University of Houston Athletics
Press Conference: Houston vs. Tulane
11/4/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Hear what Houston Football head coach Tony Levine and student-athletes Kenneth Farrow and Joey Mbu had to say at this week's press conference, in preparation for Saturday's game vs. Tulane at 2:30 p.m.
Press Conference Quotes
Head Coach Tony Levine
Opening Statement
"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."
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Junior running back Kenneth Farrow
Senior defensive line Joey Mbu
