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tric. He might just do something with the ball.' I think everybody is excited to see him play." LITTLE DEPTH Purdue's defense has little depth. And the bench got even shorter vs. Wisconsin, when two starters — Frankie Williams and Ra'Zahn Howard — missed the game, and Ryan Rus- sell missed the second half. But defensive coordinator Greg Hudson says Purdue deals with the injuries as best as it can. "Coach the guys that are there as hard as you can and get them to play," he said. "The thing that's been the most revealing, where you see progress, where other people might not see it, we played Wisconsin and Nebraska on a 50-yard field. The average field position was the 49 at Nebraska and was the 46 vs. Wisconsin. And you look at that and say 'You know what? These guys are battling.' And you get an appreciation for the challenge that they were presented. The kids have done a good job. Next man up. And sometimes, it's easy for everyone to see that the No. 1 guy isn't in there, but sometimes you find out that the gap between the No. 1 guy and the No. 2 isn't as big as you thought. It's encour - aging when that next guy performs not good, but re- ally good. "It's easy to take the best player and coach them up and say, 'I did a great job coaching.' No. Show me how good your backups develop." Hudson feels that Purdue is developing those No. 2s and 3s well, a must considering the program is a "developmental" school, as he calls it. "The five stars aren't rolling in here, so we're taking two and three stars and we're developing them," the defensive coordinator said. "So you should be judged on how good do your bottom two guys perform. And it's been encouraging. Our coaches have done a great job of getting the next guy ready. The next guy ready, they haven't been intimidat - ed; we haven't seen anybody go in there and flinch. It's been great." Hudson says he likes the way defensive end Evan Panfil has played. The sophomore, Russell's backup, was pressed into action vs. Wisconsin, first backing up on the interior, then playing full-time outside. "We'll take all the Evan Panfils and Jake Replogles that you can find," he said. "We'll take them all." BETTER PASS PRO All season, Purdue's offensive line has been solid in rush blocking but only so-so in pass protection. The latter came to a head against Wisconsin, when Austin Appleby was sacked four times and pressured mul- tiple others. Although Purdue will likely make some schematic changes, Shoop says im- provement is as much about technique. "Coach (Jim) Bridge did a good job of working with the O-line every day (during the bye week), a lot of pass protection, a lot of technique," Shoop said. "Our backs did some work in pass protection, our tight ends. Our quarterbacks, we've done a lot of work in that off week about finding the eye of the hurri- cane in the pocket. Don't really look for us to change a whole lot. You can always change the aiming point of the pocket, where the quarterback throws, a little bit. But we just want to get better at what we do." Purdue has allowed 21 sacks this season, a big improvement from last season (38), but still only tied for ninth in the Big Ten. j Tom Campbell Evan Panfil was forced into a season-high snaps against Wisconsin after Ryan Russell got hurt. Greg Hudson said he liked Panfil's motor. GOLDANDBLACK EXPRESS • VOLUME 25, EXPRESS 11 • 22