After practice press conference with Bill Lynch

Following publishing an article on Tuesday's practice, I decided I would share with y'all what IU coach Bill Lynch said to the media after the players hit the showers.

Much thanks go to my co-beat reporter Lee Hurwitz who transcribed half of this for me.

Opening remarks

We've had a good couple of days to get back. We've held some guys out, they're dinged up a bit. But it really gives us an opportunity to work with the young guys. I think the last couple days have been pretty good. We're going to pick up the contact part of it the next couple of days and give them this weekend off.

(Andrew) Means and (Ray) Fisher are not (seriously hurt). (Linebacker Matt) Mayberry's happened today. You guys probably know as much as I do. He was sitting with ice on his foot or ankle. I'm assuming it's not real serious. Generally, if they feel like it's real serious they'll take him off. But that happened in a punt drill.

The other guys, Means, Fisher, (Mike) Stark, (Pete) Saxon, (Rodger) Saffold we're going to hold again - we're going every other day with him - Brandon Bugg had something done to a wrist. But they should all be in good shape for next week, we just decided to give them a chance to rest up a little bit.

I think he's come a long, long way as a football player, as a leader. When we first got here, he was a wideout and he did a decent first year. He was a good kick return guy and then we moved him to running back. He had been one in high school, but different than what we're doing here.

I just see a maturity - all the way to being elected captain. That shows a lot. We make our guys take that really seriously, it's not a popularity vote. I think running track helped him. I think that gave him a good perspective on what the other athletes go through, and competing and I think he brought some of that leadership into the locker room. As a football player, he's gotten stronger and faster and just more ingrained in our system. But I think it's the other things that I see in him in terms of his development.

I would say that all along, the start of the Big Ten, which means we would have eight games left. But there could always be a circumstance after that too. Generally, you think half of the season but I think we went into this thing thinking Big Ten season because that would give us two games off a week off and another third game to make some of those decisions.

It's pretty hard when you get into a situation with seven weeks to go, six weeks to go and you really need to, for the good of the team, put the best player out there. If that's a freshman, you do it but after that, you don't want to take another guy's year.

What I did was, at the beginning of the year, I brought them into camp and told each guy 'this is what it looks like.' At that point, I think we had a real good idea that (Tandon) Doss and (Demarlo) Belcher were going to play. At that point, we had some injuries to the offensive line and (Will) Matte and (Justin) Pagan were working.

With Darius (Willis), we basically have told him that we've got to keep him going but there's a possibility we would redshirt him. As time has gone on, as the older guys are playing well, I think in fairness to Darius what you don't want to do with a guy like that is play him a little bit.

That wouldn't be fair to him and the thing about Darius is he's such a great kid and he's such a good team guy that he'll do what's best for him, what's best for the team.

On the defensive side, we've stayed pretty healthy on defense so I don't see where those guys would probably play and then the same thing at quarterback.

He seems to be (100 percent). He is so quick. For a 300-pound guy, he's got some great athleticism. I thought he showed it Saturday night. He is one of those kids who you see off the field and say, 'Hey, how ya feel?' and he'll say, 'Fine.'

You have to go off what they are telling you. But in terms of watching him on the field, it certainly seems like he has his quickness.

It's been one of those things that I have left up to the medical people to say what's best for him. So we are really just following the plan they laid out and they thought would be best.

(Austin Thomas and Nick Polk) are playing really, really well and they are fourth year guys. Austin is in really his third year starting safety and Nick is in his second as a starter and one of our leading receivers the year before that. So those are two pretty good football players with a lot of experience and they really know the defense.

That's the biggest thing with Jeremy (Finch). He goes from essentially playing one kind of safety in high school to playing linebacker down (at Florida), to coming back and playing safety in more of a zone coverage type scheme.

But I think (Polk and Thomas ) have been good at mentoring him and putting an arm around him and teaching him the system. He's coming (along). He played well on special teams the other night. He is sick tonight so that is the reason he is not here. (The medical staff) sent him home sick.

I think the biggest thing is the young kids played really well. And they got to play in a game-like situation. We ran our offense when Ben (Chappell) went in. And it didn't surprise me Ben played well, but I thought the young offensive linemen -- (Dennis) Zeigler, (James) Brewer, Milton Owens, Andrew McDonald -- I thought all of those guys played really well. And we played a bunch of tight ends. And from an execution stand point we didn't commit a penalty.

I thought our kicking game was solid accept for our first kick return, but I think we can get that corrected. But all in all I thought it was a solid effort and one that -- You know, sometimes in a game like that you wonder how they are going to come out and play, but I thought they had good focus.

Both. We have to take care of our team and correct things, make the adjustments we need to and certainly we are going to take advantage of (the bye week). One of the advantages with Ball State is we have played them the last two years. I think it's really tough to get a jump on someone you don't know anything about.