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Coach Dana Holgorsen Media Conference
December 16, 2016 12:26 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University football coach Dana Holgorsen addressed members of the media on Friday, December 16, 2016, at the Milan Puskar Center Team Room.
Opening Statement
It’s a big day today, graduation and all of that. We’re going to try to bring the guys up here do some media stuff, meet with them a little bit, then go do our graduation ceremonies and then come back and practice. The guys who graduate don’t get to throw parties and everything, but getting our practices in is important. During the finals which finals ended on Wednesday, we couldn’t do a whole lot of practicing for a whole week, we’re a little behind right now so we have to get out there and practice. Speaking of the bowl, it’s the first time we met since the announcement came out and all that, but just a lot of excitement in this building about going to Orlando. I consider Orlando one to the top, probably two or three, bowl destinations that exist. I know WVU has been down there before. I have been down there one other time but it’s a good spot. I said that last year in regards to Scottsdale but Scottsdale and Orlando just from a weather perspective, resort style hotels, lot of things to do makes for a good bowl game and then you couple it with a great opponent Miami, it gives you a lot to practice for, it gives you a lot to play for, so a lot of excitement around here when it comes to that.
Getting right into Miami we’ll do things the way that we have always done for a bowl game. We’ll practice our tail off here, I like to give the guys a couple of days off before we report to the bowl game, yet you like to say I would like to give the guys a couple of days off for Christmas but you don’t control what the dates are but give them a couple of days off and then report down at the bowl site and go through our weekly routine, so we’ll have plenty of opportunity to be prepared for this game. Bowl game 101 is about wanting to be in the game, not necessarily being prepared to play in the game, because you have enough time to get prepared but wanting to be in that game and I think this sets up to where both teams want to be there and both teams are going to play really well. Miami is a damn good football team. You can say well they’re 8-4 that’s not up to the standards of Miami, but they’re a couple points away from being 11-1. They play a tough schedule, have beat a lot of good football teams, one-point loss to Florida State, two-point loss to Notre Dame, a touchdown loss to North Carolina and then a tough loss at Virginia Tech, so a quality football team.
(Miami Head Coach) (Mark Richt) Coach Richt has been one of my coaching idols for a long time just the success that he had when he was at Georgia and then really goes back to the success that he had when he was at Florida State, just always watched what he did. Great football coach, great human being, great offensive football coach, so offensively they are good just like they’ve always been. He’s done the same type of stuff for a long time now, and he has some pretty good players to be able to do it with. Starts with their quarterback (Miami junior quarterback) (Brad) Kaaya, this guy is the all-time leading passer at Miami, I would say he’s pretty good because they have had a lot of good quarterbacks through there. I could have sworn he would have been a senior by now but just a junior to be able to be the all-time leading passer in Miami history speaks for itself. They have unbelievable skill. Their running back the (Miami sophomore running back) (Mark) Walton kid, we recruited the heck out of him, didn’t get him, but he’s a great player, scores a lot of touchdowns. They give him the ball a lot. Their receivers are as good as we’ve seen. The (Miami senior quarterback) (Stacy) Coley kid and then the true freshman (Miami freshman wide receiver) (Ahmmon) Richards, he just broke Michael Irvin’s freshman receiving records. I think the Irvin dude was a pretty good receiver down there. Then their tight end is the biggest and baddest dude that we’ve faced all year, gives a lot of matchup problems.
Offensively, they don’t turn the ball over, they can score at any point, and they can control the clock. It’s going to be a huge challenge for our defense. Defensively, Miami is really good, statistically is as good as we’ve faced. The only team that compares to them statistically is Kansas State, who statistically was a really good defense in the Big 12 this year, but the thing that you notice about what Miami does it’s (Miami Defensive Coordinator/Linebackers) Manny Diaz, has been around for a while. I’ve competed against him for a long time. He plays a lot of odd front, likes to blitz, has guys coming from everywhere, coupled with (Miami Defensive line coach) (Craig Kuligowski) Big Kul, their defensive line coach who came from Missouri, he was at Missouri for a long time. I have known Kul for forever, he is considered probably the best (defensive line) d-line coach in the country. They were a four down front, so they kind of merged the two, which is an interesting dynamic to watch, but they have been very successful at it, they’re well coached, they play their tail off, and they get better and better and better throughout the course of the season. They have five or six true freshmen who play for them a lot, so they are going to continue to get better. Their three linebackers, all three of those dudes are all true freshmen, I don’t know if I have ever seen that. They’re big, 6-2, 230-240 (pounds), run, hit, and they’re true freshmen. I would hate to play against those guys here in a couple of years.
Secondary wise, they’re great, they have another true freshman starting back there, but 29 the (Miami senior defensive back) (Corn) Elder kid is a guy who I think is going to senior bowl, he’s a really good player. Their safeties, compared to Oklahoma State’s, old, been around for a long time, big, run, tackle, and then their front, their front four is as good as a front four that we have faced, so we have our work cut out for us offensively because they really, really have great team speed. They’re big, they tackle and schematically the pose some problems as well.
Special teams, we have to really, really pay attention to what’s going on special teams wise. The one thing that stands out about them more than anything is they block a ton of kicks, they come after everything whether it’s PAT field goal, whether it’s punt they come after it, and they get there quick, so we got to pay attention to the blocking of kicks aspect of things. Their cover guys are fast as you can imagine because of how they recruit and the type of recruit they get, the success that they have in recruiting year in and year out, they are incredibly fast, so they’re big and they’re fast which means cover guys get down the field and make things happen so our return units have a huge challenge. They have solid specialists with their kicker and punter, both guys are as good as I’ve seen. Accuracy wise, leg strength, averaging 40 yards a punt and extremely solid with their field goal units, kicked a lot, made a lot and then about every other kick is in the end zone when it comes to the kickoff team, and then they have speedy returners as well. The (Miami junior wide receiver) (Braxton) Berrios kid, we recruited him here, he’s from North Carolina, the punt return guy he’s a kick return guy as well. He’s dangerous, he takes chances, he makes things happen. So we have our work cut out for us in this game. We had a good day yesterday, we’ll prep again tonight, tomorrow afternoon and then shoot over and watch (WVU Men’s Basketball Head Coach Bob Huggins) Huggs win his 800th game, and then practice Sunday morning and let the guys get away for a couple of days prior to getting down to Orlando to have a great week down there for our bowl prep, so it should be a fun deal down there as we all know at the end of the day it’s only fun if you win, so hopefully we’ll do what we need to do to be able to do that.
On is there’s any bad news going into the bowl game
The injury aspect of it and I believe its coach Hunter to bring up bad news right? But the bad - the injury aspect of things we had two weeks to heal up as we all know looking at Iowa state looking at Baylor there was walking wounded everywhere, so that was a good two weeks to be able to let the guys heal up. We spent a lot of time down with (Football Athletic Trainer) Dave (Kerns) and (Director of Strength and Conditioning) Mike (Joseph) down in the training and the weight room from a recovery aspect, so that has been good for us as it is everybody. No one has been ruled out, everyone is good to go. The long term guys are the long term guys. Academic side, we won’t know, I think we’re in pretty good shape. (Associate Director, Student-Athlete Development) Brittney O’Dell our main academic lady in the back is fantastic. This is her first year here. She’s from Orlando, so she’s excited about the bowl game, but she did just a fantastic job with the guys, getting to know them and getting them in the right spots. I think we’re going to be okay, we may lose one or two but don’t know that for sure.
On is redshirt sophomore defensive lineman Jaleel Fields and redshirt junior defensive lineman Xavier Pegues will have a chance to play
Not going to chance it. Never said that (about Xavier Pegues).
On if he’s worried about the time off and picking up momentum
Not worried about it, excited about it. The energy out at practice was good. I don’t like going inside practice, and I think I would probably get a team revolt if I tried to go out at this point, but I thought the speed of the game was good. We went against each other for the first couple of periods and energy was good, speed was good, not worried about that.
On Miami’s four-game losing streak was from scheduling or lack of execution
Yeah probably schedule more than anything. The Virginia Tech game, Virginia Tech played well. It’s the first time I’ve watched Virginia Tech, and obviously we open up with them next year, so there’s going to be a lot of film study on Virginia Tech moving forward, but that’s the first time because there is no cross over in any of that stuff. Anytime you go into a different conference, there’s not a ton of crossovers, so I had not watched a lot of the ACC this year, just like TV aspect of like Notre Dame and Florida State, that sort of thing. Virginia Tech played really well in that game but other than that those other three, it could have went either way. You’re talking about a missed extra point versus Florida State, they’re pretty good. It got down against Notre Dame. Notre Dame I thought played well and they got down, and then they came back, just fell a couple points short. How many times did we win a game where it was a point or two? Everyone is sitting there saying how excited we are about 10-2, well there were four games that were decided by less than a field goal. Same thing happened when we went to the Orange Bowl, the last three games of the year were decided by a point or two, so it could go either way, and those games that they lost could have went either way. Like I said, they could be sitting at 11-1 and then they would be in the College Football Playoff and everyone’s tune would be a little bit different. Don’t look at this team and say well shit they’re just 8-4, right? I mean good God, it’s Miami and they could have been 11-1, so that’s the way we’re looking at it. I can assure you that. I won’t swear anymore Mike, so I apologize for that. Started to get fired up there. I was acting like I was talking to our guys in here.
On Miami’s growth over the course of the season
Yeah, (Miami Head Coach) Mark Richt is a good football coach, now, and they’re going to continue to improve. If you look at his bowl record as a head coach its good. He’s an experienced, established guy who knows how to deal with this, so they have a plan in place and I think we do too from the way we have done bowl games and my 16 years of doing bowl games, we’ve won a bunch of bowl games, so I think we have a pretty good handle on it too. They will continue to improve with it because he understands how to do things right when it comes to that, so we’re expecting them to continue to get better.
On Miami’s head coach Mark Richt’s scheme at Miami
It’s Georgia stuff, he’s always been pro style. He’s going to have a fullback and a tight end, a couple wideouts, run the ball, establish the run and do some All-American type route combinations and all of that, so it’s pretty similar to what they did at Georgia. Their (Offensive Coordinator/Running Backs Coach) OC Thomas Brown was a running back at Georgia. His son is one of the quarterback guys, so a lot of the stuff that he’s been doing for a long time. (Associate Head Coach (Defensive Coordinator/Linebackers)) (Tony Gibson) Gibby would know more, they won against them back in the 2005 Sugar Bowl, so Gibby has a pretty good knowledge on what they’ve done in that past and what they’re doing now.
On how different it is to coach a bowl game
It’s easier. It’s easier from a preparation standpoint. It’s easier on the coaches you have more time, so at the end of the day it’s about, and there is nothing easy about it, because the other team is doing the same stuff, there are other things that you have to worry about like speed of the game, keeping their attention and separating fun activities from work activities. There’s a lot of other challenges when it comes to that but from a preparation point of view it’s a little easier when you sit in there all day one day and you have to get everything done in one day, that gets hard. To where now I sat in there for three days to be able to get a game plan together and then we can practice for three days, make some adjustments on some things that we don’t feel real comfortable about, change some things and then go down there and have a whole other week of preparation. It gives you a little bit more time to prepare, which is good. I do think at this point of the season obviously you kind of still are who you are. You’re not going to be able to change it very much. Everybody says, “well you have 15 practices.” Well you really don’t have 15 practices, and there is not a whole lot that you can do from a personnel point of view to really change who you are.
On if it’s hard to manage emotions at the end of the season
I don’t think so. No I don’t think so. I mean I don’t think so, I think who we are is who we are at this point. I think we have a group of guys who like each other and fight hard for each other, which is why we won a lot of those games. Finished the season the right way, got to 10 wins, which is something to be proud of, but the next step is to get 11. What’s the difference in winning 10 and 11? I mean you get to 11, that’s only been done here five times in 125 years. What does it mean to get to 10? Well it’s been done now 10 times in 125 years. There are still things that we can target to where we want to achieve.
On if there’s a team that’s comparable to Miami that we have played
They are different. You know defensively they have some Kansas State to them, just schematically. Offensively, they do different things, they are more traditional. Big 12 is so spread, and they are just not that team. They are dangerous, their yards per play is high, but they just don’t do, they aren’t a typical Big 12, spread it, up-tempo type stuff. They are multiple, they can do a lot of different things, and it’s just a little different philosophy, so not really. It’s a different kind of ball.
On if scouting is difficult when you don’t have a common opponent
No I don’t think so, it’s still just video. You have a lot of information on who these guys are. A lot of different people have attacked them in different ways and you can look at it and see what matches up with you. It’s easier now than it was in the beginning of the year. The beginning of the year you don’t know what you’re going to get from how guys improve, from what their bodies are, from if they’ve made scheme adjustments. Like I said who you are is kind of who you are at this point. You go back and look at their 12 games, and you’ve have a pretty good idea of who they are.
On the two signee wide receivers adding depth at the position
I’m happy for David (Sills) to kind of put it to rest. I told him - I said, “go give it a shot”, and he did and he said he wanted to come back, and I was like well we’d love to have you, we know what we’re getting with you. I think he’s going to develop into a great receiver. (Dominique) Maiden is a developmental guy. To answer your question, it should help red zone. It should help red zone, we have a lot of 5’9, 5’10 guys who could run pretty well right now, but we need bigger bodies. (Redshirt junior wide receiver) Ka’Raun (White) is our biggest body so hopefully (redshirt sophomore tight end) (Trevon) Wesco develops and those two kids are what we think that they can be, and it will help be able to complete passes in tighter space. That’s our problem red zone wise right now, we’re having a hard time completing passes in tight space, so just bringing in a couple of guys who are a little different than what we have is probably the biggest thing.
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