Oh hey, didn’t see you there! That old gag. Welcome back to Minocqua’s favorite guessing game, The Chrystal Ball! Oh, nobody said anything about a game to you? Well that’s more or less the ethos of this bit anyway, so you’ll fit right in. If you’re not familiar with Paul Chryst, first of all how dare you. Second, all you really need to know is that he says a decent number of words and you don’t learn much of anything. Despite the fact that he’s freely allowed to speak, he is widely-considered a world class mime.

Just how good is Paul Chryst at minimizing valuable insight? Well, let’s try to find out! The game is simple. You will be presented with several quotes responding to a prompt: one is actually from Paul Chryst, the others are fake quotes created by us. Think you can spot the real Chryst quote? Well, have at it and marvel at the indirectness of it all!

The prompts below come from Chryst’s press conference following Wisconsin’s 61-0 win over Central Michigan.

On starting games strong and keeping a foot on the gas throughout the game:

#1: “Um, you know I, I appreciate the way the guys play, and you want them to play each snap. And, you know what there’s uh, these are limited moments, and, and you want them to maximize ‘em. And, and I think that the group for the most part has done a good job with that. And all the other stuff, um, you know every week there’s a challenge right? Every week there’s an opportunity, and you just want guys to be in that moment, to, to maximize it and I think for the most part, they’re doing that.”

#2: “Certainly when, you know you get out in front, get, get in the flow of it, you want to stay in a rhythm. And lately I think we’ve done a good job, when we’ve had a chance to really, um, understand the situation and finish the play, I think we’ve seen some of that. Some of it, you know, you take back and learn from it. But, uh, the things we work on and try to get better at every day, you like what, what we’ve seen out there so far.”

#3: “That’s the thing I think, you know, I think we’ve really been able to build off the last play, build a good drive and, and turn it into another. And it’s exciting. It’s exciting, uh, for the guys to get out and get in good positions, certainly these first couple games here and put together some good film to work on and, and keep getting better. Now we’ll, um, we’ll have the bye week, but really it’s the same thing. Same goal.”

On whether the uptick in passing attempts was meant to give Michigan more to think about:

#1: “Yeah I mean it was, I don’t think you necessarily, you know, want to worry too much about what’s, um, up ahead when you’re right in there. I think they gave us some good looks, good opportunities to uh, give, give the guys some reps. Chase, you know, he got some time last week but really, kinda didn’t have much to throw. So it was good to see, maybe get in some reps to build on for those guys. And with the league coming up, certainly the competition ramps up, um, and they’ll need to be ready for it.”

#2: “Passing, I thought we had some really good chances to sorta, open the field a bit and really, a lot of it is taking what you’re given. Granted now, with the way, um, how things unfold you try to give ‘em chances to go, go make plays…But there’s not, I wouldn’t say a motive to all that. With, we’ve got a small window to see, see some of our, how you want some of it to go before, um, the road ahead.”

#3: “You know how that is when they look at that, I think we thought we needed to keep working at it. And um, and also, you know there, there is a point where, you know, thought we really tried to get both Graham and Chase some throws…And they did a pretty good job, especially, with some of those groups you know, I thought we had to throw it to, to move it. And um, but a lot of it was just kinda how do we play and keep growing as a team.”

As always if you actually watched it for some reason and know the answer, save it for your book club. And stay tuned for the answers whenever I remember I should be providing those later on!