Bret Bielema Press Conference Quotes

Illinois head coach Bret Bielema spoke with the media in advance to the Illini’s Week 1 game at Indiana 8/29/22.

Opening statement

“Well for everybody else, it’s their week one but it’s our week two. So it’s a little bit of a unique position going into Indiana. They got a chance to watch us on Saturday. They’ve had some turnover on their staff, but what I appreciate about coach [Tom Allen] about what he’s done is that he does it his way, and that’s why he’s had success. I know they have a tremendous chip on their shoulder, and they’re going to do some good things this year. We’re going into a hostile environment, I don’t know what their crowd is going to be at, but we are prepared for it to be loud and crowded, so we’ll put in the due diligence during the work week. We came out fairly healthy, I think we have two guys we’re still waiting on. We actually have some guys we’ll get further information on from further testing today. Josh McCray, I know that he won’t be with us this week, I just don’t know the long term prognosis to where he’s at. Shawn Miller has an appointment today at five o’clock where we should gather some more information. So those are the guys, really the only two, that will be out for a prolonged time, and they won’t be with us this week. Everybody else got through it pretty clean. Isaiah [Williams] was just a cramping issue, and he was cleared to play and come back in, but we just didn’t want to do it at that point. We had a couple guys do well on both sides. You take Julian Pearl right, he’s always started for us on the right guard or tackle, he never started at left tackle. He started next to Isaiah Adams who has never started a game at Illinois, who started next to Alex Pihlstrom, who had never played a snap at center, next to our right guard Ty Chrisler, who also has never played a game here at Illinois. Palcho [Alex Palczewski] was the equalizer, he’s had like, 88 career starts at right tackle right so he brings our average up but that was kind of like a microcosm of that game. Tommy DeVito has played a lot of football but has never played one snap for Illinois football. His first handoff was a big run and his first pass was a touchdown. So there’s a lot of positives on the offensive side of the ball. To see on the outside, the…