Northwestern's Phillips a big hit on 'D'
You couldn't have blamed Northwestern senior safety Brad Phillips had he kept a wary eye on Illinois quarterback Juice Williams throughout the Big Ten's freewheeling two-hour question-and-answer session on Tuesday.
Phillips, who sat at a table less than 10 yards from Williams in the basement of the Chicago Hyatt Regency, has never wound up on the good end of his encounters with the 230-pound Illini senior.
In 2007, Williams trampled him in a 1-on-1 meeting at the goal line. Shortly thereafter, Phillips left with a concussion.
"If anything, the stiff-arm Juice gave me," Phillips said, "gave me more incentive to get better in the off-season and work on my tackling."
Sure enough, Phillips developed into one of the league's most improved players and fearsome hitters in 2008. Among other feats, he knocked out Iowa running back Shonn Greene (causing a crucial fumble) and ended Purdue quarterback Joey Elliott's season with a separation shoulder.
But when Northwestern wrapped up last year's regular season with a convincing win over Illinois, Phillips tore the labrum in his left shoulder while trying to tackle the 230-pound Williams.
Not that Phillips knew the extent of his injury at the time. He declined to submit his body for an MRI until after he produced 8 tackles and 1 interception in the Alamo Bowl. That enabled to finish as the Big Ten's No. 5 tackler last year with 109 stops.
Phillips missed spring practice after undergoing surgery but was declared full speed "about a month ago."
On a defense rich in secondary talent (the Wildcats return all four starters and feature two up-and-comers in Brian Peters and David Arnold), Phillips' versatility makes him a valuable wild card.
He's powerful enough to blow up ballcarriers but quick enough to line up at the nickel and cover slot receivers. That gives defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz lots of options.
"I know the defense pretty well, so I could play pretty much any position if I needed to," Phillips said. "So we'll see what 'Coach Hank' has in his back pocket to pull out. He's the genius. I just do what he says."
More fun with JoePa: Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who pretended not to know about "Twitter" on Monday even though he has every assistant coach posting there, took a different technological tangent on Tuesday.
While he accepted it when the athletic department set him up with an e-mail address, you're not going to get him to join the cell-phone generation.
"I don't want to have a cell phone so people can get me anyplace," Paterno said. "Nothing bothers me more than when you're sitting around in meetings or something like that and a cell phone goes off."
Senior linebacker Sean Lee and his teammates know how much that bothers Paterno - and they team up to escape his wrath.
"If anybody has a cell phone in a meeting, usually you put it on 'silence,' " Lee said. "But every once in awhile, somebody forgets and so whenever we hear (a ring), everybody starts coughing to try to mask it so he doesn't hear it.
"It usually works for the most part. Then he's like, 'What are you guys doing? Why's everybody coughing?' "