University of Houston Athletics
Houston vs. SMU: Press Conference
10/21/2019 3:25:00 PM | Football
HOUSTON FOOTBALL
Monday, October 21, 2019 • Houston
Carl Lewis Auditorium • Athletics/Alumni Center
HEAD COACH DANA HOLGORSEN
On expectations of this program…
"We just won a game man. I know we're not SMU, 7-0. I think Sonny Dykes is doing a really good job up there. He took over a program that was kind of on a high note, Chad Morris was there there years and got those guys winning some games, which is why he got Arkansas, and then Sonny takes over and there is still transition. They were 5-7 last year and now they are 7-0 and they are No. 16 in the country. By no means did I think we were going to take over the University of Houston program and win every game but we try to and we are going to try pretty hard here Thursday night to win this one. I thought our guys tried incredible hard last week, for all of the adversity we hit, our guys keep playing hard which pleases me. I am not here to overnight turn this thing and get out of here, it's just not what I am doing. I think you can see with what we have done, we are going to build it the right way.
As long as our guys, coaches and players, put their heads down and go to work we are going to get better. We got better last week and if we wouldn't have gotten better last week at some specific things, then we wouldn't have won. I don't care who you play in college football. Those guys in Austin almost had a pretty big hiccup last week. It just happens every week. Wisconsin was a 35-point favorite and lost to Illinois, who beat UConn by a touchdown. It's college football and every week is the same. We did some things last week that if weren't disciplined that we wouldn't have won. We had two penalties, zero turnovers, every possession ended in a kick and we won. I am proud of the way our guys played and did what we had to do to win. I am happy with where we are at and we got a lot of really good teams ahead of us. It's going to get hard. Five of the six are all 6-1 or better. This conference is really good and I knew that coming into it. By no means did I think "I'm gonna go to Houston and we are going to have better players than everybody in the league," I didn't think that."
On SMU's Shane Buechele…
"He has played a lot of ball, he had a really good high school career. He played a lot of high school ball and won a lot of games. He went to Texas and played early, you could tell he was one of those guys who had been in the system like we all tried to run. It seems like he has been around a good bit. We went to Austin three years ago and he was the quarterback. We won and he was just a gritty, competitive kid that threw the ball really well, a Texas high school quarterback that played in a really good system in high school and has played a lot of ball. I knew as soon as it was announced that he was going to SMU that it could be the difference in SMU's season. He is playing really well, he is accurate and he understands the game. It looks like he has a good rapport with a couple of those receivers. It is going to be a challenge, this is the best passing attack that we have seen this year."
On SMU's skill player …
"Reggie Roberson was with me at West Virginia for a year and he has developed into the receiver we thought he could. He is a dynamic player, he is from the Dallas area and needed to go back home. James Proche was their guy last year. He single handedly beat Tulsa, but now they have two of them. They are going to run the ball and they are going to go fast, they are going to formation, they are going to shift and motion. Sonny Dykes and me go way back, its all 'Air Raid' at Texas Tech back in 2000. But Rhett Lashlee is their offensive coordinator and it looks a lot like what they have been doing at Auburn for a long time, which he has been in that system for an awful long time. They are good, we have our hands full."
On Clayton Tune…
"He's good. He could have probably done the same thing last game that he did against Cincinnati. It'd be the same conversation every week. He didn't respond to Cincinnati as well as we had hoped. We have to pump the brakes, and try to get as many snaps out of him for the remainder of the year as we possibly can. He's in a good place and he practiced hard last night. Hamstrings are funny. It sometimes takes guys six weeks, or sometimes it takes guys six days. I think the bigger issue is what the recovery aspect of it is. We knew when we played that we were going to have to turn around and play five days later. It's just trying to manage it and get him as good as we can. The other thing is when you don't practice, it's hard to go in there and play. He was rusty against Cincinnati because he couldn't take reps. They were like 'he's probably not going to be able to take reps between now and UConn', so we had to make a decision and we did."
On Clayton Tune playing against SMU…
"I do, but we have to go out there and practice. We have to test it. I feel good about it. I think everybody that understands that he came back after having a bye week. He had time to be able to recover. Then he played against Cincinnati. A week later, we probably could've played him, but it was going to be a recurring thing every single week. He looked decent last night. I feel good about him practicing this afternoon, understanding what to do, and then being able to line up and play on Thursday. I feel good about it, but until we go practice I don't know."
On coaching Logan Holgorsen…
"I never have. I didn't do a very good job of coaching him last week. He said, 'Dad, I want to go where you are at.' At the time was that was the previous place, he was going there. I go 'That's fine, but I'm not coaching you.' I don't want to coach the quarterbacks. That's why I have Marquel Blackwell coaching the quarterbacks. I have so many other things to do. Obviously my head coach hat, and there's so many other different hats that I have to wear. There's so many other players that I have to interact with, offensively, defensively, and special teams. I don't have time to give the quarterbacks what they need. Which is why I have a quarterback coach to give them what they need. So Marquel coaches him and I treat him like I treat everybody else. I will reflect at some point. Its a pretty cool moment. I mean your kid starts his first college game and you go win on the road. Its a challenging environment and a challenging situation. You can say, well UConn never wins, but the guys wanted to win that game pretty bad. It was their homecoming but the atmosphere was good. I didn't think it would be. Those guys wanted it. This was their chance to win. They put a lot into it. I was proud of the ways the guys fought and had a chance to win. Logan made a few plays and he didn't do anything really stupid. We didn't have any turnovers, we punted which was good. I probably would look back at it and say 'Good job there son'."
On Dennis Bardwell…
"I honestly don't know at this point. He was not out there last night and I know he had an MRI meeting with the doctors, so I don't know. Which means he might be back this afternoon or he may be done for the year, I don't know.
On the short week…
"Yeah, it isn't easy. Just when you think it could get worse from what we dealt with earlier in the year. Not complaining, nobody cares, no one wants to hear it but I'll say it anyway. Six days play, now we have five days and then play. When we probably have more injured guys than we've had all year. Like I said, nobody wants to hear that. We will get our guys ready to go. I'm confident in our coaches, we were here when we got home, we were here Sunday late last night. We do what we got to do. We've got to be careful with how much we practice and prepare because the guys are beat up and sore. I would imagine SMU is in the same situation. They have played seven games and they have a five day window too. As long as it is even, they are dealing with the same things we are dealing with, we will be able to handle things just fine. We know our players are excited to play on Thursday. They are going to get out there and practice and prepare a little bit this afternoon and we will wind up and know what to do on Thursday."
On Zamar Kurvin…
"We really didn't want to play [Terrance] Edgeston another week. He wasn't ready to play. We appreciate him trying because we are down to about one linebacker. Kurvin got hurt on Thursday, he twisted his ankle on Thursday, we took him on the trip to see how much he would progress and it was a gametime decision, he couldn't go. So, we were forced to play Edgeston more than we wanted to and he isn't quite ready to go yet. How will they be Thursday? I don't know. We will see this afternoon. They are not ruled out but we will see how they progress throughout the week and we will play whoever looks better in practice."
On Patrick Carr…
"Patrick is week-to-week. He didn't make the trip last week which means he is probably another week or two away. Is what it is. You line up and you play with who you got. I'm not complaining about it. I'm proud of how our guys don't complain about it either, they don't really care who is next to them. They line up and play. Its college football and guys have to step up."
On team's discipline and rest of season…
"It's good. Other than the Pac 12 game. That was the only game where we had 10 plus penalties, I think we've been good. To me, playing smart is not doing real stupid things. Which we haven't done, but we need to be disciplined with technique and I think we have done a good job not being egregious with holdings and not being egregious with pass interference and illegal blocks and stuff like that. I've been happy with that and I think we have been doing a relatively good job of protecting the football as well. The one game against Cincinnati, we had the worst picks at the end of the game but I've been happy with that. It's something we preach a lot and I think our guys are listening."
On Sonny Dykes…
"In our six years at Tech, we became really good friends. I would always come to Houston to recruit and he would always go to Dallas and recruit. SMU has been a job that he has always wanted. Much like how Houston has been a job that I've wanted. His dad was very instrumental in his upbringing when it comes to college football. Sonny was a baseball guy growing up but just being around football as much as he was and being intimate with high school coaches here in Texas and his love affair with the city of Dallas makes it a good fit for him."
On Jeremy Singleton…
"He is getting better weekly. His confidence is getting better. He made that play early. Him and Bryson [Smith] got a pretty good little connection right there. We are going to continue to do things like that with Bryson. He is a natural but he is getting better at it, so I like where Bryson is at. Jeremy from a receiving standpoint, is becoming pretty dependable. I thought he could have got a bit more separation and caught those deep balls early. He got close but his dependable nature is something that excites me for the future with him."
On the quarterback situation…
"It's been perplexing because it wasn't there in the spring. It was frustrating. It was a combination of the quarterback not putting it where they needed to be putting it, timing, the receiver was not getting off coverage. The technique was not good and we have improved on it. The last two weeks we hit six or seven deep balls that didn't exist for the first five games. These guys got it at SMU. The deep balls that they got and the timing aspect is really good. We got to do a better job at protecting too. You have to have time to be able to set things up. The double move that Jeremy did, we had that set up and he ran it beautifully and I thought Logan [Holgorsen] threw a perfect pass. It was a big moment in that game. It was one of the four plays that changed the game. We will keep working and getting better."
