University of Houston Athletics
Head Coach Tony Levine Press Conference Qutoes
11/4/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
HOUSTON HEAD COACH TONY LEVINE
"As we have done in the past after a win, we've got our players of the game. Offensively we had three players of the game: senior receiver Wayne Beadle blocked extremely well, had 5 receptions, 38 yards - a couple of those catches were for huge 3rd down conversions. We're very proud of the way he's been performing after stepping in for Daniel Spencer at the 'H' position. Our center, Bryce Redman, had one of his better games since he's been in our program. He graded out 95 percent and had a technique grade of 90 percent. Obviously he was a big part of us being able to rush for 217 yards. Running back Kenneth Farrow had his third 100-yard rushing game of the season. 22 carries, 112 yards, a rushing touchdown, and a receiving touchdown. He really ran the ball well.
On defense, our player of the game was Efrem Oliphant. He had eight tackles, a tackle for loss, a quarterback hit, a quarterback sack and a forced fumble. Efrem seems like he's putting up those kind of numbers and that kind of production week in and week out. We're proud of the way he played last week.
On special teams, Luke Stice was our special teams player of the week. We had five kickoffs and he had four tackles. That all came on kickoff coverage. He prepared extremely well and has been a leader for us in the kicking game. He had one of the better games of his career.
Our scout players of the week: scout offense was offensive lineman Hank Granda, scout defense was Zorrell Ezell and scout special teams player of the week was Kaliq Kokuma.
As we look back on this game, it was probably one of the more complete team wins I've been around in a long time. What I mean by that is, as we talked about last week, and I even said this publicly, what we had to do to go down to Tampa and come away with a win, I felt like we did. It was really three things: not turning the ball over, have better field position in the kicking game and eliminate penalties.
The first is obvious, we did not turn the ball over on offense.
The second was special teams. We've been improving on special teams the last few games. Our average field position after special teams plays was our own 31-yard line and USF's average starting position was their own 23-yard line. That's an eight yard difference, and it's extremely significant when you talk about running our offense out on the field, having to go on average 69 yards to score a touchdown, and running our defense on the field to make USF go almost 80 yards against our defense. So we got that accomplished in a significant way.
The third thing was penalties. We had one penalty in the game for 5 yards, and it was on our opening drive. Our young men did a great job in those three areas. When you break it down we're talking about a complete win.
Defensively, our goals are to have less than 10 missed tackles and less than 10 missed assignments. We had six missed tackles against a very athletic USF offense, and we had two missed assignments, which is a low for the season. To hold that offense to 222 total yards and only three points, our defense played extremely well.
Offensively, we did a great job at halftime making adjustments. Other than when we got the ball back with two minutes left in the game and put our backups in to run out the clock, we had three possessions in the second half. On all three possessions, we scored touchdowns. As far as we look at it, we were eight-of-eight on third down conversions in the second half on paper. The statistics show seven-of-eight. The reason we look at it a little bit differently is because twice in this game I communicated to Coach Bush on a first down in the Red Zone that this would be what we call "four down territory." We had four downs to get the first down. We're not going to kick a field goal in two specific areas in that game, so on our third and medium calls we ran the football to set us up for a fourth-and-short and converted both fourth downs. I think as a whole, we were nine-of-16 on third downs. When you look at the two fourth down conversions, it could've been 11-of-16, and we actually converted a third and long when we had an inadvertent whistle and had a do-over and we didn't get it.
Again, I was proud of the way we made adjustments at halftime, and proud of the way we continued to make halftime adjustments. David Gibbs pointed out to me that in the second half, we are outscoring our opponents 118-46. That speaks volumes to the job we're doing as a staff with our halftime adjustments and the shape our student athletes are in physically.
We turn our sights to a young, talented Tulane team. You put the video on and they play extremely hard and they're extremely well-coached. They've got tremendously skilled players, especially at the running back position, and a young quarterback in Tanner Lee, who has a tremendous upside. He's only a redshirt freshman, but can make every throw: one of the stronger arms I've seen on video this season.
Defensively, they've created 10 turnovers in the last three games. They're very aggressive and they play more man-coverage than anyone we'll face all season.
Like I've said in weeks past, the game will be about us, our execution and taking care of the football.
We're glad to be back in TDECU Stadium. It's fun. It will be homecoming with an afternoon kickoff. The weather should be beautiful. We're looking forward to Saturday.
On the three touchdowns in the second half
"Well our execution on offense was outstanding this last game. We were able to run the ball well. We made a couple adjustments at halftime by adding a motion to a run that we didn't call much of in the first half. USF changed some things up defensively that were different from what they had shown coming into the game. They made some adjustments going into the game, so we had to adjust at half time. Going into the game, their offense, huddling and trying to run the football, tried to keep our defense on the field a little bit longer and keep our offense off, but getting down and coming away with seven (points) is huge. There were 22 and 23 mph winds which affected some throws and certainly affected some kicks. Their kicker Marvin Kloss rarely misses, and he attempted a 42-yarder that came up short. You never see that from him.
(The wind) was a factor in terms of what we were calling offensively and to be able to get down in the Red Zone and not have it be a secret that we were going to run it in, then be successful doing it really gave our guys a lot of confidence. Our offensive line for seven consecutive games, we've got the same five guys starting in the same starting positions, and they're playing better each and every week.
On Kenneth Farrow...
"The first thing I'll say is that a year ago, he was elected captain as a sophomore. He's got a chance, now that he's only a junior, to leave here a year from now as a three time captain, which speaks volumes about the young man and what his teammates think of him.
I said going into this season that a lot of our success would be determined by keeping Kenneth Farrow and Ryan Jackson healthy, and being able to establish the run. We're getting more and more confident there. Our offensive line is doing a great job.
What you're seeing right now from Kenneth Farrow is that he's running as hard as he's ever run. He's a tough young man to begin with. I've talked before about how he not only plays running back for us, but plays on special teams as well. Both he and Ryan Jackson are as confident in themselves, the offensive linemen, and themselves making plays as they've been in our program. They're making tackles and getting the ball up-field. I know you asked me about Kenneth, but Ryan Jackson on his last touchdown, made a couple guys miss and broke a tackle, and even in weeks past he may not have broken that tackle a couple weeks ago.
They're playing at a very high level and we're very proud of the way that they're preparing each week for the games. The success you're seeing them have in the games is a direct reflection of how they're preparing during the week.
(Their running styles) are different. Ryan Jackson is one of the most explosive young men we have in our program and in the league. If he gets daylight, I don't think anyone's going to catch him. Not that I think someone's going to catch Kenneth Farrow, but Farrow's 215 pounds and Ryan's around 190. They both have great ball skills and for us they're interchangeable. We rotate them by series at times. There will be a certain plays we want Ryan in for, or Kenneth in for. They complement each other. It keeps defenses off-balance based on which one of them is in, and also when they're both in the game.
On Kenneth Farrow being the lead blocker on the Ryan Jackson touchdown
"That's exactly right. So, we had third down and goal on the one-yard line. We tried to run in up the middle twice and USF had a goal-line package in there with five defensive lineman and four linebackers. So, we made the decision on third down to go outside with it and put in our three back set and Farrow had a big time block on the edge to let Ryan really, walk in."
On how much it helps for the defense to be able to control the ball with the running game like they did in the past few weeks
"It is huge for our defense. We had a big win against Temple and were able to have our defense to only play seventeen minutes in the game because our offense had the ball for 43 minutes. In this last game, I want to say we controlled the clock for about thirty-three minutes. We've been banged up defensively with the loss of Derrick Matthews and Lee Hightower. Trevon Stewart has been nicked up, and played a little bit of a role against USF. So, to be able to do something fresh is a combination of two things: one, controlling the clock better than we ever have offensively, and two, our defense gets a lot of three-and-outs also. It does help getting years passed with the type of offense we run. We've had the ball and gone three-and-out with three incomplete passes taking nineteen seconds off the clock. By the time the defense sits down from the previous series, we're yelling for the punt team in the box and they're back up and ready to go back out there. It has helped and our plan going in this past week in terms of all three phases was a big part of it."
Home game this week against Tulane then going into a bye, talk about momentum your carrying with defense
"Well carrying momentum back home is how I am looking at it more than anything. We've won a few games in a row now, and we're establishing some things offensively that we hadn't established earlier in the season. Our defense is continuing to play at the same level they have throughout the whole year. It's a great time to have a homecoming game in the afternoon back at TDECU Stadium. Again I appreciate your question, but in terms of bye weeks and the season, we're not looking past Saturday afternoon. The way we performed the past few weeks and the outcomes we've gotten, it's good to be back home and have a game at our stadium."
On being one of the team's atop the standings
"Well its turn-over margin. If you ask me the difference in the last couple of games, well the last three games, which we have won, we've turned the ball over on offense two times. And in the last two games we've not turned the football over. Both those turnovers came against Memphis, which were an interception and a fumble. Defensively we are continuing to take the football away. In this last game we only took it away once, which was at the end of the game, but we had our opportunities. and we're playing extremely well on that side of the football. Regardless of whom you play, and I'm going to say this, and I don't know for sure, but I want to say East Carolina lost this week and I want to say they fumbled the ball five times. If you turn the ball over in the game of football, you have a great chance of losing. You asked what been the difference in the last couple of games is and it's been turnover margin. We're not turning it over on offense, and were continuing to get turnovers defensively."
On if the players talk about keeping the turnover streak alive
"Our guys are aware of the streak just because it's been on social media. After the game I realized in the locker room that some young men in our program statistically played well. I mentioned Adrian McDonald's interception pushing the streak now to thirty-one games. But are they walking to class during the day talking about" hey lets keep the streak alive?" No they're not. Were going to go out this afternoon in full pads and practice for two hours. You're going to see Adrian McDonald flying around trying to punch footballs out, Trevon Stewart trying to strip footballs and that's just how we practice. We had some balls on the ground against USF and we didn't come up with them. Then we got the interception on the last defensive play of the game. It's not our minds, its something we've grown accustomed to. So, we're going to try to go out Saturday afternoon and create turnovers in the game again."
On what are some of the new challenges Tulane presents
"As I mentioned earlier, defensively they are going to get up in your face and play man coverage. We do that some, but Tulane will play man coverage more than any team we have faced all season. You don't see it a whole lot in the college football. I give them a lot of credit. They play great defense, and when you're able to play man coverage like that, its no coincidence that in the last three games you forced ten turnovers. In eight games, six of their eight games are multi turnover games for them. They're an aggressive defense and have a very active defensive line. Offensively, I think they do a great job of play calling. You try to zero in on a coordinator and get a good feel for his personality, and they do a great job keeping defenses off balance when they call their screens down in distance. Tanner Lee gets the ball out of his hands with a quick release and is 6'4", 220 pounds. They throw the ball down the field extremely well so they present a lot of challenges in all three phases."
