University of Houston Athletics
Press Conference: Houston vs. Temple
10/14/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Hear from Houston Football head coach Tony Levine and selected student-athletes Efrem Oliphant and Demarcus Ayers at Tuesday's weekly press conference.HEAD COACH Tony Levine
Press Conference Quotes
Opening Statement
"As we do after a win, our players of the game from last week: on offense, quarterback Greg Ward; on defense, linebacker Efrem Oliphant, and on special teams, Earl Foster. Scout players of the week: on offense, freshman receiver Elton Dyer, on defense, senior walk-on Vincent Hall, who is doing a great job for us, he played kickoff cover in the game against Memphis and had a big time tackle in the second half, and on scout special teams, coming off an injury from last season, it's good to have him back, is senior defensive end Jon Witten.
Just to recap a little bit from last week, we are proud of our young men in our program, our staff and coaches. We went on the road against a team that was in first place in our conference; a very good team in Memphis. We started slow, but finished fast. A couple of things we had talked about going into the game that we felt like would be extremely important helped us win the football game.
Turnovers were one thing we talked about. We turned it over three times on offense, which is way too many. Defensively, we forced five turnovers on a Memphis team that, in their first five games had only turned it over five times total. Two of the five we forced within the last 2 minutes 50 seconds of the game. So, we won the turnover battle.
Another thing we talked about was field position. Field position was hit or miss. They did a better job than we did on special teams in that game. Our kickoff return was not where it needed to be. It put us in some tough positions, offensively, but at the end of the game, we were punting from our own 28-yard line, and they have a very dangerous returner. Logan Piper had a 49-yard punt and Matthew Adams got down the field and tackled him at their own 28, which was a critical play at the end of this football game.
The third thing we talked about was penalties. Coming off of a game against UCF, we had been penalized 12 times with eight of those 12 penalties occurring prior to the snap or after the play ended, it was a major point of emphasis for us last week. In the Memphis game, we had three penalties: two holding calls and a block in the back on Lee Hightower's interception return. Pre-snap and post-play penalties against Memphis were zero.
I'm proud of the way our young men hung in there after being down 14 points. They came back, executed well in all three phases, and did enough to win the game.
Looking forward to Temple Friday night. Again, we've got another short week, and another talented, well-coached undefeated team in our conference coming to town. I was asked a question yesterday, in a conference call, to compare this year's Temple team to the one we played last year. I don't think it's a fair comparison for us, having played Temple in game two last season.
PJ Walker, their quarterback, is a young man that a lot of coaches in our league have been talking about for a long time now. He ended up becoming the starter at Temple last year as a true freshman about halfway through the season. He's very dynamic, a dual-threat, can throw it, can run it, and is certainly doing a great job for them.
Defensively, Phil Snow is their coordinator. He's been doing it a long time. Does a great job. The young men now really understand and are very comfortable in the scheme they're running. Tyler Matakevich is as good of a defensive player as we will face all season. I want to say he led the NCAA in solo tackles last year as a sophomore. It's one of those things where you put the film on and if you don't know where the ball is, just find number 8 for Temple and he will bring it to you. He's around it on every snap.
It will be a great challenge for us. I sound like a broken record in that we feel like we've got to do, on our end, the things we feel like we need to do to be successful and to win a football game. We will be out there tonight in full pads for two hours, tomorrow ends up being a Thursday for us, and we are three days away from kickoff.
On the injury front, it's been, I use the word devastating, for our program to see young men like Daniel Spencer and Derrick Matthews have their careers end the way they did this past week. Lee Hightower is a junior, he will have surgery tomorrow and be out for the rest of the year. As much as anything this past week, we feel awful for the young men. What they mean to us and what they have done here in our program off the field, and certainly on the field, they will be very much missed."
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Demarcus Ayers - sophomore receiver/kick returner
Efrem Oliphant - senior linebacker
