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Coach Dana Holgorsen Media Conference
November 01, 2016 04:17 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University football coach Dana Holgorsen addressed members of the media on Tuesday, November 1, 2016, at the Milan Puskar Center Team Room.
Opening Statement
Welcome everybody, looking forward to coming back home here this next week, playing a night game in Morgantown. First night game we’ve played all year, as you all know. Sometimes changing routine is good, and I think this is a good time to be able to do that. One thing we learned, I guess we learned this a long time ago in this league is you play your best every week to win, to be successful. It’s a tough league. There’s only a few teams in college football over the course of the year where if you don’t play your best you still have an opportunity to win, that’s not us, so we have to understand that, we have to prepare hard. I know we will, and speaking with the team on Sunday night it was very apparent that our guys want to win, and they want to be successful. They were disappointed in it but they are realistic to the point that you just get back to work. I’ve been doing this a long time and I understand that and the 20 seniors understand that, so that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll prepare hard for playing against Kansas, we’ll practice as usual, we’ll get out there and come up with the best game plan that we can, try to get our guys in the right frame of mind for Saturday and put our best foot forward so we’ll have a chance to win. That’s what this is about, and that’s what we’re going to do.
Kansas offensively, (Head Coach) David Beaty is calling the plays this year. Is a really good offensive football coach. Been at some good places, doing some good things offensively. I guess the thing that sticks out more than anything is they’re turning the ball over too much. We can’t rely on them to turn the ball over, we have to force them and that’s what happened to us last week, so we have to get back to where we’re forcing turnovers much like we did two weeks ago. We can’t rely on them just to give it to us, so that’s kind of the message with the defense. Play two different quarterback (redshirt junior quarterback) (Montell) Cozart and (sophomore quarterback) (Ryan) Willis both have good experience. Have a couple of difference making receivers that you’ll see, number one, (junior wide receiver) (LaQuvionte) Gonzalez is a dynamic transfer from (Texas) A&M, national recruit out of high school and then (sophomore wide receiver) (Steven) Simms (Jr.), a little kid out of Houston is doing some good things as well. It will be a good challenge for us defensively.
Offense, we have some work to do. These guys are pretty steady. A lot of respect for (Assistant Head Coach/ Defensive Coordinator/ Safeties) Clint Bowen, we’ve heard that name before. He’s been there for as long as we’ve been in the Big 12. He’s been their defensive coach, was their interim guy there for a little while, very respected in the business, does a great job with their defense. Got some good young players that are up and coming. Their (defensive end) d-end, the (sophomore defensive end) (Dorance) Armstrong (Jr.) kid, No. 2, has had a sack in each of the last I think seven games, six games, something like that, is playing really well. Two senior corners, a couple years ago they had a couple of corners I thought were as good as anyone that are in the NFL now. These guys are good. They have a couple of corners that can really play. Pretty stout against the run upfront. They do a good job with pressure. They play hard. One thing that you’ll see on their team more than anything is the amount of energy that they play with, so we have to get out there and start fast if we want to get accomplished what we want to accomplish in this game. It’ll be a challenge; we know that and our guys understand that so well work hard to see if we can get back on track here this week.
On offensive improvements
We have to score. We still didn’t meet our goal with touchdowns in the red zone. We were four for four, which that’s good. We were just outside the red zone when we missed a field goal that was a pitiful three-play sequence. After we had momentum we moved it all the way down the field, three horrible plays and then we missed the field goal. We just have to keep drives going, we have to get the ball in the end zone. It’s been an issue with this team. We have to score more. We’re still not scoring what we need to do to be successful. This past week that was, I’ll get this out of the way, it was an evenly matched game, and it was an evenly played game for the exception of three plays. You take those plays away, I still don’t know if we’d win because it’s a tie game, we still have to do a better job of finishing drives and scoring touchdowns. We scored two touchdowns. Hell, we scored more against them last year than we did this year. It’s not good enough. We have to score more, and I’m not going to sit here focusing on all of the turnovers and all of that, we’ve been good with it throughout the course of the year. I think when you look at it, think Oklahoma State, you give them credit, they played pretty good, they played hard, they played fast, when you turn on the video you can see that their effort was a little bit better, their speed was a little bit better, and when you play like that, you force turnovers and they forced turnovers. We played like that against TCU and we forced turnovers, so we’re capable of forcing them, we’re capable of preventing them. We just have to be in the right frame of mind, and we will be this Saturday.
On the team’s approach after a loss
Were disappointed in losing there’s no question, that’s unfortunate. We were how close to having a couple losses earlier in the year, so it’s not the end of the world. If you pin your whole season off of one loss then there’s going to be 99 percent disappointed people across the country. Its college football, it happens, what you have to do is you have to use it as motivation to go out there and practice harder and prepare harder and go out and have the understanding that you have to be playing at the best of your ability every single week. Oklahoma State is a good football team and they were 5-2, so their motivation level looked to me a little higher than ours, as opposed to us being motivated and going out and playing for some revenge and playing real hard, we’re the ones being hunted at that point when you get to that situation. You can’t let it affect the next game, you have to regroup, you have to prepare hard, you have to practice hard. I know our guys want to win. I know they want to get out there. This group likes each other, they like playing, they like practicing and that’s what we’ll do on Saturday.
On redshirt senior running back Rushel Shell’s injury
No, couldn’t go, so we’ll see what he does today.
On other team injuries
(Junior running back) (Justin) Crawford? Don’t know. I think those are the only two, so they are day-to-day. There’s nothing long term or season ending on either one of them.
On generating more explosive plays in the run game
That’s some of it, that’s some of it. Making guys miss is a big one, downfield blocking it was not as good last week as it was against TCU, and I think that has something to do with effort, I think that has something to do with the mentality that you have. Guys are committed to stopping their own, they were squeezing the box hard that’s why we threw it 40 times, more than half of the times. That’s not going to change. Guys are going to try to stop the run, which means we have to block better, which means we have to make a guy miss at times, and we’re average when it comes to that.
On how the offensive line performed against Oklahoma State
Okay, okay. Not bad, not great. We had four sacks, two of them were on the (offensive line) o-line, two of them were on the quarterback, threw it over 40 times. We’re not talking about catastrophe, it’s better than it was at any point last year. That’s not what happened. We had adequate time to throw the football.
On redshirt junior defensive lineman Xavier Pegues’ injury
Hasn’t practiced yet, so don’t know.
On if he thinks he’ll ever get him (Xavier Pegues) back
I doubt it.
On extra motivations with the 7 o’clock game
Yeah. It’s fun. Night games are fun. Haven’t had one. What game is this, eight? Is this eight? So, I think it will be good. Like I said I think it’s good to change routine every now and then. I know Mountaineer Nation gets fired up about night games, so I know our players will too. Good time for that.
On senior quarterback Skyler Howard
There is a confidence issue with that. I think Skyler has played well over the course of the whole year. The better you play, the higher the expectations are. Nobody has higher expectations for him than him. So to me it’s the same thing with him, we have to give him confidence, we have to teach him the game plan, we have to get him out there, we have to practice hard and he has to feel the game plan, understand what we’re asking him to do, and he probably needs to reduce a little pressure that he puts on himself and go out there and just play the game. He’s better when he just goes out there and plays the game, loves to play the game, but he does have high expectations for himself. That’s a good quality that he has. It’s our job to make sure those don’t get too high for him.
On the Big 12 defense
Defense wins championships and offense sells tickets. It applies and its understanding why it does apply. We’ve done a lot of things to try to improve defensively over the last three or four years, and obviously we have. (Associate Head Coach (Defensive Coordinator/Linebackers)) Coach (Tony) Gibson deserves a lot of credit for that and our players deserve a lot of credit for that, and the expectations that we have for how we play defense here is probably a little higher than at some other places. Didn’t think we played awful last week defensively but didn’t play good enough to win, same exact thing can be said for the offense, there’s no doubt and even more so. Then when we win is when we play well together. I don’t care if it’s offense or defense or special teams or whatever, when we win we play well together. That’s the formula of this team, so we need to get back to playing well together.
On redshirt sophomore tight end Trevon Wesco
Trying, he’s just still a little raw, he’s still a little green. He missed last year with an injury, he missed camp with an injury. I think he has a chance to be a good player for us, not really doing anything to change the game at this point, but we’re trying, we’re trying.
On if the team is different without redshirt senior running back Rushel Shell III
No, I think it’s a valid question, he’s a strong presence. He’s a strong presence in meetings, he’s practicing really well this year, he’s a strong presence in the locker room, he’s a strong presence on the sideline, he plays with anger and intensity. We need more than one back. We’ve been through this for quite a while now, where he’s our starter for a reason, but I think (junior running back) Justin Crawford is going to continue to get better and better and I think (freshman running back) Kennedy McKoy is going to continue to get better and better. When this happens those guys need to step in and play, and I thought both of them did that. They went in and played okay. That’s not going to be any different this week, that’s not going to be different for the remaining four games as well, but we need him on our sidelines. I would prefer him to just be dressed out and playing.
On emphasis in recruiting
Yeah, bigger, faster, stronger guys. Guys who score, guys who block, guys who tackle. You know, recruiting is always changing, your needs are always changing. We didn’t decide we needed (junior running back) Justin Crawford until Wendell declared, so that’s always kind of a change but, it’s going pretty good.
On what positions you are recruiting
Everything, we’re not at that point where we’ve narrowed it down. If you look at it we need probably one of everything. We’re not going to turn down good players based on what we have already, so we have a certain amount of spots left and guys who are on the board, and we’ll take them if they want to come.
On success taking graduate transfers
No, I’ll tell you where that has helped out is the signing day surprise stuff. You can only send out a certain amount of NLI’s but when you don’t get one or two of them back there’s no reason to panic, because you can still fill that slot, that’s where I’ve seen that help. There has been times where you send out 25 letters and you get back 22 and you go - that’s not good because over the course of a couple of years that can lower the total number as we saw what that happened here right around the time that I got here, but you can make up those with some guys, you can find guys, you can go through spring practice and say the corners aren’t quite ready to go yet and go try to find a guy, so it has helped us.
On graduate transfers getting their degrees
I haven’t heard anything. I don’t know where they’re at on it honestly. In one sense, I feel like it’s the kids right, if a kid comes here they get their degree and they leave without exhausting their eligibility, I feel like I’ve done my job. Ultimately it’s about getting their degrees, but then there’s the other side of it that you let guys in grad school you kind of want them to get their degree, their master’s degrees, right, and I don’t see that happening very often, a small percentage of them. I don’t know what they’re going to do. That’s above my pay grade, for certain.
On making explosive plays
Boy that would be nice. Wouldn’t that be nice? Phew. God, I forget what it’s like. I forget what it’s like. I don’t know. Stay on your feet, go score, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have to pull out some film from way back in the day. I think we have guys who are capable of doing it. Different things have to happen, accuracy of the ball, confidence in your ability to do it, the wherewithal of staying on your feet, turning up field, your dude getting a block, seeing it and going. Hopefully it will happen a little bit more moving forward.
On opposing teams taking away the run
You’ve seen a lot of intermediate throws, you’ve seen a lot more hitches, you’ve seen more curl routes, over the middle. How many over the middle throws did we have last week? Quite a bit. I thought Oklahoma State did a fantastic job at tackling, because we threw it and caught pretty good, and then the play was over, so they are not letting us get behind them and that’s something that’s not uncommon. I mean we had to hitch and go (redshirt junior wide receiver) Shelton (Gibson) to get behind them. We couldn’t get behind them. You have to be satisfied with first downs and you have to catch it and you have to turn those routine plays into explosive plays like we’ve been talking about here for the majority of this press conference, and then you have to do it again in the red zone when you get down there, so it’s just offensive football. I thought Oklahoma State did a great job. We have to get better at it this week.
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