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Bill Blankenship Press Conference Video and Transcript
10/14/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
TULSA, Okla. - Tulsa plays host to South Florida at 11 a.m. Saturday at H.A. Chapman Stadium for Homecoming. TU Head Coach Bill Blankenship met with the media Tuesday to preview the upcoming American Athletic Conference matchup.
Opening statement...
"Obviously, we were discouraged by the outcome, but encouraged by the fight and the improvement in areas. Still got a lot of work to do. We're still trying to really tweak and challenge and trying to build. The buy-in has been very good from our players. I believe that they see the progress as well. We are all frustrated and we want to get it tipped over. We want to get past that tipping point. I love the way our guys went into the fourth quarter and seized the lead and gave us a chance. We've got to continue to fight to give ourselves that opportunity.
"We turn our sights to USF. Willie Taggert is a guy that I've had a lot of respect for what he has done both as a player and as a coach. He has inherited a situation where the team is in a rebuilding mode. He's playing a lot of young players and a lot of players. They are doing some of the things that we've done, they've continued to play well but haven't been able to reap very many Ws. They played East Carolina really to the wire, probably as well as anyone has all year and defended them quite nicely. They've had really tough physical games with Wisconsin, NC State and Maryland. You look at all those pieces of the puzzle as you evaluate them.
"Their running back Marlon Mack leads the conference in rushing as a true freshman. He is a legit back, a legit speedster and a guy that can make you miss. They have a receiver, #7 Andre Davis, who has missed four games this season after playing in the opener, but he's been back. Last week, he set their all-time receiving record. I think he's over 1,700 yards. He's very impressive. They do a good job getting those guys the ball. They're more of a power-oriented team than we've seen this season - tight ends, fullbacks and a big physical quarterback who has a strong arm. That will be our challenge defensively.
"As our offense looks at their defense, this is a very fast and talented team. That doesn't surprise you coming out of south Florida with the talent base they have. They have multiple players on their team that were five-star recruits and lots of four-star recruits. They've recruited very heavily in the south Florida area and have done a good job of upgrading their talent level.
"We'll certainly be seeing that in terms of the match-up, but we are really looking forward to the opportunity to come back home and get a W this week."
On Dane Evans' improvement...
"He was much more poised last week. I think Dane really locked into the game plan. I was very, very pleased with his decisions. We gave him some run-pass options and the opportunity to audible and that big throw to Keevan Lucas was an audible that he checked to. I thought he played within himself a lot more, which I think is important. He didn't try to do too much but he operated very efficiently. That's a result, I think, of the running game and being able to push that a little bit. I don't think that he would ever admit that he wants us to run the ball, but I think the fact that we can run the ball allows him to settle in a little bit and to play his role a little more."
On the big plays being given up and what they are doing to address them...
"It's been, without a doubt, the issue that has been the Achilles heel for us. It's just so different than how our defense has played since we've been here. We've always been able to get a grip on not giving up the big play. We're continuing to coach and teach. Partly it's us having to put new guys in spots and some of that is a little bit of a learning curve, but we're having some veterans that are making some of those same mistakes too. All I can tell you is that we are continuing to focus in on the teaching. An analogy I would use is that I know what happens when I overeat, but sometimes I still overeat. The reality is that we're getting to the point where we shouldn't take the fake and we've got to read our keys and we know to do that, but yet sometimes we can't resist the urge to try to do more. I think it's really a result of trying to do too much instead of playing the game, doing your job and trusting the rest of the defense to do their job."
On the secondary's performance compared to expectations at the beginning of the season...
"I think that those guys [Michael Mudoh and Demarco Nelson] are the ones I'm talking about who are trying to do too much. Do your job, you're the safety don't try to make up for the linebacker, don't try to make up for somebody else. Do your job and we've got to coach those other guys to do theirs.
"What happens on offenses and defenses, everyone can get into this, if you start mowing other people's yards, yours won't look as good. You've got to focus on getting your yard cleaned up and your yard looking good and then if yours is great then you can start helping the neighbor.
"But you've got to be careful that you don't start working in other people's areas and I think that analogy is happening in the back end. Sometimes we've got good, veteran players are trying to do too much instead of just doing their job."
On linebacker C.J. Gooden's performance...
"C.J. is a young man that we've been trying to move into the weak-side linebacker spot. The reality was that he benefitted from some bad timing earlier in the season. He played in a couple of series and each time he was in the game, the opponents scored. It wasn't necessarily his fault, but we were kind of hesitant to put him in because it just kind of seemed like bad things happened when you put him in. And so we got in a situation where we put him in the game after they had moved the ball on us and I thought he actually played pretty well. He missed some opportunities on some coverage things, but in terms of defending the run and running around and making plays his performance was encouraging. We are really beginning to see his athleticism and we're letting it play out. That's what he brings to the table."
On playing well on the road...
"It was by far our best road performance. And when I talk about performance I'm talking about everything; from the travel, to the focus, to the food, to getting out and starting the game. It just felt better. I think we are starting to find our balance a little bit in terms of what these players need to do and how they need to manage their travel, so that part of it felt good. Several people have asked me if it was our best complete game, well, no because we didn't get the W.
"I think we competed really hard against Texas State. I think we competed more aggressively against Temple. Temple is a really good defensive unit and we knew that going in. We knew what we had in their quarterback being a duel-threat guy. It was just a little more of an uphill battle going into Temple that we responded to and that was encouraging."
On the defensive veterans trying to do too much...
"It's not always the same thing and that's the tough part. When we're looking at the deep throws that are happening, we had one semi-late in the game that was a double move on Demarco and normally he's able to handle that. A lot of the deep stuff has been on our corners. Literally, what happens is our safeties begin to try to help the corner when it's not his coverage and that does two things; 1) it gets him out of position and 2) it also gives the corner a sense of security that he shouldn't have when it's not supposed to be there. That's what we talk about when we talk about doing what you're supposed to do. I'm pretty sure that looking back to last year, even though we had some issues on defense, they weren't nearly as pronounced as the big pass plays being consistent against us.
"Obviously early in this game we gave up a couple of big runs but again, I think we got that fixed. The pass plays were backs coming out of the backfield and we don't pick that one up. But a couple of deep shots are just back-breakers when two things happen. When he has time to throw it and we can't get the pressure and get him down and they're in a position to make the play and we're not. There's a reason corners in the "league" are paid a lot of money. Those guys are very, very valuable. You've got to have guys that can do that and without Dwight Dobbins and Will Barrow we don't have a lot of guys left who have a lot of playing time.
"Austin McDaniel is the most experienced guy and has been the most productive player we have at corner. He's always going to get picked on, he's the white corner out there with the long hair, so people are always going to look at him and think, "there's got to be something wrong with that guy, so we'll go attack him." And he knows that, which is why I love how he responds to it. He loves the challenge."
On the penalties affecting the Temple game...
"Penalties are always an issue, but they were just at critical junctions of the game. Third down penalties and the one in the end zone, those were opportunities where we had a chance to get off the field. The one right before half was huge because we would have gotten the ball back probably at midfield with a little bit of time to go. Those are things you have to fight and coach. One of the things we are learning as we get into this new conference, and we knew this going in, but you just have to play through it, is that there is clearly a philosophical difference in how you call the game in Conference USA and the American. We knew that upfront, it's not a new thing. But we're having to learn to play at that same tempo. It's not a bad thing, I'm not saying that in any way. But it is a little different and we are having to adjust to it."
Did you send in the call in the end zone to the league...
"We'll ask [that one in the end zone] to be reviewed, but that's routine. Terry McAulay, the head of our officials in the American Athletic Conference is first class and they do a great job with it. It's a routine that if there were issues that came up, good, bad, indifferent, and you want to have an evaluation, he'll come back and tell you yes or no and I support the ref or they should have done it this way or maybe that should or shouldn't have been called. It doesn't give you any change, but it gives you some sense that there is an evaluation process. We always send in multiple plays, I think this week we sent in three or four."
On motivation for this Homecoming game being better than last year's...
"I don't want to do that again. We have a lot of pride in what we're doing here. I wear a lot of badges, so to speak. The Tulsa patch for me as an alum and as a letterman might as well be my family name. That's how big it is to me. It matters to us how we're doing on the field, how we perform, how we represent our university and how we represent our lettermen who have come before. That's probably the motivation and pressure for me. We don't ever want to disappoint our family. That's the way I feel about it. I think the neat thing about our staff is that we have a number of alums and former lettermen here who feel the same way."
On assessing the performance at the halfway point...
"I don't think we are as far along as I had hoped to be. Some areas of the team are making the strides that we had hoped for. Some are surprisingly behind. You never know what you are dealing with when you start the year in terms of how you keep personnel on the field, injuries, those types of things. That's what always makes it interesting. I think in some ways we are far from being the offense that we need to be, but we've made significant strides offensively. Defensively, we thought we would be further along than we are. But the issues are not surprising given the places we are seeing them. We thought our secondary would be stronger, but we're having to play through some issues there. We'll just continue to fight."
On Zack Langer's emergence...
"I think he's a big part of the emergence of our offense. Being able to rush the football gives us the ability to stay more balanced on offense and the more balance we can achieve offensively, the better we'll be through out. Zack has really inspired us with his physical running style. It's a lot of fun for the offensive linemen. We were playing last week with our second, and eventually third-team center and our back-up right tackle. We were quite a bit injury riddled on our offensive line, but yet they were able to setup a rushing attack using Zack and James and the other guys, but especially Zack. That was against a really good defense against the run and I thought we looked like the more physical team and I think that is a result of Zack."
