Aug. 30, 1996

Off The Practice Field…Head Coach Lou Holtz

JOHN HEISLER: To begin this afternoon Coach Holtz will make someopenings remark then we will take some questions.

COACH HOLTZ: First of all, wewill practice this evening under lights predominantly just to have theopportunity to catch punts, catch passes, et cetera. That will be ouronly opportunity. The past three days we have been on astroturf. Wewill go outside the next couple of days; probably go back to astroturfnext Monday.

As far as the injuries are concerned, several people are starting tocome back. I think Mosley will be back today full speed. Jamie Spencerwill be back; he missed the last couple of days with an ankle injury. Joe Babey will be back to aid us on special teams.

Matt Williams showed up here with a stress fracture in his leg. Kevin Kopka underwent surgery for cartilage. Lee Lafayette with theknee. Those people are probably out for the entire year — at least fora while. Jay Vickers hurt his shoulder about four days ago. He willprobably be lost for 4 to 5 weeks, but other than that, our players arestarting to come back and hopefully we can stay healthy this week as wego into it. Opening ballgame, you never know.

I say this each and every year. You really don’t know. More upsetsoccur in the first game of the season than in any other time, and I’dsay upsets the first three weeks of the season outnumber those thatoccur the other eight weeks of the season. So very early in the seasonit is always a very, very nerve-wracking time for your football team andyour coach. It is nice, though, to know that you have certain playersthat have been in the game before that they will respond pretty well,referring to our offensive line, particularly our tackles and ourcenters.

I think Mike Rosenthal will play very well. Peter Chryplewicz hasplayed a lot, but our wide receivers, you don’t know. Not many of themplayed much. Autry has never been out there, although he played sometailback. Defensive secondary, Jarvis Edison, hadn’t played much.Johnny Sanders has never played. We will just have to see as we goalong.

I think we are pretty much set in our starting lineup. Jeremy Akersis starting at left guard, backed up by Jerry Wisne. And we willprobably see Luke Petitgout some at tackle, not because Clevenger andDoughty aren’t playing very well, but just because Lou Petitgout hasdone good some awful good things.

Wide receivers will probably be Emmett Mosley and Autry Denson,although you will see Malcolm Johnson, Dee Cooper and Ricky Nelson ondefense. Alton Maiden will start at middle guard. I think we are goingto see Corey Bennett a little bit more at one tackle position andpossibly middle guard. He could work his way into the starting lineupin the near future. Linebackers of course will be Cobbins and Tatum,Bert Berry, Kory Minor. You are going to see Lamont Bryant and you willsee Bobby Howard during the course of the game as well. Of course as Isay Johnny Sanders, Jarvis Edison and our quarterbacks Rossum andCovington. I am anxious for you to see our football team and what youhope is that they will play in the game the way that they have been inpractice. They practiced very well. Practiced confidently. You alwaysquestion yourself as a football coach, have we practiced enough againstone another? Have we scrimmaged enough? Have we had enough qualitywork? And this you never know until you get in the opening ballgame.

Our deep snapper will be Jon Spickelmier. John is very, very solidand did it for us last year until his injury. Hunter Smith will be ourpunter. He had an excellent fall camp in punting. I think he will puntvery, very well. I think at place kicking right now will be ScottCengia. Jim Sanson has a possibility and a young man by the name ofKevin O’Donnell has a chance to be our field goal and PAT kicker. Hehas been very, very consistent since he came back. We wanted to bringhim back during two-a-days down at Colburn, but it was impossiblebecause he had an injury to his playing foot, but he probably kicks itas consistently as anybody we have in the short period of time he hasbeen with us, but we will just have to see.

Looking at Vanderbilt you can’t say an awful lot about theopposition, but just from what I know from last year, they return 10starters on defense. We have looked at the film. Their front 7 is verystrong and they run very well. They are very, very athletic. Theirlast game of the year they held Tennessee to 12 points. They lost 12 to7 to Tennessee. But they held Tennessee to 12 points. I was reallyimpressed with their defense. Very, very athletic as I said, and theyrun very, very well. They are very, very strong. Not necessarily hugesize, but Boycon — their one down linemen — he just has a unique knackto put his hands in there and arch his back; you don’t get a lot ofmovement on him. We were fortunate last year to hit some sweeps on himearly, and we played very well on defense. But their secondary is very,very good.

I don’t think there is much doubt that Fred Vincent and Eric Vanceare two fine football players. I think they are going to play a lot ofman-coverage; play us with a 9-man front. That is what I anticipate. Iknow they feel that they are going to stop the run and they can do thatby putting 9 men up there. If they do that, the question I have is canwe throw the ball successfully? Can we give the quarterback enoughtime? More importantly, can our receivers get open against tightman-coverage? That is a big question mark I have about this season. Ihave it about this opening ballgame. As I say, Vanderbilt is a very gooddefensive team. Going into fourth quarter last year, they were ahead ofAlabama by a score of 19 to 10 and they beat the University of Kentuckywhich came on strong at the end of last year, so I really am concernedabout our ability to move the football.

Offensively, they have a rebuilt offensive line. I don’t know muchabout it. They did a lot of different things on offense last year. Whenyou study the film against us, they played a lot of three wideouts –then later they went to two tightends. Now I think they’re aconventional two wideouts, tight end and then what I refer to as anH-back. H-back can be a tight end-fullback or a variety of things. We doknow what to expect. We do know Damion Allen is an excellent athlete atquarterback. I don’t know much about their starting wide receivers. Ijust know that they will be a very, very dangerous football team.

We just want to play. We don’t care who we play, where we play, whenwe play; we just would like very much to play. And the expectations ofour football team, you know, everybody talks, sometimes people talk totoo much. That includes coaches. Our expectation is to go out thereand let’s find out what kind of football team we are. We lost ouropener last year, but I thought we bounced back very well. But youknow, you just have to be prepared for anything in this world, andsometimes we all want to live in a make-believe world and believe thateverybody is good and everything is going to go our way and everythingis going to turn out in happy land. The story this season did not startout with Once Upon a Time. It started out on January 14th, button ’emup. So we will go from here.

Q. What has Denson shown you at wide receiver so far?

COACH HOLTZ: What he showed us is he is not a polished wide receiverbut he is a fine athlete. He catches the ball pretty well although hewill catch the ball far more consistently in the future than what he hasnow. He is an excellent blocker. I think I can honestly say this abouttwo players on our football team. I am sure I can say it about manymore, but Marc Edwards and Autry Denson. They aren’t running backs,they aren’t wide receivers, they are football players. They arefootball players and I pay them the ultimate compliment, both of them.

Q. Just about Denson, there is no formula for how much time he willbe at wide receiver or tailback, or might alter from play of play?

COACH HOLTZ: No, I don’t think it will alter play to play. I thinkmore series by series. I think we have three fine tailbacks. I thinkRandy Kinder, Robert Farmer are fine, fine tailbacks as well. I am notsaying they are better than Autry Denson, certainly not saying that, butthey cannot play a wide receiver whereas Autry could. If something wereto happen to Kinder or to Robert Farmer as far as injuries areconcerned, we would then have to look at either putting Marc Edwards attailback or moving Autry Denson back to tailback, and I think we woulddo the latter. But right now, for this ballgame, we have everybodyhealthy, appears to be healthy, and I think it gives you the best chanceto win. You will see him. We are going to get the ball to Autry Denson. Autry Denson also is going to run back punts, and that is always alittle bit nerve-wracking the first time guy goes back. He catches themvery well in practice. First time in a game, it is a little bitdifferent. That is one reason we are going out tonight. I told Autrythat we have the best chance to win when two things happen. One when heis on the field and two when he has his hands on the ball. We only haveone ball, and Edwards is going to get it and Farmer is going to get itand Kinder is going to get it, and Autry Denson is going to get it. Ihope we can get it to him. They play us man-coverage, I think maybewith a little bit of experience he is going to be able to beat thatman-coverage, and that is very, very important to us. And if we can’tget him the ball, then I’d never seen anybody intercept a snap fromcenter. I have seen us fumble it. I have never seen anybody interceptit. So we are going to give him the ball if we have to hand it to him.

Q. Coach, can you talk about situation with Kilburg what exactlyhappened to him?

COACH HOLTZ: What happened with Jeff Kilburg, we were doing a 7 on 7session and it was versus the defense and we have three tempos that weoperate under. One is scrimmage. That means take the ball, carry it tothe ground. The second one tempo is live thud. That means you tackle,you hit as hard as you can, but nobody on the ground. The third tempo iswhat we call tag off. Tag off means nobody on the ground, you don’t hitthe ball carrier, you touch him, and the ball carrier doesn’t try to runin a pile or fall forward or anything he. We ran a tag off tempo andJeff’s leg buckled underneath him and he went down. Jeff is anindividual that has been injured most of the time that he has been here. He missed most of spring practice and much of last fall. It’sunfortunate because we are very, very thin at the center position. Rightnow, the backup would be John Morandi who is a true freshman fromCalifornia. I think John Morandi is going to be a fine center. Hecompetes well. I felt he would be fine. We got in a scrimmage onSaturday and he forgot he was a center. He wanted to know where thehuddle was. Got set the huddle, got to remember his assignment, and allthese other things, asking an awful lot of a freshman. If somethingwere to happen to Rick Kaczenski we would go to John Morandi but thereis a possibility that we could move back Jeremy Akers there as well. The thing I like about John Morandi, he does get the snap up therepretty consistently and when he keeps his poise, which he does very wellas a freshman, he is good enough to win with this year.

Q. Coach, can you talk about what you told your team to expect asfar as improvement from Vanderbilt offense that didn’t really do much inSound Bend last year?

COACH HOLTZ: That was a real emotional game for our football team. We don’t know exactly what Vanderbilt is going to do but I know thegreatest improvement a football team makes is between the first andsecond year of a football coach. I think Coach Dowhower in there andnow he knows the personnel and knows what he has and knows assets andliabilities and who makes plays, et ceteras, will put those people inthe appropriate places. But in an opening ballgame we go in there sayingwe don’t know what to expect. We try to prepare for everything. We tryto keep things simple to what we are going to do, but I don’t thinkthere is any doubt that our football team and our coaches will have toadjust during the course of the game on both offense and defense. I wantto say this about Vanderbilt’s kicking game which I did not cover. Theywere 10th in the country last year net punting and they blocked 5 punts,so they have a very, very good punting game, and they put a lot ofpressure on your punter. So it is going to be important for us to excelin the kicking game as well.

Q. You made reference to never having played at Vanderbilt or inNashville. As you can imagine, there is lot of excitement here. Areyou ever surprised by the level of excitement that comes to a Notre Damegame when it plays at a new site and how do you insulate your team fromgetting caught up in fan reaction like that?

COACH HOLTZ: I wish I could say to the football team, man, I tellyou Friday afternoon we get there, we are going to go out there and weneed to push tickets, we are going to have to do radio interviews, TVand try to get people to come to the game. I’d love to have that. Iwish there was empty stadium. I wish nobody cared we were coming. Butthat goes with University of Notre Dame. So what we try to do is likeeverything else, we try to take something turn it into a plus. I thinkit is a compliment. Vanderbilt administrators certainly into the team. Compliment to the University of Notre Dame that there is tremendousinterest in this game. We don’t try to do anything different. WednesdayI spoke to our football team in great length about how we conductourselves during the game and trips and being on time and why we aregoing, and you know, we don’t take cameras and sunglasses and we aren’tgoing on a tour. We aren’t going for anything except we are going downthere to play a football team that is obviously very, very important andwe need to stay focused on what we do. I do have some concerns with thefact that it’s a Thursday night game and our players, I don’t know howmuch they are into soap operas, I can assure you I am not, so the timethey are going to spend Thursday concerns me because they are anxious toplay. It’s a long day and you have to be able to stay relaxed. I willbe attending a luncheon down there with officials from the University ofNotre Dame and the officials and coaching staff from Vanderbilt. So myday will be pretty well occupied but I do worry a little bit about ourfootball players.

Q. You landed Bill Mitoulas out of the Toronto area couple years ago. Now it seems all the powerhouses are up here in Canada, recruiting. What do you attribute that to?

COACH HOLTZ: I think that there aresome good athletes up there in Canada. Bill Mitoulas — Ireferred to him as our Canadian Mounty. He has been one of the morepleasant surprises on our football team this fall. Right now he isplaying behind our captain Lyron Cobbins on all our specialty teams. I just think the fact that people realize that there are good athletesin Canada and you have pretty good school system up there I might alsoadd. I think you go to school year longer than we do, but I just thinkthey are good athletes. The way the Canadian League is, I you need tocorrect me if I am wrong, but the Canadian League has to have so manyathletes that are Canadian citizens; is that correct?

Q. They have to have a certain number of Canadian athletes, yes?

COACHHOLTZ: Seems to me if an individual is a pretty good athlete and wantsto have a chance to play professional athletics, if he went to a goodschool he would have good chance to play in the Canadian League. I alsothink the fact that Mike Wadsworth, our athletic director, came downhere and played under Ara Parsegian — very, very successful. But we gowherever we can to find a good athlete. We are delighted to add BillMatter to the list here, and I hope we will find other fine athletesfrom Canada come down here. They have wonderful discipline,good, hardworkers and they are solid people.

Q. Your expectations are always high on your program, this year theyseem possible a little higher. Usually people anticipating anotherNational Championship run. Does that bother you and how do you prepareyour team for that type of expectations every year?

BOB DAVIE: Thething, and I will talk to them a little bit more about it duringtwo-a-days, you like them thinking very optimistically; you like theirgoals to be exceptionally high. That certainly helps you gettingthrough two-a-days. If you don’t have goals, you know you show mesomebody that is bored with life, that doesn’t have the burning desireto get up in the morning and go do things. I’ll show you somebodywithout a lot of goals. I’m a great believer in them. Now that we areinto the season, they can forget all of that nonsense. Duringtwo-a-days that was great. Right now that is not important. What isimportant right now is to beat Vanderbilt. I don’t even think you canthink of a National Championship until you get to the 10th or 11th ballgame. If you start thinking about it before then you are being littlebit unrealistic. I said this before, and I mean it from the bottom ofmy heart, you don’t win a National Championship. Wake up one day and youare, or you wake up one day and you are very, very disappointed that youare not. We have experienced both. But I think if you try to live up toother people’s expectations, I think that is a very, very frustratingthing to do and I think it is a very shallow way to live. I am one ofthese old-fashioned people. I think that leadership is not saying whatpeople want to hear, but leadership is really saying what needs to besaid. Some of things that I will say to our football team, I knowthey’re not necessarily things they want to hear, but they’re thingsthat have to be said, and they are sacrifices that have to be made Do Ithink we have a chance to win the National Championship, yes. Do we havethe best chance, absolutely not. Some people have a paved road, theyplay too tough games. Let us just not take anything for granted and letus get down there and play and I will talk more about the situationprobably on Sunday. I will start talking to them about it on Sunday. Iwouldn’t talk to them about it until then. But on Sunday we will starttalking everyday about some facts of life.

Q. What question did you have going into fall camp that you feel havebeen answered?

COACH HOLTZ: I think that we have an excellent punter. I think Hunter Smith is going to punt very, very well. I still havemore questions than I would like to have place kicking or on our playskicking but I think we are definitely improved there. We are not asgood as I’d like to be at this time. But we haven’t made any during agame, we haven’t missed any during a game. We have made some inpractice that I thought we should make and we have missed some. So ourpunter has been a very, very pleasant surprise. I think our offensiveline has a chance to be pretty strong. I think Mike Rosenthal has been amost pleasant surprise. I expected Mike to be a good offensive linementhis year. But he is an excellent offensive guard. He is not as quickbut he replaces Ryan Leahy who made it to last cut of the Cardinals. Ifeel good about that. Alton Maiden on defensive line at nose guard Ithink has been a very, very pleasant surprise and Alton predicted it. Alton came back he said, Coach, I am going to be outstanding student. And he was, and then, he came to us this summer he said, I am going tobe the most dedicated athlete you have in the summer program and I amgoing to start for you. He signed a contract on it. I didn’t ask that. He did that. He has done it all. Did it in academics. He has been agreat surprise. I think that — I’d like to — I thought Kory Minorwould be good outside linebacker, I thought Lamont Bryant would be good.And I think Johnnie Sanders has eliminated lot of my concerns at strongsafety. I felt he would be pretty good I but I think he will be alittle better than we did this early. He has never played a game. Ithink Ivory Covington has really matured and grown, and Allen Rossum,let’s say a referee calls a jump ball, I think they are going to be fineat corner. They are not very, very big. So we have had a lot of pleasantsurprises, I think I do. You know, Malcolm Johnson has reallyprogressed I think Ricky Nelson and Dee Cooper come the last couple ofdays has been positive. So we have had a lot of them.

Q. Speaking of corner, if something were to happen to one of those two,you only have two choices I guess at this time. Who between the twowould be the first one off the bench, Harper or Shannon Stevens?

COACHHOLTZ: That would be dependent upon the situation. Both of them are going to get a lot ofwork this week. We are going to have some physical practices with No. 2.We also can move Ty Goode to a corner. I think Ty Goode has been apleasant surprise. I think Ty Goode has come back and he has playedvery, very well. So we talked that Ty Goode could possibly be at cornerand Ben Gibibow could be a safety, Johnnie Sanders could go to free,Benny to strong.

Q. Dan O’Leary was playing some slit end. What is happening with thatexperiment, is he still there?

COACH HOLTZ: He is still going to bethere. We feel Dan O’Leary has a lot of natural talent in passreceiving, et cetera, and we were really struggling at split end. Mosley was injured, Malcolm Johnson’s knee was banged up a little bit,and the freshman, you know, seem to be more interested in what theirgirlfriend was doing back home than they were what was called in thehuddle, but that that has changed drastically the last couple of days. So he will eventually be at tightend, but until we are completelysatisfied at wide receiver, we will continue to look at him there.

Q. You talk highly the way the wide receiver core has looked lastcouple of days. Does that mean we can rule Jarious Jackson out?

COACHHOLTZ: The one thing you can do, you can absolutely rule JariousJackson out of being wide receiver. When Tom Krug was with us in thespring there was always a possibility that we would take Jarious Jacksonand make him a quarterback/receiver. He is very talented individual. Byhaving him at wide receiver you could then take and put Ron Powlus atwide receiver, Jarious Jackson under center for a play or two withoutanybody knowing it. But we can’t afford to do that with Jackson beingNo. 2 and Eric Shappel being No. 3. So you would definitely not seeJarious Jackson at wide receiver, at least until he throws his firstinterception. (Laughter)

Q. Coach, with Vanderbilt being somewhat of an underrated team, andwith what happened with North Western last year, how does that affectyour preparations for the game next week?

COACH HOLTZ: It reallydoesn’t affect what we do or how we prepare. I thought we prepared justas hard for Northwestern as we did for Michigan, with our footballteam and everything else, you know. What people remember now but theydidn’t know at the time was that North Western beat Michigan, beat PennState, won the Big 10, went undefeated in the Big 10, and yet we lostthe game, we missed an extra point, fumbled couple of times, they playedan excellent game. I thought we played pretty well for an openingballgame there. But you know, let’s give North Western a lot of credit,and I know that there have been articles where Vanderbilt says they aregoing to be the North Western of this year, they are going to, you know,be able to beat Notre Dame and then go on from there, you know, to anoutstanding season. Now, I am not saying that they predicted that theywould beat Notre Dame. They didn’t do that. But it in reading anarticle out of the paper down there, their players did say that, youknow, they are capable of beating Notre Dame, they feel they can, theyfeel that they, you know, didn’t really prepare for Notre Dame lastyear, whereas they have this year, and they are very, very talent andcould very well be a surprise football team. I think that, you know,like anything else, in opening ballgame they are going to play very,very well. They are going to play hard. I know they are. But we aretoo. We are going to play very well down there. I just have thatconfident we are going to play well. We also expect Vanderbilt is goingto play very, very well and we also know in the opening ballgame strangethings happen. But as far as our team playing well, I have noreservations the fact that we are going to play well. I said thatsometimes and I have been wrong. When I have said that, far more timesI have been right. And I think we are going to play well. I just hopethat it is good enough. We are going to play well.

Q. Jarious Jackson can be ruled out at wide receiver. How about asshort yardage quarterback? Any chance of seeing him next Thursday inthat role?

COACH HOLTZ: We have no plans right now to put JariousJackson on the field in a short yardage situation. We did that withPaul Faylor, did it with Kevin McDougal when we had those two, and thereason that we have eventually went to that was we felt Paul Faylor wasso close to Kevin McDougal. If you will remember going into openingballgame I wasn’t even sure who was going to be the starter. It was soclose, it was Faylor/McDougal, McDougal/Faylor. We decided to go withKevin McDougal. And as you will recall, I think we were playing NorthWestern and we were really struggling and I think they scored to takethe lead, now this is three years ago. And, you know, we played Faylorsome, we played McDougal some, we put Kevin in, he hit that pass downthe sideline, I remember and we took it in and scored. So we started himthe next week but it was still real close and then we go up againstMichigan and Kevin McDougal just, boom. But now you have a guy like PaulFaylor was so close, we felt we will give Paul a chance to lead NotreDame, we put him in short yardage there, and did a nice job. We didn’tput him there because McDougal could not do it; we did it because it wasso close going in, as you recall, it was so close we just felt it wasthe right thing to do.

Q. In defense in terms of quickness and depth, especially up front,does this unit remind you of any that you had earlier in your career atNotre Dame?

COACH HOLTZ: I don’t think we are as quick as we have beenup front on defense. Bryant Young and Flannigan were very, very quick. I think Paul Grasmanis was pretty quick. I think Dansby has lost someof his quickness. Dansby gained an awful lot of strength and doesn’tseem to be as quick. So I don’t think we are as fast and as quick as wehave been particularly at safety, but I think it is a good defense Ithink if we that we compare with some of the better defenses that wehave had here. Is it dominating defense? I hope so, but I can’t say.But then again when you go against one another you are going to dominatethe third team and you are going to stifle the second team, but and wehaven’t scrimmaged it enough ones against ones because of depthconcerns, so I really don’t know. But I will say this, if we can gainsome confidence on defense, I think how good we are going to be ondefense depends upon our ability to play well on third down and how wellwe play on goal line. If we play well on goal line and play well onthird down, I think we will be a very, very good defense.

Q. How is Ron Powlus? What is his mindset? Have you seen any differencein him since the last time he played before his injury?

COACH HOLTZ: Ithink that Ron is like most people that are injured. They reallyappreciate the opportunity to play and he has more enthusiasm. You don’ttake things for granted. He doesn’t seem to have any effect at all. Hehas been tackled, he has been hit several times in practice and reallyhadn’t affected him. I remember the first time in the scrimmage he gothit went down, and first thing I did was, Is he okay? You thought hewas, but you just want to be sure, but he seems to be fine. He isdefinitely the leader of the offensive team he and Marc Edwards. Thereis no doubt that they are running this team.

Q. Lou, followup on that, Powlus has been saying that he doesn’t feelthere is that much of a burden on him this year because there is moreversatility in the offense. How is that going to shape up for youbetween the passing and running game?

COACH HOLTZ: Well, we would liketo be a little bit more balanced than what we have been, but make nomistake about it, we are going to be a running football team. I mean,that is going to be our first inclination but we do work an awful hardon the passing game. I feel quite confident that if our receivers, ifour receivers, can beat man-coverage, we will be much more diversifiedthan what we have in the past. Will we throw the ball 40 times a game? No. But I’d like to think if people aren’t — we got to come up withthe way where people can’t play us with nine men up front andman-coverage on us because that is what I think some people are going totry and do.

Q. You said that Dansby had gained some strength or lost quickness, isthat since last spring?

COACH HOLTZ: Yeah, I said since last spring hehas gotten stronger and he is a very, very good football player. Maybeour legs retired. We have been through a long, strenuous time. I wouldexpect some of their legs are starting to come back now because they had aday off yesterday and we are in one-a-days and sitting in class, etcetera, we just don’t look as quick as a football team as what we didlast spring.

Q. Some defenses want different teams college pro will have a playerwho sort of has to be accounted for, maybe he is the best park rusher insome cases, is Dansby potentially that kind of a player on your defense?

COACH HOLTZ: I would hope so, but I don’t know. Dansby made an awfullot of plays, you know, the spring before he get injured he made a lotof plays last spring. We will just have to see what happens when we getinto the season. I agree with you, have to have some people that aregoing to make plays, whether it be sack the quarterback, or getpenetration or lost yardage plays, et cetera, we are just going to haveto see.

Q. Priority of getting Jarious sometime? Are you going to give him aseries or he is a mop up quarterback if you get in that situation?

COACHHOLTZ: We would like to get Jarious Jackson some opportunities to play,but we have to keep in mind our No. 1 objective is to win the footballgame. And you always do what you feel you have to. I don’t think thereis any doubt that we have to get Jarious Jackson on the field and gethim some playing time but, it is not going to be an experimentation. Wewill just have to see and play it by ear as we go along.

Q. This other kicker you mentioned, Kevin O’Donnell?

COACH HOLTZ: Yeah, young man name of Kevin O’Donnell. He was out in the spring, andthe one thing that I like about him he kicks the ball end over end. When I look at a place kick, I like to see the thing go end over end,because then it will stay on line. You know, there are some successfulgolfers that hit big sweeping hooks, some hit big sweeping slices, nottalking about a fade, I am talking about a slice. Those people mightplay a hole or two pretty good, but if you are slicing or hooking theball, it is going to catch up with you. When you kick the helicopter,the knuckle ball, it is going to have a tendency to react differentways. And so I like the way Scott Sengia has kicked the ball and I likethe way Kevin O’Donnell has kicked the ball and Samson at times, butwhoever can get that ball to go end over end will end up being our placekicker.

Q. Is O’Donnell a walk-on, soccer player?

COACH HOLTZ: No, just awalk-on.

Q. Who would spell Marc Edwards if he needs a breather at this pointfor fullback?

COACH HOLTZ: That would be Jamie Spencer. Behind Jamieit would be a toss-up. Joey Goodspeed could very possibly be the thirdfullback, but Jamie Spencer is back in practice today, and he’d would beNo. 2.

Q. How does he look? I know he has been out a lot?

COACH HOLTZ: He has looked very good, protected the ball well,runs well, he is a good blocker. As long as Jamie protects thefootball, he will be fine, and I expect that he will. He has done verynice job of protecting the ball this year. This fall. Okay, very good,thank you for coming.