UNIVERSITY OF TULSA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 31, 2023

Kevin Wilson

Press Conference

Tulsa-42, Arkansas-7

THE MODERATOR: Coach will give an opening statement, and then we'll open it up for questions.

KEVIN WILSON: Appreciate everyone being here. For sure a struggled start. I think we've worked really, really hard to take care of the ball, which we didn't early.

A couple of situations I think were not great play calls, getting a feel for what they're doing.

Put the quarterback in the bad situation, the first one that Braylon had. Running a perimeter play with a hook and a throw, and their linebacker undercut. Loose with the ball on a really good kick return. Then had another fumble.

I thought our defense did a phenomenal job weathering the storm because you lose three turnovers, and you get a chance to really get snowballing.

And, of course, we were able to hold the line of scrimmage, not give up some plays. They scored the first drive. They settled down. I thought they had a couple of drives I would like to see them be maybe a little cleaner when we them pinned down a couple of times where we could have created better offensive field position.

I thought the offense did a good job a couple of times with bad field position and punched it out and had a couple of long drives.

Unfortunately, Braylon got an ankle injury. I don't think it's severe, severe, but enough that he really couldn't put some weight on it tonight. We'll see how it goes here from day-to-day, week-to-week. I don't think it's -- I think they've already X-rayed it. I think it's just some degree of a sprain. We'll see if it's high or low and figure that out.

We've been telling you we thought Cardell was a good player. Nice for Roman to get in and keep complementing him. We had Kittleman and Kirk Francis behind, but we liked Cardell.

Our plan was to put Cardell probably in the third or fourth drive just to give him some experience early in the game because we think he is a very gifted quarterback as well.

I think in fairness to Braylon versus Cardell, we started not knowing exactly what we were going to see a couple of times, and I think we put Braylon in a couple of tough spots. I think we settled down and were running it a little bit better by the time Cardell got in there, and he was able to settle down, and his surrounding cast played pretty well and made some plays that helped him out a lot.

It was a good win. A lot of errors. Some things to clean up on. A lot of things that we're trying to be not a part of our game that we have to learn to take out.

But it was a good start, and proud of the work. Excited to get the win. Excited to be 1-0.

Q. Did the offense change very much when Cardell came in?

KEVIN WILSON: We kind of all through preseason he runs the ball. He does have good feet. Not quite as big as Braylon size-wise. Actually sometimes he's really maybe as accurate or more accurate a passer. He throws a really good ball, but is athletic.

He is young. Like I said, nice start. Everyone thins he is great, and I say, You've got a lot of work to do. We're just starting, learning how to play.

Same with Braylon. It's really his, what, fifth start, so even though he has a little more time on task, but we like both those guys.

In the spring we toyed with both of them on the field together, but right now we'll just see where Braylon is day-to-day, week-to-week. I don't think it will be long. I don't think there's going to be a controversy because we were planning on playing Cardell too, so we'll just let them play.

And don't think because we're down anybody. I think we have two really good quarterbacks. It was nice to see -- we're counting on Braylon being awesome. It was nice that Cardell came in and had a really solid first start or first go.

Q. What did you think of the way Cardell handled the whole situation?

KEVIN WILSON: Good, but in some of the practices he has been that way. He had some streaks in practice where he has made some throws, like, wow, just because we're back and forth, ones on, twos on, ones on, twos on.

We did a lot of good-on-good against each other. So when we're playing a game, it's like you come off the field. When you're practicing, somebody is out there the whole time, and there's been a lot of practices where in the practice you've seen him ignite where that's a good run of three, four, five great passes, great shots, great plays.

He is still young enough. He can be a little inconsistent, just young, a little immature. We're just learning how to -- he is so talented, but so young. He is trying to figure out how quarterbacks really need to prepare, and that's a learned skill.

I mean, Braylon is still doing that. The way to bring the energy to practice because when the quarterback is on point, everybody takes off. And when he is a little bit off, it just sucks air out of everybody. At the same time they need the surrounding cast playing well.

But he has had some great runs in practice, and no one in that locker room is surprised. That's still probably about as good as you can play, but I don't think anybody is surprised like, wow, that was luck. No, he is a good player. He is a really good player. And so is Braylon.

Q. Overall impression of the offensive line so far I?

KEVIN WILSON: They're getting there. We're learning how to come off the ball. Tight ends are complementing too. Luke McGary playing a lot as a freshman. Ethan Hall, cowboy out there rolling around.

We played about four, five tight ends. Did a little two tight ends on the field. Nice to see the young receivers Marquis and Devan make plays. We are needing those guys to grow.

We need Carl Chester and Rempert, and Malachai has been a little dinged up, back in the mix. Going to get Presley a couple of touches.

So we're still young. We're still growing. That line does a really good job, but I think we've got some young players, but I think we're going to be as good on offense and defense as these fifth and six year guys want to be, whether it be Darrell Simpson or Bryce Bray or Will Farniok or Kai Herbert or whether it be Joe Anderson and Kendarin Ray and Ben Kopenski and those guys.

I think we're going to be as these good old guys want to play, and I thought the old guys had a really good start.

Q. Talk about, again, about defense. Kopenski, Ostroski made some good plays. Talk about the way they played.

KEVIN WILSON: We let the quarterback out a couple of times, which is unfortunate. We're going to play some athletic quarterbacks, but it's nice to get some pressure.

We did a fair amount of team pass and team blitz to try to create the feel of getting to the quarterback, and we have to continue to do that. You have to stop the run and try to get them one-dimensional, and then you have to try to get after that quarterback.

But we let him out a few times. There was a couple of Q draws and scrambles and things you would like to do better, and we played about eight, nine of those freshmen D-line were in there. R.J. Jackson, Tyler Rich. I thought Jayden Simon made a great play on the screen pass running down field with great effort. Sometimes those big guys don't do that. That was great to see.

Vontroy Malone, getting him out there. Nice to see Kulkin making some plays, Coleton Smith making some plays, those backers. So we're going to play a lot of guys and a lot of those guys played well tonight and need to keep it going.

Q. You mentioned you gave the defense credit for the way they hung in there after the tough start, but just overall both sides or all of it, the fact that there wasn't -- didn't seem to be panic after that initial crazy first six minutes.

KEVIN WILSON: Yeah, and I don't know. I didn't want it to go that way, but we had talked a lot about we had practiced so hard. And you're right. I even used the old 38 Special song today about you have to hold on loosely, but don't let go, don't squeeze too tightly, don't squeeze, don't try too hard.

At the same time you have to be focused, and you have to go and cut it loose. It's not going to be perfect, you know, and it would have been a heck of a lot better if we hadn't had all those negative plays, but sometimes you're playing as well as you can, and how do you just play the next play? How do you weather the storm?

We talked about it. Now they experienced it. Hopefully we'll gain some confidence that when we do make a glitch, you do mess up, can we move on? We'll come back. We'll talk about it . We'll correct it. We'll look at how we can be better. We'll look at how we can practice it better. We'll look at things we can do calling plays on both sides to help them.

But we called some bad plays. Our players made some bad plays, but you keep playing through it. I thought our guys battled through it pretty good.

Q. Talking about you mentioned the defense a little bit there. Third down defense seemed to be somewhat of an issue early. Felt like it got better as the game went along. Did you feel like there was one area in particular that was maybe causing some issues there on that, or did you notice anything?

KEVIN WILSON: I don't know. Off the top of my head I think early couple of times we played some soft coverage and they hit a couple of out routes in front.

We had a third and long corner route we just made a poor play on the ball here in the third quarter I think it was. I think a couple of times we let the quarterback out of the pocket when we had them, but once we settled down and stayed in the rush lanes that covered, we got some good stops.

There's a couple of things you need to do, and conversion football is a big deal. Third down stops, third down conversions, red zone stops, red zone conversions win games.

It was nice. I don't know if we had technically the red zone stops, but we had some midfield stops where we're getting into that four-down territory, and we were able to make some stops, and that was nice to see. We need to build on, and we need to be better at it.

Q. You mentioned red zone conversions. That was my next one. That was my next one. You guys were scoring touchdowns instead of kicking field golds when you got down into the red zone. I would imagine that's got to be a big emphasis for you, so it was probably nice to see that as well.

KEVIN WILSON: We had our plan to win. Scoring zone is a big deal. It's not yards. It was nice we had yards. You can look and say we had balance. Balance to me means if you have to throw, you throw, if you have to run, you can run.

It's not equal yardage. It's not balance. It's your ability to execute and be reasonably clean, but you have to make big plays, which we made a big one. It helped us get going. It was a huge play. We're backed up. Made a huge play. We punched it out, had a couple of good runs. We teed it up, go a nice play action.

You've got to score. Field goals don't win a lot of football games. You don't win 17-13 a lot anymore. You have to score 35, 38, 40 points to have a chance a lot of times, and that means you have to score touchdowns. That doesn't mean you always go for it on fourth down.

We do a fair amount of team blitz. We do a fair amount of team pass. We do a fair amount of third down work. We do a fair amount of red zone work.

It's in our plan to win. It's a part of our preseason. It was a part of our spring. It was a part of our summer. It was a part of our weekly plan. Today we did okay with it, but that's, again, our plan to win, playing good defense.

Turnovers, we didn't do that very well. Red zone and then kicking game. I thought our kicking game went bad tonight. We made some solid plays in the kick game.

Q. Bob Stoops was here tonight. What did it mean for you to see him here, and did you have a chance to talk to him before?

KEVIN WILSON: Quickly before the game he sent me a good luck text. A couple of friends of mine that came with him were my neighbors, and I called them today and said, Hey, now are you guys coming up? I think Coach got wind because they're all kind of friends.

He hit me the other day and said they were coming. It was great to see him. I think we had Toby Keith tag along with him as well. It was kind of nice to have some -- I just told them they couldn't be skunking me for Coach Venables and getting a scouting report.

But I saw him before the game, and he said, Hey, I'm proud of you. I will say this, when I worked for him a long time ago, he said he was going to retire at 55, and I'm going to go and watch you guys coach. So I'm glad he got to do that. Unfortunately, I wish I was younger than 61 when that happened, but here we are.

Q. How was it for you the first time being head coach in a while?

KEVIN WILSON: It was fun. I think early I was a little -- maybe out of rhythm, getting a feel for the play calls. I think I hurt us with a couple of choices.

Again, at the same time we had a hard time game planning this team because it was hard to watch. The coach was at Monroe, but he was special teams. Then the year before he was defense. Then he was somewhere at defensive coordinator and came from this school. Then you're watching the last year team play.

So it was really, really hard. Earlier our thought was try to do as simple or sound as we could to not put us in bad situations and a couple of my calls early actually did put Braxton, I think, in a couple of bad situations.

You know, but it was -- I mean, it was fun. I was just us clicking back with the defense. Four down, I think they're going for it. I'm pretty good at watching offense and calling a running pass out there a little bit.

I thought we settled down, and I think the team settled down. I think I settled down, and we had a good run there for three quarters.

Appreciate everybody being here. Have a great Labor Day weekend.