's game?
GREG SCHIANO: I think the same thing I learned in the win: when things didn't go well, they kept chopping. Tonight things didn't go well for a long period of time, and they just kept playing hard.

We made some errors. We made some mistakes. I often say this. I've said this before. I don't like when people say, Oh, we made mistakes or we beat ourselves. That team is a really good football team. They force you to make errors. Unforced errors, that's something else. But forced errors are real, right? A guy can make you lose your gap because he digs you out of it, right?

We need to improve. I didn't think it was going to be wham, here we go. Keep working at it.

Q. What is going through your mind during that final desperation play? How much of your coaching in the second half going for it on fourth down, going for two a couple of times, the on-side kick, is setting a tone for this program that you're not going to quit in games?
GREG SCHIANO: The first part of it, we practice that play. That's one of our end-of-game plays. It never plays out the same. The beginning starts the same, but who knows where it goes from the pitch fest, right? I couldn't tell you if that was a forward pass. How do I know?

I do know this: they really executed it about as well as you can. They refused to go down with the ball, which is not easy to do. How many times do you watch a game and see a guy go down with the ball? You see it all the time. They refused to go down with the ball. I thought it was a tremendous effort.

I didn't come back here to lose. I'm not saying we're going to win every game or we're going to win 'em all right away. We're going out there and we're playing to win. If it means going on fourth down, if it means going for two, whatever it means, that's what we're going to do. I promised these kids that. As hard as they work, they deserve that.

Q. What did you think of the way Kay'Ron Adams ran the ball? Will we see a running back by committee going forward?
GREG SCHIANO: I thought Kay'Ron gave us a little spark, that's for sure. Sometimes it's like that. I thought Isaiah ran hard. I thought Aaron ran hard. Sometimes guys get a little groove going.

But it hasn't been that. I mean, to be frank, just because certain guys get carries or don't get carries, we have real confidence in all of our running backs. We just kind of Coach Hoffmann and Coach Gleeson, we talk about it throughout the game. Somebody has a hot hand, we let them roll. If we're looking for a spark, we know we have other good players and we're going to let them play.

Q. On the first on-side kick, you called timeout. What happened there? Looks like you got the bounce you needed.
GREG SCHIANO: Yeah, well, that was a little different. That was more of a catch 'em off guard on-sides. It was a technical error. I'm not sure. We got to get it sorted out.

But they had the opportunity to adjust, then to adjust again. I'm not sure of that. I got to look into why that was the case. Once they adjusted, I didn't want to run an on-side kick at that point in the game. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Guys, I appreciate it. God willing, we'll have many more. Appreciate you covering us.


Indiana Head Football Coach Tom Allen
Opening Statement: "I'm proud of our team for getting the second Big Ten win in a row to start the season 2-0. Hats off to Rutgers for playing hard, like we expected them to. It's hard to win on the road. I'm proud of our team, especially after a historic win like last week. I thought we handled it pretty well. Still a little bit sloppy at times, we'll get that cleaned up. So proud of our offense, we were so productive in the red zone. We were six-for-six, two touchdowns, which was awesome. Creating takeaways and protecting the football, that was huge for us. We had a plus three turnover ratio, which was great. Proud of our players, proud of our coaches for keeping the guys locked in."

On QB Michael Pennix's performance: "We had some drops in the first half that weren't on him. Overall, I thought he played pretty well. It takes time. What you saw last week and what you saw today is him just getting better. Better protection of the football. I'm proud of Michael, he's a talented young man and he will only keep getting better."

On the secondary: "I'm really proud of them. I thought we did a good job of mixing things up and creating pressures. Three takeaways, that was just massive. And they all came off pressures. That's a talented secondary, we have a lot of guys stepping us. I'm really proud of them for getting better. If you can create those kind of negative plays, the takeaways, that's huge. And it helped get our offense jump-started. I'm proud of our guys for being able to create game changing plays. We don't have a bend but don't break mentality, we want to be aggressive. We want to create pressure on the quarterback. These guys are talented enough to play a combination of man and zone. It's a special group back there that our coaches do a great job with on the back end."

On Rutgers' last play featuring multiple laterals: "I've never seen anything like that in person. The year after I left Ole Miss, they had a play against Arkansas that was similar. Not quite as many laterals. That's not a very good feeling when it's happening to you. Because, you think the games over, you think you've got him and the guy is down, then all of a sudden you don't. One guy literally just heaved it over the back of his head! When the official told me that they thought one of the laterals was forward I just said 'thank you Jesus'. Are you kidding me? It was crazy. How about two weeks in a row with as crazy of an ending as you can get? We're just trying to create some memories I guess for our fans and everybody watching."

On the late offensive response after RU cut the score to 23-15: "I thought that was an amazing response by our offensive group. It's going to be a battle. We saw what happened today and the team that Rutgers beat last week turned around and beat Michigan. We told the guys, it's going to be like this all year. So, to handle a spot like that was impressive. So hats off to that group for executing and really putting the game away. I thought that was a great response from our offensive."

On handling success: "It's going to take a lot of leadership from our coaching staff and from the leaders on our team. We'll bring those guys together and take about that. In my mind, we'd expected to do things like this. So we've been planting those seeds, we've been talking about it. Not surprised by what's going on here. But you still have to, in the moment when it does happen, you have to live it out, how you go respond. So that's going to be critical that we can continue to get better. And we can block out all the noise. And right now it's going to be positive nose. And we can just stay locked in. And we can live out our mission of being able to not blink, even if it's positive things that come at us. We will stay focused on the tasks at hand. I want to see us be a mature football team now and learn how to handle success. I'm excited to be able to handle this new challenge and put our guys in position to keep having success after a hot start."