• Position: Wide receiver
• Class: Sophomore
• Height, weight: 6-0, 215
• Hometown: Leander, Texas
• Notable: Gilleylen's best Husker highlight came two springs ago, when he caught a 77-yard touchdown pass in the 2008 Red-White game. He'd already proven he was fast, though. At Leander High School, he ran the 100-meter dash in 10.22 seconds.
Q: Is this what you expected when you thought of college, all of this competition at wide receiver?
A: “It's something that I heard about and I kind of expected, but I really didn't know what it was going to be like until I was actually in the environment. You can't even take a rep off. You don't exactly see how the coaches grade, but you know what you're doing wrong and what you're doing right, it counts.”
Q: Do you feel like you're in a good position at this point in camp?
A: “I'm not where I want to be. I want to be more consistent. That's the thing I'm trying to work on. I have really good days, really good plays and then sometimes, I'll have mental lapses or I'll get some concepts confused. But I just really want to play assignment-correct. That's one thing that our coach wants us to do. Try to play perfect and try to play fast.”
Q: Could you still run a 10.2-second 100-meter?
A: “If the track coach wanted me to, I could probably go down there and run at least a 10.3. I don't know with my weight, but I feel like I could run a 10.3 still.”
Q: There are some speedy receivers who've joined this team. Have you raced any of them?
A: “No. We have Antonio Bell, Marcus Mendoza, Niles (Paul) — they're all really fast guys. We don't ever race. It's usually the DBs that want to race. It's people like Larry (Asante) or Alfonzo (Dennard). The receivers, we'll knock each other (by saying), ‘Oh, you're not faster than me,' when we're watching film and stuff.”
Q: But if you were to race those receivers, you'd probably win, right?
A: “I'm thinking that I could give everybody a run for their money.”
Q: Well, at least there's a lot of speed. What does that element add to the receiving corps?
A: “It makes us a lot more explosive, just to try to get the ball downfield. I think Coach (Shawn) Watson is trying to get us to play explosive because he knows that we have speed at the wide receiver position.”
Q: Does anybody pronounce your last name right?
A: I've got GIL-LEE-GIN. Or GIL-E-EN. There's an L. It's pretty bad. They don't mess up Curenski too much because it's just how it's spelled. But it's GIL-LEE-LEN. I don't think I've heard anybody really say it correctly. Oh well.”
— Jon Nyatawa
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