University of Houston Athletics
Houston vs. Memphis: Press Conference
10/16/2017 12:00:00 AM | Football
2017 HOUSTON FOOTBALL QUOTES FOR THE MEMPHIS GAME
TDECU Stadium • Houston, Texas • Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017
HEAD COACH Major Applewhite
On how he is preparing the team with a short week...
"On Sunday, we came back and had an extended day in the office, in terms of game preparation. Sunday is more like your Monday, in terms of game planning and then we practiced last night. Obviously we'll practice today and tomorrow, and get back into our normal routine in terms of practice. The only thing you do slightly different is, after a game you're a little bit smarter with your roster and how much hitting you do earlier in the week."
On depth and recruiting...
"You have to manage what you have during the season with your roster, how you practice and what you can do systematically with some of the depth of the positions. It's a numbers game and you've got to be able to build your roster back up to where you have quality depth and experienced depth. The biggest thing is when you jump from a senior to a red shirt freshman, or when jump from a senior to a true freshman. Those are the holes on the roster that you have to fill through recruiting."
On the consistency of the offense's performance...
"You either stay with what you do and get better at it, or you change things. It's a combination of both to develop some kind of consistency. Sometimes you need to do things systematically different to help, and sometimes you need to get better and execute as a player. These are things that you have done, you can do, or you didn't do that we've got to get better at. Other times, in defensive, offensive, and special teams, you've got to look at it from a coach and say `I'm asking you to do something you can't do, so we need to do this' and it's always a combination of those two."
On whether he's felt like he's had to change things systematically...
"That's done day to day, week to week, and game to game. You're constantly evaluating. Whether it's after a Sunday practice saying `I don't like this matchup, this is not good for whoever is blocking who, or whoever is having to cover who. Let's take this out of the plan, this doesn't fit.'"
On his involvement is game and play calling...
"I haven't called plays. During the series, you need to have your plays ready to call, whether it's defense or offense. A lot of my questions are after the series, here's what I saw, here's what I see. These are some thoughts coming back into the next series. During the series, unless I see something completely wrong, I won't chime in because there's a lot of communication, getting personnel's in and out and you can disrupt the play caller. The way I liked it is the way I had it the last two years in terms of `This is what I saw in that drive, what did you see? Okay, let's talk about what we're coming back with. Here's what I saw on the red zone, here's what I saw on 3rd down, these are some thoughts' and come back to that."
On his need to get involved in terms of execution, talent etc...
"I think we need to coach better, be able to play better, and play like we have at times when we've been very consistent and shown that we can be explosive. It doesn't need to be a knee jerk reaction, and it's certainly not acceptable to be as inconsistent as we were whether it's offensively or defensively from the first or second half. As a football team, we played a pretty good first half. We didn't play well enough offensively, but we played a pretty good first half and we've got to develop 60 minutes of consistency. I'm involved with everything. I'm the head coach, I want to be involved with what we're doing. I'm not going to call both sides of the football and all special teams calls. You're going to go through that and talk about the matchups, personnel groups and what you're trying to get done. During the series, you can't have two and three play-callers on any side of the ball. One guy needs to call it, you need to talk about what we're doing after the series, what we need to come back with, and what we need to do more of."
On what he expects from Memphis...
"A lot of the same guys are returning. The backs are great players, but they don't get mentioned because the quarterback has thrown so many touchdowns. Miller has caught so many balls and made so many plays. They have great stable backs that can run the football, they've got a great offensive line, and they do a great job up front. As an offense, they're very difficult to put your hands around because they can do just about everything. "
On lessons learned from Tulsa...
"The message was very clear yesterday, in terms of, this is college football. It boils down to the staff, the head coach and player understanding that you have to bring your A-game every Saturday. You can point out Iowa State vs Oklahoma. How does that happen in Norman, then you win a big rivalry game the following week? LSU loses to Troy, then they go and beat Florida on the road and Auburn loses at home. It's about how you perform during the week to prepare yourself for Saturday, then on Saturday you have to perform and execute. That is how you develop consistency in play. There were opportunities during that game against Tulsa. There was many opportunities to impose our will early in the game and we didn't take advantage of those as an offense. That's how we let them hang in there."
