University of Houston Athletics
Press Conference: Game 12 at Memphis
11/21/2016 12:00:00 AM | Football
HOUSTON FOOTBALL WEEKLY PRESS CONFERENCE QUOTES (PDF)
#18/21 HOUSTON (9-2, 5-2 AAC) at MEMPHIS (7-4, 4-3 AAC)
Liberty Bowl • Memphis, Tenn. • Friday, Nov. 25 | 11 am CT
HEAD COACH Tom Herman
Opening Statement
"It feels good to come off a win. I have stated that was about as a complete of a team win as we have had around here in a while. We played tremendous defensive football. Capitalized on opportunities on offense and protected the football. It felt like our special teams really made a positive impact on the outcome of the game. I'm proud of our guys. I'm proud of our seniors to be able to say that in their junior and senior year, they are 6-0 against top 25 teams, 3-0 against top 10 teams and 2-0 against top 3 teams. By the way, they are the most winning class in the history of this great university, lot to be proud of there.
That being said, we have one more to play. We have put the Louisville game to bed, as we should. We have moved on to prepare for Memphis. Coach (Mike) Norvell has that team playing really good football right now, and even in the couple of losses they had, they have been right in the game with only one game really getting away from them the entire season. For everybody that thought when their quarterback went to the NFL and they lost Justin Fuente, that this team or program would take a step back. That is absolutely not the case. It's a really good football team that is balanced and is excited as we were to play Louisville on Saturday night. This is their senior day as well. They've got a lot to play for. It will be a tremendous challenge for us going on the road. We haven't played as well as we liked on the road at times. We have got to take the things that we learned the last couple of weeks in our wins and make sure they translate over to road games as well.
On how to prepare the team after a big win,
"Around here, and in this program, it's really difficult to get away without any let down or complacency. It is not allowable in our culture. We practiced Saturday morning, and I was really, really hard on our guys. I was really demanding. There was a lot of yelling and screaming. These are 18-22 year-old kids, where every day is a battle to fight human nature. Our coaches and program do as good of a job of that as anywhere in the country; of truly battling and fighting human nature on a daily basis to make sure we can accomplish the things we want to accomplish."
On dealing with distractions and being a part of a distraction
"Distractions are only something you see when you take your eyes off of your goals. We don't do that around here. We don't worry about things we can't control. Human nature is to do those things, but we train our guys how to avoid it. There's nothing in their lives that's more important than accomplishing your goals. If you're not preparing to beat Memphis or doing something that has to with academics, whether it be going to class, doing homework, or taking a test, then what are you doing? How are you helping this program? Those should be the only two things in your life right now. Our guys do as great of a job of doing that as anyone else in the country. I have very honest conversations with our team, and there are no distractions. Distractions are only things if you let them be and right now we don't have any."
On having double-digit winning seasons
"The number isn't that big of a deal. Is ten better than nine? Yes. But does that make nine a failure? No. So it's not that significant other than it being the next game on the schedule. I keep going back to it being the best two-year run in the history of this program and that we have a chance to add to that number."
On the schedule this week
"Thanksgiving doesn't exist in college football. We will practice today as if it were Tuesday. We'll practice tomorrow as if it were a Wednesday, and since there are no classes on Wednesday, we will practice in the morning like it's a Thursday and have the kids out of here by 11:45 a.m., or noon. If they live within 100 miles then they can go home. If they don't, then they have to go home with a teammate. If they don't live within 100 miles and can't find a teammate to go home with, then they're coming to my house or another coach's house on Wednesday. When we get up on Thursday, it will be a normal Friday for us. We'll have our walk through and meetings at 10 a.m., then get on the road to play Memphis by 2 p.m.
On the latest update on Ed Oliver
"He is improving. He's expected to play. Very slight sprain of the MCL. He put a brace on it Saturday morning and ran around on it. He isn't 100 percent, but he's at 90 percent, which is still pretty good. "
On what this game means
"This game is as important as our game against Cincinnati, our first league game. It doesn't carry any less importance. Winning is very hard, but it's what we're supposed to do around here. Regardless of what's at stake we have a job to do, and that's to win a football game for the University of Houston."
On the impact of the multiple Thursday games this season
"I remember my first year in the conference George O'Leary saying 'I'll play all my games on Thursday nights.' The exposure is great. I love it, and I love winning on Thursday nights. It's cool because you know the whole country is watching, but trying to go from a Saturday game to a Thursday game is awful. It's awful for preparing, especially when you have to go on the road like we did for Cincinnati. I don't know any other way to fix it. I get why we do it as a conference, and as members of this conference we are starved for that attention. You saw the tangible toll it took on our team in the month of October for sure, but I don't know how you fix that in the American Athletic Conference."
On the similarities and differences of Memphis from last year
"They're spread, and their quarterback is good. Is he Paxton Lynch good? I don't know. Paxton could run the football, and they don't ask (Riley Ferguson) to as much. He is very talented. He was the No. 1 junior college quarterback coming out of junior college: you can see why he's good. Their defense is different structurally, but they still have talented guys up front and in the secondary. The one thing that makes preparation easier for our offense is that their defense is almost identical to ours. The things that our guys practiced against every day in spring ball and in training camp are the things they're going to see Friday."
On preventing another road loss
"I don't know if there's extra motivation. We're always going to be motivated pretty equally. What do we do? I don't know, that's something I've thought about and will continue to think about. Up until this year, we've been pretty good on the road and neutral site games. I don't know if it has anything to do with how we travel. The biggest thing is, a lot of places in the conference aren't like TDECU Stadium. You have to BYOJ, bring your own juice.
Memphis plays in a big stadium where there'll probably be some empty seats in it, and that's okay. We've got to bring our own juice and energy. We've got to mature as a team to do that. We'll find out. That's something we've already addressed with the team, and we'll find out during pregame warm-up how well they respond to that challenge."
On how Todd Orlando preps the defense for big games
"He's really good. He's the best in the country, and I say that without exaggeration or hyperbole. We have the best defensive coordinator in the country, along with the best defensive coaching staff and some of the best defensive players. This was not a deal where he had extra time: he had limited time, unlike a bowl game or the first game of the year.
It sounds simple, but people haven't done it. I credit Todd for staying with the game plan of pressuring for every snap. You get burned once or twice, you want to slow down and play base defense. This was the plan, and it was a bit high risk, but the plan is the plan, and we're going to stick with it. It's a great plan against a guy like (Lamar Jackson). You sit back and cover everybody, and he takes off and runs for 20 yards. Let's get after him, see if we can get pressure, get some negative yardage plays, get them in third and long and make life difficult for him. It was a great plan executed well by our players."
On mandatory community service hours for players
"There's not a requirement. Based on the numbers of all the sports teams, we have the highest numbers of community service hours. That's something that is very important to our kids and myself as a program to give back to this great city. But no, there's not a requirement."
On freshman Aymiel Fleming as a person and player
"He's a great kid. He's fun to be around. He needs to wash his dreadlocks more often because they start to stink after a while. He'll laugh when he hears that, I give him a hard time about it all the time. Very gregarious and talkative. Smart kid that always has a smile on his face. He has played in some big-time situations for us as a true freshman.
This is a kid that we didn't offer until his third camp. He came to the first camp and said 'How did I do? Did I get an offer?' Not good. Second camp, 'How did I do?' Did okay, but we're going to keep recruiting these guys. Third camp, 'How did I do?' You know, just the fact that he paid the money to come to three camps tells us a lot about his character and desire to play at the University of Houston. We offered him a scholarship partly because of that. We knew how important it was for him to play here. I can't say enough good things about him. He's been fun to coach."
On if he exceeded expectations this far into his coaching tenure
"Maybe after the Memphis game I'll have the opportunity to sit back and be appreciative. It's funny, I don't know that we had expectations. That was one thing I said from the beginning. Our goal was to compete for and win the American Conference championship on a regular basis; we've done that. When you come in it's so day-to-day. It's mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting. You don't have time to think about what the expectations are or should be. That's for you guys to ponder and talk about.
For us, it's a daily, minute-by-minute grind to instill a culture and cultivate that culture to make sure it continues to grow. You don't have time for expectations. Internally, they have never changed. Our expectations are to go 1-0 and to compete for the American Conference championship every year. That's it. That's all we talk about."
On Thanksgiving in college football
"It's really not a holiday when you're involved in college football. Some would say it's a shame, I don't know. The people that suffer the most are our families. These guys only play college football for four or five years. This is a profession for 30 or 40 years. It's difficult on coaches' families. We'll practice Wednesday morning, celebrate Thanksgiving Wednesday night and try to make the most of it."
On the significance of ground breaking on the indoor facilities
"You've known me for two years and know I'm not the most patient of people. I am excited and wish we were in it today or tomorrow. I know that's not a reality, but I'm excited at the prospect of being able to have that and train in a first-class facility; and never having to worry about weather when it comes to our preparation, and that's a cool feeling."
Houston Football student-athletes Nick Thurman, Steven Taylor and Tyler McCloskey also met with the media on Monday.
DEFENSIVE TACKLE Nick Thurman
On takeaways from Louisville game
"I'm actually proud of our team. I'm proud of our offense, I'm proud of defense and how we played. We played hard for our seniors and our brothers. For their last home game, there's no other way to go out."
On the key to the defense keeping Lamar Jackson contained
"Just going hard. Mostly every play we were doing something. We were trying to give him different looks the whole game. It worked. He didn't have time to diagnose it."
On Lamar Jackson getting frustrated
"He was a little. The offensive line was flustered. Shout out to all the fans. It was loud. Credit to them, because they really helped us win that game."
On focusing on the next game even though there's nothing on the line
"That's not our team. It's a business mentality. We have Memphis on Friday. It's time to work on them."
On where he's spending Thanksgiving
"Honestly I haven't thought about it much. I'm thinking about maybe going to a teammate's house. My coach told me that his house is open so we'll see. It was kind of sad when he told me I couldn't go home, but I get it. We have Memphis on Friday, so that's what we have to focus on."
On getting up for games when the atmosphere lacking
"That's a problem we have to get better at. We have to be a more mature team. It starts at practice, because there's nobody at practice. It's just us. We have to come out fast at practice and go extra hard. For the seniors, it's their last game. We want to do it for them and for the people in that locker room."
On having everybody back on defense and being at full strength
"It's always nice to have Tyus (Bowser) and everybody on the back end back. To see everybody click again and have an outcome like that there is nothing better."
SENIOR LINEBACKER Steven Taylor
On key to keeping Lamar Jackson contained
"We really showed no fear. We came at him strong and executed the game plan."
On Lamar Jackson getting frustrated throughout the game and feeding off of his frustration
"We definitely fed off it. Believe it or not, the offensive line was more frustrated than him. They were an elite squad, we just followed our game plan which was stop Lamar Jackson from running, takeaway the post game, and get three turnovers and we accomplished all three. We came out victorious."
On views about what the staff does to get team ready
"Even in the offseason we practice being physical. We would always do hardcore drills like matt drills and tug of war. Coach [Todd] Orlando and Coach [Tom] Herman really developed us in our culture and really created a physical mindset team. We're prepared for anything. We prepare for chaos. It was good to go out there and show the world our training."
On emotions for last conference game
"I can't believe it. These years go by so quick. I was a redshirt freshman. I've been here five years and its unbelievable how time flies. I'm excited. I can't wait to go out there and ball out with my boys. We're going to come hard and prepare hard as well."
On having entire defense back
"It feels incredible. I'm happy to have all our guys back. We're fresh and we have the right mindset right now. I think we got our swagger back. We're getting ready for Memphis and it should be a fun one."
On if he could have ever anticipated the past two years when Tom Herman arrived
"We wondered. We just took it one week at a time like Coach Herman preached to us. He always told us our plan was infallible. It just goes to show Coach Herman is an elite coach and knows what he's doing. His plan is truly infallible, only thing that can mess it up is humans."
On atmosphere during Louisville game
"It was incredible. I was actually the last person to make it back to the locker room. I was taking so many pictures with our fans. It was fun. It was a great win for the team overall and the program. We have to finish strong against Memphis. We are over that win to be honest."
On plans for Thanksgiving
"I haven't thought that far into it yet. I'm just thinking about Memphis right now and when that time comes I'll find out."
SENIOR TIED END Tyler McCloskey
On the final home game of the season
"It was crazy. The new stadium record was the best way I could have imagined to go out."
On the resume that the team has built
"We always knew we were good. We've had the talent here. We've had guys here go to the NFL. You put a coach in place that's going to get the most out of us. Nobody was surprised that we've done this, internally at least. It's nice to look back on it and see what we've done."
On the importance of bringing your own "juice"
"We had a lot of juice Thursday night, but it's hard not to in an environment like that. When we've struggled, it's been on the road in environments that were not like Thursday night. It's been our focus all week to make sure that everyone is excited to play and excited to play for each other."
On focus heading into final regular season game
"Just going to go 1-0. One game season like we always do. It is the last game that could get us to 10 wins. There is a definitely an added incentive there. We are just going to go out, play hard and do what we do."
On Thanksgiving plans
"Every single year I have been in college, my mom has made two or three turkeys, a bunch of stuffing and I bring 10 or 11 guys to the house and we go to town. She loves it because we are usually not there for Thanksgiving. It's something she looks forward to every year. The guys that come every year, they also look forward to it as well."
On who comes over for Thanksgiving
"Brandon [Wilson]'s always been, Byron Simpson always has gone, a lot of linemen always make the trip. She cooks a lot of food. There's not much leftovers."
