Ryan Day Speaks About Playing Minnesota in the Opener

Here's what Day had to say about opening the year against the Golden Gophers.

Here are Ryan Day's comments about playing Minnesota from his Monday press conference.

Day on What Excites Him and What Scares Him

“I’m excited to get going and find out what we have, solve all the things that need to get fixed … that’s the fun part about coaching. The hard part is you’re not allowed to lose around here (Day said with a smile). You’ve gotta win, you have to find a way to win the game and get out of that environment 1-0.

“I told the team the other day in the first meeting of the week is that’s the goal here – we’ve gotta be 1-0. There’s no other expectations, you don’t know how it’s going to go. Whether we go up, go down, it’s even … we’ve gotta get that game to the fourth quarter and then find a way to win the game. That’s the only expectation right now. But that’s the exciting part; you have a new challenge year in and year out, find out where guys are and then you build as the season goes on.”

Day on Playing Minnesota to Open the Year

“They’re a veteran team that has experience. Two years ago they were a top ten team in the country and a lot of those guys are still on the team. Certainly their quarterback, running back is a very good player and they’re very well coached. P.J. (Fleck) does a good job there. They play hard, take care of the football, fundamentally sound. They really make you earn it. So it’s a combination of all those things and then going on the road to their place for the first game of the year.”

Day On Defending Minnesota’s running back Mohamed Ibrahim

“Any time you’re playing in the Big Ten, you’re going against really good running backs. We’ve played against good backs before. But this guy is built low to the ground and he breaks tackles. So when you look at this past week, I think there were 56 explosive plays across the seven games played and I think there were probably some missed tackles along the way. We’ve spent a lot of time tackling in the preseason." 

"We’ve gotta do a good job of getting him down. There’s a lot of different way we can look to do that, but he’s a very good running back. He runs hard. Their offensive line does a good job of getting movement. We’re gonna have to defeat blocks and tackle well.”

Ibrahim has run for over 100 yards in each of his last eight games, a school record. He’s averaging 152.0 yards per game and has scored 16 touchdowns during the span.

If you'd like, here's his entire press conference:

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