University of Houston Athletics
Cougar Football Notes
10/31/2001 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 31, 2001
For the second straight weekend, the University of Houston Cougars will be on the road as they travel to Tampa, Florida, to take on South Florida on Saturday at Raymond James Stadium. As the Cougars look for their first victory of the season, practice on Wednesday (Oct. 31) afternoon once again centered on the "little things."
"We're doing everything we can right now to get our first victory," began second-year head coach Dana Dimel. "Our guys are just working real hard."
"Our defense has had great practices all week, so we're hoping that we can come out and have a great defensive effort in this football game against a spread offense (four wide receivers, no tide end sets)."
Another focus of Dimel and his coaching staff this week has been to not only give the best effort and win football games, but to look ahead to the future of the Cougar program.
"We've made some switches in personnel on the team to get some guys into positions which will help them, not only for the remainder of this year, but for next year," said Dimel. "We've spent a lot of time during the week bringing all of our young guys up that are going to form our two-offensive line and have actually been scrimmaging them quite a bit.
"We're using these last four weeks not only as a good focus to win football games but to help get the young guys better in practice."
Examples of moves made this week Dimel noted include moving freshman Kendrick Goss over to defensive line and freshman Donald Mayo over to offensive line.
"The mood of the team has been great," added Dimel. "We've (coaches and staff) tried to do different things to keep the team focused and their overall attitude up."
When switching gears to preparing the Cougars for South Florida, who heads into Saturday's contest on a three-game winning streak, Dimel said the Bulls' strength is their offense and that the Cougars' approach will be to cover the field and halt their spread offense.
"They're real good offensively and we've got to work on defending the spread sets," said Dimel.
Leading the Bulls' offense is quarterback Marquel Blackwell, who has completed 57 percent (200-353) of his passes this season. For the Cougars, sophomore quarterback Nick Eddy, who completed 26 of 56 passes for 254 yards and threw a career-high four interceptions last weekend at Southern Miss, will make the start again this weekend against the 5-3 Bulls.
Perhaps the biggest spotlight of this weekend's game will be on Houston senior wide receiver Orlando Iglesias, who enters the game just two catches shy of becoming only the third receiver in school history with over 200 career receptions. In addition, Iglesias needs just eight more yards receiving to surpass Manny Hazard (1989-90) for second place all-time.
Following the Cougars' game against the Bulls, they travel to Louisville, Ky., to take on C-USA opponent Louisville on Nov. 10. Houston returns home for their final home contest of the 2001 season against UAB on Nov. 17. This weekend's contest at South Florida begins at 6:00pm.
