Press Conference: Houston at Cincinnati
12/2/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Houston Football head coach Tony Levine and selected seniors Rowdy Harper and Joey Mbu met with the local media during Tuesday's press conference.
Press Conference Quotes
Head Coach Tony Levine
Opening Statement
"After a win I like to start off with our players of the week. Offensively it was a young man that played his best game for us. He graded 90 percent on 74 snaps and had nine cut-blocks downfield that helped us on some explosive plays. That is our starting left guard, Ben Dew. On defense our player of the game has done a great job all season. He's really been consistent week in and week out, and he really controlled the line of scrimmage, disrupted some things in the backfield and had two tackles: senior defensive lineman Joey Mbu. On special teams we had two players of the week, kickoff specialist Ty Cummings with seven kickoffs, four of which were touchbacks and his hang time was a little over four seconds, which is tremendous. Also defensive lineman Gavin Stansbury had our first blocked kick of the season on a field goal. It was a great individual effort by Gavin.
Scout players of the week. On offense running back Kaliq Kokuma, on defense linebacker Austin Potter and on special teams safety Clayton Brown.
Looking back at the game, we had an extremely fast start that didn't last long. We kicked off and gave our defense great field position, went three and out and got the ball back. Defensively in the first half we gave up around 140-150 yards and 67 on one third and long pass that they threw to their tight end. Statistically, you can't take a play out, but other than that play, we played well defensively in the first half. We missed some tackles on Matt Davis, their quarterback that we got cleaned up in the second half.
Offensively, based on the wind and the punt by SMU we had great field position. The first play offensively Greg Ward ran for a touchdown and we were up 7-0. We did have four dropped passes in the first half, two balls that were tipped at the line of scrimmage, one for an interception. We didn't get into a rhythm early, but were able to come back in the second half, clean some things up, and we executed much better. It was good, for the second consecutive game, for the offense to come out on our opening drive of both halves to go down and score.
We've got another great challenge this week. This is a little bit of a longer week than what we went through last week. We're going on the road and playing another team that's been through the transition in this league, and it certainly shows in the job that Coach (Tommy) Tuberville, his staff and previous staffs have done recruiting. They're athletic and talented across the board.
Offensively, they run the ball effectively. They've been banged up and lost some contributors at the running back position early in the season, but are still running the ball well. Throwing the ball, Gunner Kiel is having his first year in their program, in terms of being eligible, he had to sit out last year because of the transfer, he's doing a tremendous job with 28 touchdown passes to 11 interceptions, almost 3,000 passing yards and has a number of candidates to choose from when it comes to who he's going to throw the football to. I saw that they've got five receivers that have about 380 or more yards receiving this season. They do a good job at spreading the football around. Shaq Washington and Mekale McKay are two veterans among others that we really need to know where they line up.
Defensively, Jeff Luke is another transfer who's playing extremely well for them. He's got six sacks at the linebacker position. He's 6'1" and 260 pounds and has six forced fumbles and is all over the field. Nick Temple is another linebacker that is extremely active and was the conference defensive player of the week for his performance last game.
I've said this before: regardless of our opponent, we've got to execute. While our team enjoys playing at home in TDECU Stadium, it's been shown this year that we enjoy going on the road and competing as well. This will be another opportunity, with the renovations they are doing to their on-campus stadium, to play in another NFL stadium with our nationally televised game Saturday morning. Everyone in our program will be looking forward to this challenge."
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Senior offensive lineman Rowdy Harper
Senior defensive tackle Joey Mbu
