Hope Shares His Weekly Wisdom At Press Conference

The Boiling Point: Purdue coach Danny Hope held his weekly press conference today.

Danny Hope stepped in front of the podium today to answer the media’s questions (well, give an answer to the questions. Whether it actually answers the question usually is debatable). Today, he shared some wisdom regarding Robert Marve and Ralph Bolden. To read the entire transcript, click here.

Excerpts:

"Q. And with the bye week coming up right behind this game, do you try to get guys like Gabe, Robert Marve out there this weekend or kind of take it easy on them and figure two weeks off?"

"COACH HOPE: I don’t know where Gabe will be at from an availability standpoint. Right now he’s doubtful still. That could change. It’s still early in the week. Robert Marve, I believe he’ll be ready to go. I think he’ll get more reps in practice, and he’ll do well in and practice, and he’ll be ready to go."

"Q. Coach, just for the sake of clarification, is it safe to say that, barring a setback, that Robert Marve will play some on Saturday?"

"COACH HOPE: It’s safe to say he’ll play Saturday. I thought he’d play this past Saturday, but things were tight. Again, just trying to keep a touch of continuity out there at the quarterback spot. If we were ahead in the game, it might be a little bit easier situation to put him in. The score was changing, the lead was changing throughout the course of the game.Again, we think Caleb is playing pretty good. He’s still making some developmental mistakes, but we think he’s playing awfully well and gives us the best chance to win right now."

"Q. I guess that leads to my next question. You know, obviously, Marve came in here with a lot of hype, but yet you’re committed to a two-quarterback system even with Marve healthy. Has Caleb earned that status with his play the first two weeks?"

"COACH HOPE: I think he has in some ways, but the type of two-quarterback system in my mind has changed in some ways. A year ago I thought that, if Robert Marve was our starting quarterback and Rob Henry was No. 2, we’d have to have both those guys on the field somehow. Rob Henry was too good to have him on the bench. Maybe we could put him at quarterback some and do some things with Robert in different positions. Have Robert behind the center some and do some things with Rob. I liked that idea.When we were going to get them both back this year, I thought that was going to be a good thing is getting them both on the field. If you want to get a quarterback ready, getting him on the field is the way to get him ready, doesn’t have to be the quarterback spot. We had a dual quarterback package that wasn’t going to be featured but something that was going to be good for our football team to help develop the quarterbacks and get our best players on the field and help us win too."

"Q. Akeem Shavers, he’s getting about equal carries with Bolden. What’s he done, considering Bolden is established, what’s Akeem done to get as many carries as these guys?"

"COACH HOPE: The carries, again, sometimes we have plays called as a run or a pass option on the play. Sometimes what the defense lines up on can dictate how many times a running back actually gets the ball. Again, at times we spread them out, and we’re a passing football team. So we can do that.Why Akeem has more carries than Ralph doesn’t have anything to do with a preference as much as it does with chance. We have played both of those guys a lot, and it has worked out that Akeem has gotten more carries than Ralph, I believe in the last game. I don’t think it happened in the first game. I think Ralph probably had a lot more carries in the first game.But it happened that way more so by chance than it has by thinking that we had to get Akeem more than Ralph. We wanted to get Ralph the ball more and Akeem the ball more somehow. They’re good players. They’re both really good runners, and Akeem’s fast and tough and strong. Ralph is an outstanding football player. Ralph’s a very, very good blocker. He’s one of our better blocking running backs, even though he’s not big."