Best of Lynch: Media Day edition

Think you’ll see a furious Lynch on the sidelines again this year?
You might — but expect the Hoosiers to be much improved from last year, at least based on Lynch’s preseason comments. Here are some of the highlights of Lynch’s Big Ten Media Day presser:

“One of the things that we’ve done in our program, we’ve redshirted a lot of kids. In fact, in the last three years, we’ve only played six true freshmen. And as a result, we’ve been able to get them in the weight room and develop them and certainly get them ready to play at the Big Ten level — and I think it’s starting to show itself.
“As we get started, we have a lot of experience in our team, guys that have played a lot of football. They may not have started, but fourth- and fifth-year guys that we certainly feel good about. I have to start on offense. Ben Chappell ... is everything you’re looking for in a quarterback.”

On improving on last year:
“Coming off the (2009) season, we thought we made great strides. We certainly didn’t from a win-loss record, but we learned how to compete, particularly on the road, and I told our guys in January when we got back together we were really 12 plays away from having an outstanding season and playing in a pretty good Bowl game. And I think that’s been the motivation throughout the off-season.
“Our theme has been to finish, because we have so many games last year where we were competing and had the lead in the fourth quarter ... and didn’t finish the job.”

On this year’s defense:
“I can’t wait to watch this defense play. We lost some guys from a year ago, guys that have played a lot of football. ... We’ve got a lot of guys that are maybe no-name guys to our fans, to the media, but ones that we’ve seen practice. ... But I think we’re
going to have a different style of defense, a different personality and some new faces that I think are going to be important.
“I think for the first time in a long time at Indiana, we can say the strength of our defense is our defensive tackles. We’ve worked hard to get to that point.”

On being so close to winning last season:
“We’re going to keep hammering away. We spent more time in spring practice than ever in third-down situations — particularly, a lot of red zone situations, goal line situations. ... Like everybody, all the coaches here have basically mapped out our camp all the way up to probably game week to make sure that we get all that work in. And there’s a heavy dose of particularly third-down-in-red-zone situations that we’re going to work on throughout the preseason.”

— Candice Rohrman