Press Conference: Houston at SMU
11/25/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Houston Football Head Coach Tony Levine and selected student-athletes Eric Eiland and Kenneth Farrow met with the media during Tuesday's weekly press conference in preparation for SMU this Friday.
Press Conference Quotes
Head Coach Tony Levine
Opening Statement
"Before we talk about our players of the game, I'm going to mention two individuals that were honored in the last week or so that I want to recognize:
Our senior defensive lineman and captain, Joey Mbu, has been invited to both the East-West Shrine Game and the Senior Bowl; two of the most high-profile college all-star games. We're proud of Joey and that recognition. Kenneth Farrow was honored as the conference offensive player of the week for tying an all-time conference record of four rushing touchdowns in one game.
Our players of the game:
On offense we have two. Kenneth Farrow for his 21 carries, 116 yards and four rushing touchdowns, and true freshman receiver Steven Dunbar, in his first career start for us, with seven receptions resulting in first downs, and 150 yards. Defensively, defensive lineman Gavin Stansbury, who's doing a great job for us this season. He had seven tackles and two touchdown-saving tackles. He played with great effort all day.
Scout offensive player of the week was freshman offensive lineman Emerald Faletuipapai. On defense it was freshman linebacker Khari Dotson, and on special teams it was freshman receiver Elton Dyer.
When you look back at the game, we did some good things.
Starting off with offense: for the third time in our last four games, we did not turn the ball over. We had zero penalties offensively as well, which was outstanding. We won the toss and elected to take the football. We went down the field and scored a touchdown on our first possession, got the ball back and scored a touchdown again on our second possession. We scored a touchdown on our opening drive in the second half, and there were three occasions in the second half that Tulsa tied the game. On all three occasions, our offense got the ball back and answered those three game-tying touchdowns. So we did some good things offensively.
Defensively it was about turnovers. We were credited with three interceptions and three turnovers as a whole which all came in the fourth quarter. They were critical. Howard Wilson and Trevon Stewart had their third interceptions of the season, and Adrian McDonald with his fifth. All three interceptions were big plays for us. Individually, Efrem Oliphant had 16 tackles. Howard Wilson, who was an outside linebacker in high school but now plays corner, played nickel for us this week; a position he had not played, Howard stepped up. He has three interceptions this season, and had 15 tackles in this game as well. Others to recognize are Gavin Stansbury and some other young men on defense.
This is another unique week, in terms of our schedule. As I stand here today at 11:30 this morning, three days from now we will have already kicked off and be well into the first quarter. This week is going to fly by. We've got practice this afternoon for just about two hours, we come back tomorrow morning and have what is usually our typical Thursday practice in helmets, and Wednesday we get on a bus and head to Dallas. So, it's a quick week and we're going to cram our preparation into a couple days and look forward to the challenge of playing SMU at their place for their final home game and senior day on Friday morning."
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Junior defensive end Eric Eiland
Junior running back Kenneth Farrow
