Coach Hope, receivers demonstrate swagger at Purdue media day
By CLIFF BRUNT
ISL Editor
Swag.
Swagger.
Swagging.
However you want to say it, there’s plenty of it at Purdue.
It’s quite a change.
Danny Hope’s team has a new vibe after three previous seasons that began with some degree of potential were derailed by injuries. The Boilermakers have 19 starters back from last year’s 7-6 team that won the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. Three quarterbacks with starting experience, Caleb TerBush, Robert Marve and Rob Henry, are back and healthy. Two All-America candidates, cornerback Ricardo Allen and
defensive lineman Kawann Short, lead the defense. In all, 10 defensive starters and nine offensive starters return.
As is the case with swagger on most football teams, the receivers demonstrate it best. O.J. Ross and Antavian Edison say there are plenty of reasons for the Boilermakers to aim high.
We have big expectations, Edison said. We know what type of team we are. We know what we have on this team. We know the talent, we know the experience that we have, and I think any team that lines up with us, we can definitely show what we’re capable of and definitely give them a run for their money and try to get to Indy.
Ross, the fastest member of a receiving corps that considers itself the fastest in the Big Ten, kept it simple.
Expect a lot of speed, a lot of big plays, a lot of wins.
Even coach Danny Hope is talking about swag. When asked about Ross and Edison’s, swagger, the 53-year-old coach responded as though the word was a regular part of his vocabulary.
Well, if you have some confidence, you can have some swagger, and if you have speed and confidence, then you can probably manufacture some reasons to have some swag, he said. If they play like we think they can play, they ought to be out there having a ball, making big plays and swagging all over the place.
That’s three different forms of the word in one paragraph. Well done, coach.
Hope then demonstrated swagger with bold statements about what he thinks is possible this season.
I anticipate us to do some big things as a football team this year, he said. We’re in position to re-establish ourselves to football prominence.
We anticipate to compete at a championship level, to compete not only for the division, but for the Big Ten championship. If we fall short somewhere along the line, we can be bowl champions again somewhere. Anything less than any one of those, I’d be disappointed in and so would they.
Purdue has to be careful not to make that swagger disappear on Sept. 1 by falling flat against Eastern Kentucky. The Boilermakers also have to avoid their recent habits of playing down to lesser opponents and bumbling and stumbling in close games. Purdue had a chance to make last season memorable too, but close losses to Rice and Penn State turned what could have been a bounceback season into an average one.
Hope believes his veteran team, anchored by the three quarterbacks, running back Akeem Shavers, Short and Allen, has too much experience to fall short in those situations again.
I expect us to be way ahead from where we were at last year when the season began from an offensive standpoint and a defensive standpoint, he said. I anticipate us being in position to win those close games.
Hope knows the expectations have increased because division opponents Ohio State and Penn State aren’t eligible to play in bowl games.
Our odds of being a division champion, of going to the championship game in Indianapolis have increased, but the schedule hasn’t changed, he said. There aren’t any byes on that regards to Big Ten play. The teams that aren’t eligible, we still have to play those teams. They’re good teams with lots of good players, and they want to do well too, so in the end result, it’s going to boil down to what it always does, and that’s winning.
He expects to do just that.
We’re cocked and ready, he said. We have to get it done.
