Gary Clark Quotations

Nobody felt good about the way it ended. But the reality is we all believe we can be competitive at the top of the conference; that's the goal, and we think it's pretty close.

Obviously, everybody is a little disappointed about where we finished this year, but we're excited about next year and have high expectations.

I always thought I was healthy, thought I was healthy as a horse, but the past five months I've been sick three times with the same upper respiratory infection.

We've generated some needed momentum due to his hard work and strong recruiting.

What you have is all these various compartments, but there's no umbrella, and that's the dilemma that's emerging. You have to have a voice that can look at the big picture.

He could never sit at home and not do anything. I think that's why he didn't retire. I think also, although he never said it, but I think he wanted to keep providing for the family. He was the toughest guy I've ever known.

Playing in front of a hostile crowd is motivation for us. We are used to being the underdog in every big game. We just have to hustle more and win all the loose balls.

We're really looking forward to playing together. It should be a lot of fun.

We'll move in as timely a fashion as we can.

We're excited about it. It's a great opportunity for both our team and players as well as our fans.

The task force is closely monitoring the situation as we head into the planting season. While March has provided us with a good amount of rain, conditions are still at a critical stage. The message has to go out to western, northern and central Illinois that we're not out of the woods yet. We could get a month or two of recovery, then be back at it.

This came somewhat out of the blue. I knew Larry was looking at his options, as any coach does at any time. Obviously, things moved pretty quickly in the last 24 hours.

There's a lot of worry. We have seen some improvement over the winter, but soil moisture is nowhere near where it ought to be. Things are not shaping up for a good year at all.

In my mind, we didn't take the step we thought we would take this year. Beyond that, we have to see the big picture and in that context, Larry has strung together some winning seasons in a row that, quite honestly, haven't happened a lot here.