Reporter: Obviously, it was a really tough day for you guys offensively. Did you just take yourselves out of chances offensively?

Phil Bates: Yes, we’ve got some problems we’ve got to correct. We’ve got to execute. We’ve got to get receivers open. We’ve got to come back to the ball. We’ve got to block. We’ve got a lot of work to do on offense. We’ll be back next week.”

Reporter: Phil, was it breakdown on your part or was it something Ohio State was doing?

Phil Bates: They’re a good team, but a lot of it was as an offense. We had a lot of missed assignments and everybody wasn’t doing the right thing, so we have to tune some things up.”

Reporter: Phil, when were you told you were going to start?

Phil Bates: All week, I’ve pretty much known I was going to start. I practiced with the ones and was just preparing for the game.

Reporter: How was the thumb? Was it all right?

Phil Bates: Yeah, it was wrapped up pretty good. It moves, so it’s getting better.”

Reporter: Noah, when did you know you were going to play today?

Noah Keller: I practiced on Thursday and felt all right. I felt good to go. It really wasn’t bugging me too much today.

Reporter: Noah, did you feel you guys played OK defensively, but Terrelle kind of broke you down in a lot of individual situations?

Noah Keller: We started out, we always want to go out looking to stop the run. At first, I thought we were doing that, but they were able it seemed to pass it on us at will. They were able to either hit short routes and turn them into big plays, and one thing that also hurt us was letting Terrelle Pryor get out of the pocket, and obviously that’s where his game is at – outside. That was one thing we needed to address at halftime.

Reporter: You guys came free on a number of blitzes. Describe what it’s like when you get a guy that’s that quick, I guess, with his first move.

Noah Keller: He’s a hard guy to tackle. A lot of times, there’s a lot of breakdown for guys who didn’t stay on the upfield shoulder, because obviously he can escape that. We tried to bubble out and keep him contained, but it was not the best job on our part of trying to contain him.

Reporter: Donovan, it seemed like you were all over the place. Can you talk about what you were trying to do today?

Donovan Fletcher: I was just playing football. We were playing a very good team today and they executed on their plays and we didn’t execute on ours. After the play was called, I was just executing the play to the best of my abilities.

Reporter: Don, what’s the team reaction right now? Obviously, you guys wanted to come out and play well. You guys didn’t do that in the first half. What kind of reaction or what are you guys going through right now in the locker room?

Donovan Fletcher: (inaudible) … We’ve got to focus on Marshall now. We’ve got a lot of corrections to be made as far as executing our plays. We just have to move on to the next one. That’s kind of how this game is played.

Reporter: How much did it hurt to have that kick return called back after you guys got a stop and held them to a field goal?

Noah Keller: That always hurts, especially when that would have given us the lead, I believe. Whenever you get a big play like that taken away, it’s always kind of a back breaker, and I think that’s one of the things that kind of changed the momentum.”

Reporter: Last year, you made a good living, I guess, off of turnover differential and forcing turnovers. How has that kind of changed this year and what are you going to do to get back to forcing them and not giving them up?

Donovan Fletcher: We stress getting three or more a game, and that’s all about just going after the ball – if somebody is running, stripping the ball out, and if the ball is the air, going and getting it. But you can’t do that if you start blowing assignments, so we’ve got to start with the basics.

Reporter: Phil, would you say you guys were maybe kind of overwhelmed by this whole environment and playing here?

Phil Bates: No, not at all. I would say we were not doing everything to the best of our ability. We were tentative in a lot of situations. I think in a lot of situations all around on offense we hesitated. This is what happens when we don’t let loose and let our playmakers have a chance and stuff like that.

Reporter: At the same time, how do you go about to getting to a point where you guys feel more comfortable and play more comfortable together?

Phil Bates: Let us loose. We’ve got to be let loose. Pretty much, we just have to play football. There’s no other words. There’s nothing else you can say. You’ve just got to go out and play football and let loose.

Reporter: Phil, how was your first college start?

Phil Bates: What’s that?

Reporter: Was that your first start in college?

Phil Bates: No.

Reporter: What do you think when you go out there in a situation like this? You and Boo were fighting to play every week.

Phil Bates: I’ve played in front of big crowds. It wasn’t nothing I haven’t experienced before. I think, like I said, it comes down to execution.

Reporter: Noah or Donovan, when you’re playing a quarterback like Terrelle Pryor, a guy who can run, he can pass, he can break out of the pocket and get accurate passes, how do you maybe go about stopping a guy like that? What goes through your guys’ heads when you’re out there and he’s scrambling and completing passes like that?

Noah Keller: You’ve got to go low on him. He’s got long arms and a deadly stiff arm, so that’s obviously one of the most important things.

Reporter: Noah, you think there’s a lot that can be taken away from this game down the road or is it something you want to just try to forget about?

Noah Keller: We’re going to go and watch film and make the corrections that we need to. Then we’ll put it behind us and start preparing for the next week.

Frank Solich: Well, it was a long afternoon. Ohio State has a championship-caliber football team. I thought that coming in and I certainly feel that coming out. In order for us to have made a run at this and taken it into the fourth quarter to decide it and get something done to possibly win the game, we had to play perfect football and execute well. We had to be turnover-free, we had to win the turnover battle – none of which got done. I do like the fact that our kids battled hard in the second half and that they never gave up and were able to get some things done. I think if you look at our defense, they hung in there pretty well. Obviously, Ohio State is a difficult team to stop because they have a very good power running game and a good throwing game and they’ve got a good scramble game. That, as much as anything, is difficult to stop against Ohio State. I thought Pryor had a great game doing what he does best – controlling his offense and making throws that need to be made, running the way he’s capable of running, scrambling and picking up first downs and making big plays while scrambling. That in itself is something coming in we knew we had to control, but we were not able to do that, so it became more difficult for our defense, especially when we had so many three-and-outs and didn’t allow them a lot of time to catch their breath. All in all, when you add it up, I thought we played OK. That’s tough to say when you have 43 points against you, but obviously that wasn’t all their fault. Offensively, we’re very much a work in progress. We’ve got a long ways to go. I still think we have some potential on offense to be a good offensive team. We showed flashes of doing things special teams-wise, but really we needed to win every special teams category and play well offensively and defensively to make this into a football game, and we did not get that done.

Reporter: This is the second straight game you guys have had five turnovers. Last year, you made a big happening off of forcing turnovers, winning turnover differential. How has that affected you guys?

Frank Solich: It’s had a negative effect for us. We’ve normally done a pretty good job of taking care of the football and getting turnovers, but it’s been reversed this season other than our first game, and we obviously need to have that corrected. You can’t win football games turning the ball over to the other football team, so we need to settle that, get some solid quarterback play offensively, and we’ve got a running back or two that put the ball on the ground. We had a couple fumbles by running backs. We put the ball on the ground today, so there’s a lot of areas to get better at. The only thing we can do is start attacking them right now and watch film and see what we’ve got to do better and get our team to respond. I think our team will respond. They will not flat quit. That’s evident to me. In my experience, I see what we have a football team that will keep battling. We’re going to have to get better, though.

Reporter: Coach, you had some success on special teams. Did you see something on film that you were able to exploit?

Frank Solich: They’re very athletic on special teams, but we’ve kind of prided ourselves over the years in being good at special teams. We just thought if we got on people and gave our returners a chance that we could get something done. We knew we’d have to cover really well in our kickoff coverage and punt coverage in order to not give them field position. You know, field position was critical in this ball game.

Reporter: Talk about Phil’s performance today getting the start here.

Frank Solich: It was a little bit of a mixed review. I think it was a difficult game to come back in and play. He’s only had 16 snaps at quarterback before getting hurt in the first game, so I don’t think his true abilities showed today, but it seems like we’ve struggled at the quarterback position. Boo, in his two games, struggled a little bit. Phil struggled in this game, so we’ve got to get that issue resolved.

Reporter: Do sense a frustration from your offensive guys right now? Some guys feel you’re not being aggressive enough and maybe things are a little too tentative on that side of the ball.

Frank Solich: Well, I’m not sure what you mean by…

Reporter: Phil talked about that just a couple minutes ago. He said we were tentative. We need to let it loose.

Frank Solich: I’m not sure how Phil was responding to a question, or what the question really was. But if you want to come out play good football, you have to be physical, and that’s true across the board, and that’s one thing we try to emphasize with our team. That may be where Phil was coming from, because I put such a heavy emphasis on it – that in order to get this thing done, we’re going to have to be physical up front and we’re going to have to have our wide receivers blocking down field. It’s not a deal where they’re just going to catch a winning touchdown pass and win the game for us. You know, we had to be physical on the perimeter. We’re going to have to have our guys getting yards after contact, and so I get that, and that’s probably where Phil’s coming from.

Reporter: Coach, can you talk about this game as opposed to the game a couple years ago where you hung with them for most of the game a couple years ago. Was it a difference in you guys or them, do you think?

Frank Solich: Well, we played a much better football game, and I really don’t really rate teams. I have a hard enough time figuring mine out, but as I see it, they were a good football team honestly a couple years ago. The question still has to be answered are they a national championship-caliber team. I think all signs point to that right now. I think they feel good about themselves, as they rightfully should. They played good in all three units that you need to play good at. That have the right combination of things. I’ve seen a lot of, over the years, great football teams, and I think talent-wise, this one can match up.

Reporter: Coach, you talked about field position. How important has Phil Hershey been to you punting this year?

Frank Solich: It’s a big factor for us. He did a really good job today. There’s a couple where we would have liked for him to have had better hang time, but he had some crucial kicks that helped us certainly in the second half find ourselves in much better field position so that Ohio State had to drive the ball much farther than what they did in some of the drives in the first half. He had a good day, I thought.

Reporter: Coach, can you comment a little bit on the changes you’ve seen in Pryor since 2008? What did you see different?

Frank Solich: He was talented when he arrived, and I think they’ve honed that talent. I think the staff has done a great job getting him to get better almost to a period there game after game. Obviously, he’s shown that improvement now this year. He always was good, but he can hurt you in any way, and I think that’s a tribute to him and his work ethic, developing what he needed to develop in the offseason to make himself even better than what he was, and what he was was really good.

Reporter: Is there something specific that you’ve seen that’s really stuck out as improved?

Frank Solich: It’s hard when you’re not working with a guy every day, and then we didn’t play them last year, and so you just see clips of him. But you’ve got to be impressed with his ability to throw the ball. He hit a lot of seam routes against our zone coverage. He stood in the pocket well. He’s matured as far as standing there and taking hits and knowing when to scramble. He’s everybody’s dream at quarterback. What is he, 6-5 or 6-6? He looks 6-6.

Reporter: Coach, can you touch on how you thought Boo Jackson did in the second half and what he brought to the offense?

Frank Solich: I thought he came in and gave us a spark. He stood in the pocket and he threw the ball well. We executed some routes well, and that enabled us to pick up some firsts and enabled us to have some drives in the second half. That was good to see.

Reporter: Frank, do you anticipate keep on doing the picking a quarterback as the weeks go on to match up with the opposition?

Frank Solich: Yeah, going in now to this part of the season, we’ve played three games and we’re not where we want to be quarterback-wise and how to resolve that and make sure we have the right guy getting the majority of the snaps, we still have to get that figured out. Boo’s first two games, he had turnovers. He had not thrown the ball well. He had a really good week of practice this week and was throwing like his old self and that’s why we stuck with him as going in in the second half this week – because of how he was throwing in practice. Hopefully, he keeps that going. There are thing you can build off with Phil to help you with this football team with him at quarterback, so we’ll just take that one step by step and see what the film looks like and make a decision, and then obviously go with it.

Reporter: Your offensive line, particularly Ryan McGrath, had a lot of trouble with committing penalties. I saw you talking with him on the sidelines after one. Do you have any words on that?

Frank Solich: I know he had a motion penalty and I know he had a personal foul, and did he have a third penalty in there or just two? Two is plenty. I think it was two then. A personal foul penalty is never acceptable. I saw what happened early on. He got his helmet ripped off, but that is absolutely no excuse for him to do something later in the game and retaliate. Personal fouls are something we don’t accept very well as a coach staff and as a team, so that will definitely be addressed.

Reporter: (Question inaudible.)

Frank Solich: Well, they are good across the board. They get off the ball well, they can penetrate, they’re an aggressive defensive unit. When you have an aggressive defensive unit, it’s tough to get a ground game going. I think they do a good job in that secondary, so they have a complete package defensively. They don’t have to blitz all the time, but they do it when they want to, and they have the kind of people who can blitz.

Reporter: With the offense not generating many yard until the fourth quarter…

Frank Solich: The fourth quarter counts.

Reporter: The fourth quarter counts, but with them locking you up and not getting to the 100-yard mark until the fourth quarter, do you attribute that more to the Buckeyes’ defense, the way they were playing, or do you think that more plays into your poor play?

Frank Solich: I think both. We did not play well offensively last week, and so this is a continuation of that. We didn’t help ourselves out at all, so that’s back on us. But at the same time, you can’t take anything away from what they are defensively.