|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 26, 2016Frank WilsonSan Antonio, Texas UTSA - 33, Charlotte - 14 THE MODERATOR: Questions for coach. Q. What did you tell your team in the locker room? COACH WILSON: Just now or at halftime or pregame (laughter)? Here's what I said to them. We went into our little devotion and we talked about the things that we set out to do. This university, this football program. Today all hard work was vindicated. A lot of blood, sweat and tears for many years to get us to this point, and to become the first FBS school in modern-day history to reach our goal in the time we did. It's something that is special for our team. I shared with them, Enjoy this moment because it's just the beginning. Q. Can you talk about the play of Jared Johnson off the bench in the fourth quarter? COACH WILSON: I thought he played well. We thought we had some matchup advantages from a stature standpoint on their corners. Unfortunately we weren't able to connect early on in the game, so we continued to try to attempt it. We were very pleased with the ability to extend plays and allow us to have drives. He was very resourceful and effective doing that. But we wanted to get back at attacking their corners and throwing the ball downfield. We made a change and were able to connect several times with him. Q. You were in celebration with fans and players on the field at the very end. Just your feelings standing down there in that big crowd. COACH WILSON: Yeah, you know what, it's never about the individual. It's never about me. It's about all of those people who have invested in this university, including this community. We made a rally cry on a Thanksgiving weekend and asked them to come out and support us. We told them we needed their support. We had 20 something thousand, but you would have sworn it was 60 thousand because they were loud, they were prideful, and they represented us extremely well. Early in the week we talked about it, Lynn Hickey and I, our administration, of sharing that moment with our fans, with our families, because we all have a stake in it. We wanted them to be able to partake in it and not just see it from the stands. What a beautiful moment it was. Q. You had a number of former players come in today to see the game. Also the millionth fan attended the game. COACH WILSON: You were the millionth? Q. I think I was. But your thoughts on having those alumni back and the milestone. COACH WILSON: Another thing we did, we reached out to those guys, the Original 18. Think about this, the inception of this program, you ask a group of young men to come and partake in a program that's not even in existence. Talk about faith, stepping out on faith. Some of them recruited here. Some of them had nowhere else to go and ended up here. But they were our foundation. We planted the seeds for this program as well as the other classes that came after them. We wanted to extend ourselves to them, as well, because they have stake, they're stakeholders as well. To see those guys when we got ready to do the spirit walk, Eric Soza and all of them, was fulfilling because they rejoiced in it. They shared that moment with us. That's a special thing for them. It's an honor to be able to give them that moment and to see them postgame, as well, in the confetti, on the ground. A special moment for our university. Q. What do you do now? How difficult is it going to be to wait and see what happens? COACH WILSON: Well, it will happen quick. We'll watch the film in the morning, go on our first home visit tomorrow night (laughter). We have a week planned. We immediately go recruiting. We watch this game, we put it to bed, then we do what we do best, as well: coach football, recruit and develop players. The contact period starts this weekend. It starts Sunday. We'll be on our first home visit on Sunday. All 10 of our full-time assistants will be in home visits Sunday, and will be in the midst of recruiting eight days from now, the following Sunday, when they name the bowl we'll be a part of. Miss Hickey will probably get me somewhere to go speak on it. Whatever appearance, I hopefully can make it back. Here's what happens. We won't rest on our laurels. We'll immediately start finishing the great recruiting class, a full season of recruiting, and have hopefully the best recruiting class in the history of this university, and also the best recruiting class in Conference USA. We'll compete vigorously to do that. Sunday we'll get back here and wait for the announcement. Monday we'll start rolling, yeah. Q. Last year this team was 3-9 at this time. This is the first time you're going bowling. How do you tell them to celebrate? COACH WILSON: They're a part of it. We go above and beyond. Whether it was, signage, radio, TV, really extended ourselves this fall two, three, four, five, six different media blitzes to put our brand out there so that our fans could hear us all the way across this state, from one end to the other, from the north to the south, from the east to the west. We want them to know they're a part of it with us. What will happen now is to partake in our first bowl game and to get them at that bowl site. Whatever bowl it is, it's the best bowl in the world for us. We're excited for it and we're honored and humbled to be invited to whichever one that we're invited. We only ask that our fans come in and join it with us, a week of festivities, an opportunity to bring home now our first bowl victory. Q. What is the advantage of having all of the extra practices with the bowl game coming up? COACH WILSON: Development. Development. As I said, we won't start this week. We'll be on the road recruiting, then we'll have 15 days actually to prepare for bowl preparation, if it is on the 17th. If it is not one on the 17th, it's post Christmas, 25th, 27th, something like that, that will give us even more time. For us, our young guys who redshirted this year, we continue to develop them. It's a huge fundamental opportunity for us to extend our season from a fundamentals standpoint to get better for spring football. Q. What was going through your mind when you dropped the center? What was going through your mind and what did you say to your guys to keep them calm? COACH WILSON: We started a little slow. We came out the first play of the game, we called the play on the sideline, we go out, we don't get the motion right, we burn a timeout. We get on defense, we get beat because of miscommunication. Then we get warned because guys keep yapping. We get a penalty. It gets sloppy. What I said to our team was, Don't allow this moment to be too big for you. Allow yourself to be in the moment, enjoy the moment, be poised, accept it, embrace it, because you're prepared for it. You're able to have swagger. For us swagger is preparation and confidence in the things you're doing. That's how we define swagger. You're prepared for this and you're confident in doing so. When you walk onto that field, play that way. We got a little high early on. Emotionally were kind of distraught for a minute. I said to our team at halftime, We're up 17-7, and here are the things we did wrong, and here are some things that we did well. Here is what I want to help you with. In the midst of you trying to figure this out, how to handle this moment, look to me, don't flinch, look to me, and I'll help you. I'll help you throughout this. We're a young team. We're competing for something that we had never had before or in position to get before. I wanted to give a calming effect to our team. So when that happened, I couldn't flinch. So we muffed the ball, looked at it, Okay, here we go. We answered the bell the next series, went down and scored, and scored yet again. I thought it was right on time for us. Q. You have one more game to look forward to. But it was Senior Day. How would you describe this senior class? COACH WILSON: From the very beginning when we honored our seniors on the field, I'm standing out there with them and their parents, watching mothers cradle in their son's chests and cry with tears running down their eyes, I'm so proud of you, thank you. The players likewise as they gave their mothers and fathers the football. A precious moment that sometimes people take for granted. What an accomplishment to conclude four, five years of college. Every one of our seniors by the end of this fall, by January, this semester, will have graduated 100%. What an honor. How special is that? Let's give them a round of applause. 100%. All of that went through my mind as I watched them embrace their mothers and their fathers with an accomplishment of being a college graduate and positioning themselves to finish this season in a grand fashion. Yeah, that was our thought process. Q. I want to ask you a little bit about the receivers. They went out and really made some plays today. Talk a little bit about them as a group. COACH WILSON: They did. Any time a team makes a conscientious decision to stop your run, you know, we like to brand ourselves with physicality. This opponent came out and was determined to not let us just run the ball. We had some spurts here and there, but it was tough sledding. We needed to throw the ball and be effective in doing so. I thought at times we got in tempo and hurry up, went down the field, and at times we slowed it up, did a good job of managing the game and putting us in position where our defense didn't have to play the entire game. What's the time of possession on that sheet? Q. 38. COACH WILSON: Yeah, almost 40 minutes of a 60-minute game. That's kind of the way we like it, to keep it away from them, get first downs that eventually become touchdowns and field goals. I thought our receivers did a great job. At one point we were a little inconsistent. We dropped a couple in the first quarter. But they bounced back and were able to go down. Q. Was that your first Gatorade bath? COACH WILSON: No, it's not the first one. Cold (laughter). To see our student-athletes smile from one ear to another, and I'm trying to celebrate with them saying, No, it's you, you guys did it. Pick him up. No, don't y'all pick me up, you're going to drop me (laughter). I'm tiny compared to some of them. They just kind of tossed me up, put me on their shoulders. I'm like, Put me down before I fall (laughter). No, it was certainly gratifying and fulfilling to enjoy that moment with our team. At that time I'm looking for my family. I can't find them. They're in one spot, I'm in the other. Then I'm looking for Dr. Romo, Lynn Hickey. I can't find them. Finally I bump into Lynn. She was wandering like a nomad. I'm going to share this with you. Wherever I can't find my kids, I make a call. To our team, I yelp. With my kids, I make another call. It goes (making sound). I made that sound and my daughter heard it. In the midst of all those people, I waited till the music went low. I blurted it out. She heard it and found me. I got to get a call for y'all (laughter). Q. Back-to-back losing seasons, did you think when you took this job last year you could turn things around so quickly? COACH WILSON: Well, they put it in my contract that we had to get to a bowl game (laughter). You know what, we were very optimistic about it. We thought we could do those things. Once we got here, just had so much support from our administration. They would say things to me like, I know you're hopeful, coach, but just take your time, it's okay. I said, I know we're going bowling. Then we got the announcement that Dr. Romo was leaving. I go to his office, have lunch, me, him, his lovely wife. I say, Okay, Doc, here is the deal. We got to get you to a bowl game. No, you just do your best. We got to get you to a bowl game. I shared that with our team as we feel. To be able to take an opportunity where someone entrusts you with their program, to turn it around, to put us in a position to be able to do the things we were able to do tonight, and very well could have won several more games. But we'll take this in year one. Fulfilling. Fulfilling. Yes, I did think we had a chance. I thought we had a chance. I didn't know. At times it was a little gloomy. We continued to chop wood, forge ahead. Very thankful we were able to be in the position we're in now. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|