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2014 UW-Whitewater Football Prospectus
 
Five senior members of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater football team and head coach Lance Leipold addressed several members of the media Monday as part of the team's annual Photo Day at the Bob Berezowitz Student Athletic Complex.
 
Quarterback Matt Behrendt (Westchester, IL/Nazareth Academy), defensive lineman Mykaell Bratchett (Milwaukee /Hope School), defensive back Brady Grayvold (Norway, MI/Norway), wide receiver Jake Kumerow (Bartlett, IL/South Elgin) and offensive lineman Lucas Skibba (Plover/SPASH) took questions about the 2014 season from a group of local writers and broadcasters.
 
Leipold, who enters his eighth season at the helm of the program, also took questions from those on hand.
 
See below for a full transcript of the interviews.
 
Transcript – Five UW-Whitewater Seniors – Monday, Aug. 18, 2014
 
On initial impressions of 2014 team:
 
Behrendt: "I'm really excited. The freshmen and newcomers have come in here and are working really hard trying to understand the plays. It's tough for them to come in here – we throw a lot at them on offense and defense to try and know what we do as a team. It's been really exciting so far. I'm excited for what we have in the future, and what we'll do next camp."
 
Bratchett: "I'm really excited, especially for the new guys. Coming into camp, there is a lot thrown at you, but I'm excited that they're enthusiastic about this stuff. They're giving 100 percent effort and they're learning at a quick pace. I'm also excited to see what the year brings and see those guys grow over time, even when I'm gone."
 
Skibba: "From an offensive perspective, we had a young 'O-line', and we still do. We only have five that are juniors or seniors, so the rest of our line will be sophomores or freshmen. So there will be a lot of tough competition to make the squad. That's going to be exciting to see in the next week and a half or so."
 
On expectations, leadership for the offensive line:
 
Skibba: "That's kind of how it's been this year and last year. Being the oldest guy on the offensive line, you have to bring everybody up, get everybody up to speed. But that's the role of every junior and senior in our organization. We bring all our young guys up, and we are a team. Everybody can contribute. We had two freshmen starters for most of last season, so it doesn't have to be just juniors or seniors. It's been getting everyone back up to speed, getting the freshmen into the routine and the pace we practice and play. That's basically the only thing we have to do, just try to get everyone intrinsically motivated to do it for the team, and do it for the betterment of the whole Warhawk group."
 
On pressure, expectations entering the season:
 
Behrendt: "I definitely feel no pressure. I try not to think about last year and how everything went. Obviously there are high expectations for myself and as an offense with all the weapons we have coming back, but I just try not to worry about it. Day by day, in camp, (I try) to just take a step every day."
 
On relationship between Jake Kumerow (Bartlett, IL/South Elgin) and Matt Behrendt (Westchester, IL/Nazareth Academy):
 
Kumerow: "It's developed a long way from when I came here, when I barely knew him. Last year we got to know each other a little better and started to make some plays on the field. We were like, 'hey, we can do this a lot.' So we just have to trust the coaches to put us in the right spots. I know Matt's going to make the throw, and I have to do what I do best and make the catch."
 
On being a leader for a young defense this season:
 
Grayvold: "That's a good question. Last year we had all those seniors in the middle who had been playing there for a long time. So it's challenging in the sense that you have to kind of step into that role and take leadership. For Marcus McLin (Delavan/Delavan-Darien), this will be his third year starting, so kind of on the outsides we're old, and the safeties are old. But through the middle, we're a little bit younger, but it's a lot of fun being that guy that freshmen come and ask questions to. We were those freshmen at one point. As this is our last year, it's kind of fun showing what we do and how we're doing it, and then two or three years from now, they're showing (the freshmen) how we did it. Hopefully they have the same success."
 
On added pressure due to last year's postseason run:
 
Grayvold: "We go up against some of the best quarterbacks in the nation, some of the best wide receivers in the nation, so that helps a lot. Marcus (McLin) is on the other side, so you can't really pick and choose who you want to throw at. We just have to play coverage, and that's how it's going to go."
 
On the loss of several linebackers due to graduation:
 
Grayvold: "We have a lot of capable linebackers right now who can step in and play, but in college football, when people start graduating, somebody's got to step up. I don't think it's going from the best linebackers in the nation to the worst. We have very capable linebackers who are going to make plays and do their job."
 
On potential changes to the defensive line due to graduation:
 
Bratchett: "It'll pretty much be the same. As you guys all know, we're powered by tradition. It won't be anything new because we lost a couple of guys. It's going to be the same deal. Coach (Kevin) Bullis is a smart man who's super-efficient if you can't tell. So I'm pretty sure it's going to be exactly the same thing this year."
 
On high expectations for Jake Kumerow (Bartlett, IL/South Elgin):
 
Kumerow: "I've been handling it well. I feel like I don't try and pay attention to it. Like Matt was saying, last year was last year, and you've just got to come out this year and shine. Our defense lost a few guys from last year, but we've got plenty of guys to step up. The offense is mostly back, now older and grown. I couldn't ask for a better quarterback. I think there's no pressure, we just have to come out and play ball, and have fun."
 
Behrendt: "That's what we do best out there."
 
On how the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference stacks up this year:
 
Skibba: "It's the toughest conference in Division III. That's kind of the consensus across the nation. We have to come in every week, day by day, and prepare like we know how to, and like we have been over the last three years. We've got to be ready to play on Saturday. Two years ago, as you saw, we got beat twice in conference play. One (of the losses) kind of snuck up on us, and it kind of boosted our esteem last year to get back on top. Every day we have to come back and prepare. We're going to be the toughest conference again. UW-Platteville made the playoffs for the first time last year, and they'll probably be tough this year. UW-Oshkosh (will also be tough). We always have a tough time against UW-Stevens Point. Plus, we're on the road for most of our games this season in the conference. We only have four home games all season, so we've got to be road warriors this year and do what we do best."
 
On traveling to Franklin (Ind.) and The College of New Jersey for road games:
 
Grayvold: "Speaking from last year, when we went to Buffalo State, they may seem like long trips, but we have a good time. It's fun getting out of the Midwest and playing someone new. We do different things – there'll be buses and movies, and maybe some Nintendo 64. It's fun to play and to bring the show somewhere else, and play in front of some different people. We may not get out to the East Coast at all, so it'll be fun to play someone new. And it definitely helps with some bonding time."
 
Skibba: "We're heading to Indiana, and all the way out to New Jersey, so we're going to get to know each other pretty well."
 
On the team's experienced running backs:
 
Behrendt: "It's awesome. We have so many great running backs, and so many newcomers who are trying to get a spot. The competition is good for them, to have it with so many different running backs. It makes everyone better. Like we do every year, we'll have a lot of rotation with our running backs, so everyone is healthy and stays fresh. I can't wait to see it. Hopefully everyone stays healthy. We had a little trouble with that with our running backs last year, but that didn't stop us. There's always the next guy to step up. I'm excited to see what our running backs can do this year."
 
On the team's linebackers:
 
Grayvold: "Our coaches do a good enough job recruiting and bringing in people. You lose five, and I don't know how many years ago it was when those five stepped in after we lost a big group. It's always somebody's next turn in."
 
Skibba: "It's just how college football works. Two years ago, we lost five senior 'O-linemen', and we had to answer the call last year on the offensive line, and I think we made a statement there, really the whole offense did."
 
Behrendt: "It's one of the better things we do. We have a lot of competition within each position group. No matter what, if you were a starter last year, it doesn't matter. You're still competing each and every day in camp to earn that spot back. So there's a lot of competition, and that obviously helps get players more mature and helps them develop."
 
On the team's general expectations:
 
Behrendt: "We have very high expectations for our football team. Every year, our goal is to win a conference championship. Right now, we're focused on getting better each and every day, getting by camp and preparing for this next upcoming season."
 
Transcript – head coach Lance Leipold – Monday, Aug. 18, 2014
 
Opening statement:
 
"Thanks everyone for coming. We appreciate you covering the program. It's still very early. We just got into shoulder pads today. We've got about 130 players, which is probably our smallest number reporting in my eight years. But we're very happy with where we're at for that. It's a little bit of a reverse of a year ago. I think all of you know, if you're looking through our roster, the experience is on the offensive side of the ball with less questions and a fair amount of depth there. There are some things that have to be answered in camp here, especially at the linebacker position. We lost such a quality group. Even the top five – Joe Paulus (Fredonia/Kewaskum) was a young man who played a lot of special teams. So we really just don't have guys who have played a lot of football there. That doesn't mean there aren't guys who are capable, but there's a group there that just needs a lot of experience here through camp. There's some newness in the kicking game as well. Again, we're excited where we're at heading into this thing."
 
On the recruiting process this year:
 
"In today's world, it's a lot to put expectations on guys and get excited about the whole class. There are a lot of adjustments that go through. We look at it here just in a few days, where they're at, and there are some very talented guys. It depends sometimes on the program they come from, the depth of their program, and where their football experience is at. We have some players in our program who you may not hear about for a while, but have a very high ceiling of where they're going, from what their abilities may be in the weight room to when they get detailed coaching, not to take away from anything they've had before. Then we have some players who come from some pretty high profile programs in the state who have played deep in playoffs. They may be sometimes a little more ready. We're excited about where it's at as a whole group again. For every young man, I always reflect personally on some things I went through as a young man when you pack up and move away from home and where it's at. Depending on the size of the community you grow up in, and what your home life is like, it's a lot of things for these young men to go through, let alone the pace and the amount of information we're throwing at them."
 
On this year's assistant coaching staff:
 
"We've adjusted a little bit from the spring. John O'Grady's going to mainly be helping special teams at this time, so it's not quite as much on the offensive side of what we had in the spring. I'm excited about it. Everybody's different in how they look at the makeup of their staff. For myself, I always feel I've got a lot to learn. Any time you can bring in experience from the league, experience from having to make decisions sometimes across your desk as a head coach and mentoring to young coaches. I always think that's invaluable, the mixture that we can have. We've hired a young man to coach our tight ends, Kyle Jacobo, who was at Northern Arizona last year, an FCS program. He played at Wyoming and worked with (offensive coordinator) Andy Kotelnicki at Mary. Again, this is a guy who can bring in other things, other experiences, and when you have that mixture and blend, I'm excited about what we have in our coaching staff. Last year, we sat here at this time and talked about all the new faces on the coaching staff. We had so many things offensively to look through. This year, there's a lot more stability there. We lost a fine guy in Craig Harmon, who went to Northern Illinois University as a full-time coach. Daryl Agpalsa, our offensive line coach, returned from an NFL minority internship program with the Jacksonville Jaguars, so we're excited about some of the things he's been able to get."
 
"It's great about Brian (Borland)'s personal recognition, that he's going to be recognized next March by the state association. Brian and Kevin (Bullis)'s stability, Brian for 20-plus years, and Kevin in his seventh year on that side of the ball, is obviously invaluable. Offensively, for the job Andy and the guys did there to have the ability to take another step, you can see that paying off already in camp. Last year at this time, those coaches were just trying to figure out what that group of guys could be good at. You could see us last year, that first game of the year, trying to fight through that. Now, everyone knows each other a little bit. We know what we're about, and we know what we want to be about, in recruiting for the future. So that's exciting offensively."
 
On playing four home games and six road games this year:
 
"We've always tried not to get too far ahead of ourselves. But if you break it down, four of the first six weeks are on the road, and those are all pretty good distance trips. Those are going to challenge this football team. We have back-to-back out of state games. I've always felt some of those have helped our football team come closer together. Two like this will be a little bit different. It's just one of those years that didn't fall right for us. Hopefully we'll get that rectified. Waldorf was willing to play again, and it'll be their third football game when we're playing our first. They open up on the 23rd, which is this Saturday. They play Mayville State and then on the 30th at home against Trinity Bible College. So you talk about where they'll be as far as practices, and knowing what they have. So that'll be a different challenge than it was a year ago. I talked with Coach Anderson from there, and their retention has been good. He feels they're improving. Franklin is a playoff team. Mike Leonard always does a great job there, and they're always able to throw the ball and move the ball really well. That's going to be a good challenge for our defense. Then we go out to The College of New Jersey. We learned the first year we played Buffalo State that sometimes when you play somebody new and you don't know a lot about them, it's hard to get information. Much like us, (TCNJ) is a state institution, which can sometimes change a roster's complexity. There are a lot of different things that can happen there that we don't know, so we're looking forward to that one. They'll return to Whitewater in 2016. Then right away in conference play we have La Crosse, then the two trips to the Eau Claire and Menomonie areas. I like the way it shapes up. I don't spend a lot of time on predictions because you never know how a team is going to improve, but if it's like anything last year with the teams that were near the top of the conference, we'll know by the last third of the season what kind of team we are."
 
On scheduling:
 
"We're looking for one for 2015. I can tell you we'll play Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, coached by Hal Mumme. We'll have a home-and-home with them. We'll go there first in '15. We will also play a new program in the U.P. in Finlandia. We'll play them at home in the third week of September. Finlandia will play Oshkosh, Stevens Point and us in some type of order. We're the third of the three in consecutive weeks. Belhaven will come here in '16 with The College of New Jersey, so we're sitting with nine (games) for '15 and '16 right now, so hopefully we can find those other ones. The weeks don't match up right now, but we're getting closer."
 
On this year's seniors and their leadership:
 
"These guys have been through it. Thank you to all of you because they get that experience on how to conduct themselves. The guys in the room there have played some really good football for us, and have had a lot of success. But they've stayed very humble along the way, and have continued to work hard, and that's one thing we've always tried to emphasize here. We have no issues right now with where our focus is at on what we need to do. If you look at college football lower than the FBS and on down, you can take any preseason magazine or poll and I'd venture to say over the last 20-plus year, you pretty much pick the teams who've had high success before and just start them off at the top. If that were the case, I guess we would have never gotten the chance to earn our way back in last year. We can't get caught up in what people are talking about this year, because if that was the case, we got left out and had to work our way back into it last year. I think this group does understand it. I think the good thing about this group is that many of them were sophomores on the team where we didn't play as well as we had hoped a couple years ago. I think that's still fresh enough where they know they have to go out every day and work to get better. I think our assistant coaches do a great job within their position groups to make sure they are focusing on those things."
 
On the size of this year's camp:
 
"Lately we've been around 135, and my first year we had 147, which was probably too high. We probably extended ourselves, or didn't research it enough. We feel this is a manageable number. In a couple positions, with some of those coaches who have been in our program that might be a little bit newer, talking about the difference in philosophy from some of the coaches who had coached that position before, have talked about how many they want at camp and what we need to keep on the roster and what we're allowed to keep. So that number is a little bit different. We had a couple of guys decide not to come out, which happens every year. One was a late injury of somebody who had been in the program. We continue to modify how we practice, and how we be efficient but practice at a good pace, and how we keep people engaged and not standing around. We find that this is a good number."
 
On the recruiting process, given the team's recent success:
 
"What we've tried to do is speed it up a little more like everyone else has. We've tried to stay on top of it a little bit more through the year. Sometimes, you just kind of wait to see who's available at times. Our guys are working their lists a lot more than they have in the past, so that would be the first thing, that we're being a little more selective. We're not mass recruiting. I go back to when I play when you bring in five freshmen quarterbacks and hope that one of them throws a spiral consistently. Now you're going to pick the one or two that you want and try to treat it like a scholarship situation, where we're going to evaluate you and we feel you're going to be on our football team. We just don't bring in freshmen to give them a chance. If somebody we didn't recruit wants to come to Whitewater and this is where they want to get their degree and want an opportunity to play football, we'll give them a chance in January during the offseason program into the spring. The year we didn't make the playoffs, we got on the road a little bit sooner and were recruiting a little bit more against the Division II programs. Maybe that paid dividends last year when those two freshmen started on the offensive line. The good and the bad of the success is that we're always behind getting into schools at the end of the year. Last year, if you remember, with the polar vortex, we didn't get into schools until like Wednesday in the second week of January. Once we narrowed it, once we got out and identified, we had a high success rate of people that came in, and that's what we're looking for. We talked about this for multiple years, that you may have interest in somebody who wants to play here because we've had success, but you have to make sure that you've done the research and they're willing to come in and do the work that's necessary for us to stay successful."
 
On the outlook of the conference:
 
"I don't pay a lot of attention to it yet until it gets closer to the season because you're just trying to improve your own team. (UW-Platteville coach) Mike Emendorfer and his staff have done an outstanding job. They put themselves in the playoffs and they're going to have experience at quarterback. They've got a good receiving corps and I'm sure will be a very explosive offense. Pat Cerroni's team at UW-Oshkosh lost by three to us and had a last-minute loss against Platteville, otherwise they're a playoff team. Those two programs are going to be good, I would imagine. River Falls is getting better … they're starting to get their players in there with the philosophy. Stout and Eau Claire may have taken a step back last year, but I think that's just a hiccup. They're going to be back. La Crosse and Stevens Point's coaches are close to their amount of years that all their players have come in (under them), and they've always given us fits. I think it's going to be the same type of stuff you see every year. Coming off last year's group, you may ask who's going to surprise someone. Sometimes it has to do with who has the experienced quarterback. I don't know who might have shown up on someone's campus that we're not aware of who could be an impact. Our league is one of those leagues where if you get through it, you're starting to be playoff tested before you even get there if you're lucky enough to get there. So it's going to be another good year."