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ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 24, ISSUE 6 47 f Q & A : G R E G H U D S O N Coming Together Hudson thinking D can make big strides forward BY KYLE CHARTERS KCharters@ GoldandBlack.com P urdue's defense was out of sync last season. That much was ob- vious, with the Boil- ermakers ranking at or near the bottom of every major defensive category in the Big Ten. "The biggest defi- ciency, if I had to put a word on it, was togeth- erness," defensive coordinator Greg Hudson said, "be- cause it's amazing in football with toughness and togeth- erness how much you can accomplish. But without one of those two, you're going to have major holes." But combine them, which the Boilermakers hope to do this season, and improvements can be made. Hudson, in his second year, thinks the defense has made strides to- ward those attributes in the offseason, but only the results this fall will tell. Following are excerpts from Gold and Black's interview with Hudson. Gold and Black: What reasons do you have to be- lieve you can be improved from last year? Hudson: "Well, the first thing is that we made a con- scious effort to really increase and build on the relation- ship that we have with our players. In any phase of athlet- ics, the successful people have great relationships with their players and getting to know them and finding out what makes them tick and how to respond. And we did a good job of that this winter, getting with our guys one on one, eating with them, just talking to them. And letting them know that we're here to help them get better and we're all here to win. That helped for one. "And also letting them know exactly where they stand, letting them know what they need to do to get better and then taking the defense that we're going to run, that we continued on and improved on through the winter and evaluating. We really hit the ground running in spring practice. We didn't have the bowl game to get the extra practices but we really were around the play- ers enough and talked a lot of football that by the time we got to the first practice of spring ball, it was like the last practice of fall camp, as far as the emphasis on knowing what to do. We made up some time that you didn't have from 15 bowl game practices, but we also increased the compre- hension level. "I think our players are physically a little stronger and they know where to go a little bit faster, so that should equate to some more success." Gold and Black: Senior linebacker Sean Robinson has talked a lot about accountability, about players holding each other accountable, more so than last year. Have you noticed that? Hudson: "Without a doubt." Gold and Black: And encouraged that, too? Hudson: "Yeah, this is not an independent contract job site. We're all in this thing together and especially from the top down with the seniors being on the same page. We made that abundantly clear with them when we met with them in the winter, not only did we tell them what we needed to do to get better, but we told them the trust of where we thought they were. And we just held them accountable in every phase of life, had a sign on the board in there 'If your grades are like this and you're acting like this, you don't want me in your personal life.' Let's avoid those situations because it's not fun. I think we're at a spot now where everybody is on the same page, Tom Campbell Second-year defensive coordinator Greg Hudson thinks Purdue's defense can be improved this season because its players are learning to play better together.