be to care so much about something like I do about the Ryder Cup

Kevin Wilson and Mike Neu gleefully walked away with wins last week.What the Indiana and Ball State coaches both found after watching game tape was far from perfect. They saw all those typical first-game problems -- penalties, turnovers, poor decisions, lapses of judgment and overall sloppiness.So when the two in-state schools meet Saturday in Bloomington, both will be in cleanup mode.I guess that means you never coach until after the first game, Wilson joked when asked why so many improvements are made from Week 1 to Week 2. I think the real thing for kids is once you get out there, you do all the game situations, clock managements, all the down-and-distances. You do as much as you can to make it like a game. Until youre out there standing by a fast, two-by-four, those risks are greater.And its easier for a coach to get players attention and reteach the fine points of football.Wilson cant quibble with the results.Indianas oft-maligned defense scored 16 points, Devine Redding produced his fourth straight 100-yard game and the Hoosiers (1-0) have won three of their last four.But Wilson understands if problems, such as Reddings fumble against Florida International, persist, the wins may start slipping away, too.He (Redding) is getting ready to start seeing the bench, Wilson said Monday. Theres a standard of quarterback play. Theres a standard of taking care of the ball. Hes going to clean that up.Meanwhile, in Muncie, the former Ball State quarterback and first-year coach Mike Neu is holding a similar conversation.Yes, the Cardinals (1-0) beat Georgia State 31-21.The biggest concern might be sophomore quarterback Riley Neal threw two interceptions -- with one, on the third play of the game, returned for a touchdown.Neu knows if that happens this week, against a defense that returned two interceptions for scores last week, the Cardinals upset hopes will wither.The goal is just simply to win, Neu said. Adversity is going to present itself, we just didnt know it was going to be the third play of the game with a pick-six. Its not the way you want to start, but our guys stuck together.Here are some other things to watch Saturday:CHANGED DEFENSESIn 2015, the Hoosiers had one of the Big Tens worst defenses. Ball States defense was rated just as bad in the Mid-American Conference. Last week, both took a major step forward. Indiana forced six three-and-outs while the Cardinals forced seven straight punts. Now the defenses must prove their Week 1 success was not an aberration.GILBERT ON GROUNDWhile Neal struggled early, sophomore running back James Gilbert played the best game of his college career. He rushed 29 times for 160 yards and two TDs, the key component in an offense that rushed for 325 yards. If they come close to replicating that performance, Ball State could pull another surprise.THREE WARNING SHOTSNeu may still be getting acclimated to his new job, but he has a pretty good idea how Indianas coaches will motivate their players. Im sure they are going to remind their guys of the last three times they played Ball State. After losing the first four in this series, Ball State has won the last three -- 42-20 in Bloomington in 2008, 27-20 in Indianapolis in 2011, and 41-39 at Indiana in 2012.HOME SWEET HOMEAfter winning their third straight road game, the first time Indiana has done that since 1982, the Hoosiers return to Bloomington where theyve won 13 of their last 14 home openers including four of five during Wilsons tenure. Heck, a few more wins in the coming weeks might even evoke talk of cracking the AP Top 25 .---Online: APs college football page: http://collegefootball.ap.org College Basketball Jerseys Store . -- Claudio Bieler hadnt scored since early September, and not from the run of play since mid-July. Wholesale NCAA Jerseys . The Oilers come in having lost five in a row (0-4-1) and 16 of their last 20 games, dropping a 2-1 decision to the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday. http://www.cheapncaabasketballjerseys.com/ . James, who turned 29 on Monday, injured his groin Friday during the Heats overtime loss at Sacramento. He sat out the following game, a 108-107 win Saturday in Portland, before coming back to help send the Nuggets to their seventh consecutive loss. Cheap Jerseys From China . Cote was eligible to become a free agent Feb. 15. Cote helped running back Jon Cornish run for a league-high 1,813 rushing yards en route to being named the leagues most outstanding player. NCAA Basketball Jerseys Online . Inter president Erick Thohir says in a club statement on Wednesday that Vidic is "one of the worlds best defenders and his qualities, international pedigree, and charisma will be an asset. CHASKA, Minn. --?Phil Mickelson decided to set the record straight about his ill-fated pairing with Tiger Woods for two matches during the 2004 Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Township, Michigan.?He didnt hold back.Mickelson, who is playing in his 11th consecutive Ryder Cup, was asked at a news conference Wednesday how important the captain is to the success of the team.It all starts with the captain, said Mickelson, who soon after went on to criticize the 2004 decision of U.S. captain Hal Sutton to put him and Woods together for two matches on the first day of the Ryder Cup.We were told two days before that we were playing together, Mickelson said at Hazeltine National prior to a practice round for this weeks Ryder Cup. And that gave us no time to work together and prepare.However, 24 hours after making those comments, Mickelson moved to clarify his remarks and apologized to Sutton. Mickelson said he called Sutton on Wednesday night to apologize and told Golf Channel that his comments were in bad taste and came across like it was a personal attack, and I didnt mean it that way.Ive communicated with him. I feel awful. It was never meant to be like that, Mickelson said. I was trying to use an example of how a captain can have a strong effect. Unfortunately, it came across the way it did.I was totally in the wrong. I never should have brought that up. I used an extreme example the way decisions can affect play, and I never should have done that, because it affected Hal.Mickelson and Woods were a surprise team at that Ryder Cup, losing their best-ball match to Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington 2 and 1. Woods and Mickelson combined for five birdies, but they were still defeated.The real problem was the afternoon match, when they were asked to play alternate shot against Darren Clarke -- this years European captain -- and Lee Westwood. The match went to the 18th hole, where the Europeans won 1-up despite making a bogey.In alternate shot, you play with one ball, and that was the issue, Mickelson said.[Woods] found out the year before when we played at the Presidents Cup in 2003 that the golf ball I was playing was not going to work for him, Mickelson said. He plays a very high-spin ball and I play a very low-spin ball, and we had to come up in two days with a solution.So I grabbed a couple dozen of his balls, I went off to the side and tried to learn his golf ball in a four- or five-hour session on kind of an isolated -- one of the other holes out there trying to find out how far the ball goes. And it forced me to stop my preparation for the tournament, to stop chipping and stop putting and stop sharpening my game and stop learning the golf course in an effort to crash-course and learn a whole different golf ball that we were going to be playing.In the history of my career, I have never ball-tested two days prior to a major. Ive never done it. It doesnt allow me to play my best. What allows me to play my best is to learn the course, sharpen my touch on the greens, sharpen my chipping out of the rough and ball striking and so forth.Instead, Im taking four or five hours, and Im out trying to learn another ball to allow us to play our best. Had we known a month in advance, we might have been able to make it work. I think we probably would have made it work. But we didnt know until two days prior.Suttons decision to put Mickelson and Woods together was heavily criticized in the aftermath of what was the worst U.S. Ryder Cup defeat at the time, an 18? to 9? loss. The U.S. trailed 6? to 1? after Day 1 and never recovered. Mickelson went 1-3 at that Ryder Cup, and Woods was 2-3.In the seven Ryder Cups they have both pllayed, that is the only time Woods and Mickelson have been paired together.ddddddddddddI find it amusing that thats an issue at the 2016 Ryder Cup, Sutton said in an interview with reporters from GolfWorld and Golfweek. I think Phil better get his mind on what he needs to have it on this week instead of on something that happened 10 years ago.?Sutton, a 14-time winner on the PGA Tour, said he felt it would be good for the game if Woods and Mickelson played together and had success, given their sometimes frosty relationship to that point.You know, Arnold [Palmer] and Jack [Nicklaus] didnt start out to be the best of friends, Sutton said. There was kind of a dethroning going on there. They ended up being great friends. I felt like the world of golf would be better off if Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson became friends, and I felt like if they played together, had fun and beat somebody, they would end up being friends.They didnt beat anybody. It couldnt be their fault. It had to be Hal Suttons fault. It had to be.Mickelson, who has won five major championships, including his first earlier that year at the Masters, was trying to make the point that a captain plays a large role in success at the Ryder Cup and that lack of input from the players has hurt the Americans over the years.The U.S. is 2-8 in the past 10 Ryder Cups, with Mickelson making every one of those teams.Im not trying to knock anybody here, Mickelson said. I actually loved how decisive Captain Sutton was. I feel like thats a sign of great leadership, to be decisive. Had we had time to prepare, I think we would have made it work and could have had some success.But thats an example of starting with the captain, that put us in a position to fail, and we failed monumentally, absolutely. But to say, well, you just need to play better; that is so misinformed because you will play how you prepare.Mickelson was clearly anxious to go deep on the subject, as he has often been criticized for his poor Ryder Cup record (16-19-6) and what has been perceived as a lack of leadership on his part. Woods is 13-17-3.Ive had to be accountable for that decision 12 years ago, Mickelson said. Even a month ago, I hear theres an analyst on the Golf Channel that accuses me of being a non-team player for having to go out and work on an isolated hole away from the team, away from my preparation.And Ive had to be accountable for that decision of which I was not part of. Thats a very frustrating thing. I dont know if you can imagine how frustrating it would be to care so much about something like I do about the Ryder Cup and be accountable for many of the decisions that have taken place when youre not a part of those decisions, and thats what Im talking about, ownership.This is ... one of the first years [the players have been given a say]. But we start over every two years, [and that] has been the problem. We havent built on anything and had the continuity, and none of our captains have been vice captains except for one over the 20 years, and we havent had that and we are starting that, and its exciting to be a part of it.Sutton noted that Mickelson had switched equipment companies that week without telling him -- one of the reasons cited for his poor play -- and that the aftermath of the loss affected him personally.I pretty much quit golf after that, Sutton said. I took the blame for everybody. Nobody played good that week. Its tough on a captain when people dont play well. Its hard to beat anybody.If I still need to shoulder the blame for Phils poor play, then Ill do that.? ' ' '