UNIVERSITY OF TULSA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 29, 2024

Kevin Wilson

Press Conference

Tulsa 62, Northwestern State 28

KEVIN WILSON: Injury tonight with Jeremiah. Get an eval, but chances he got his knee, so might have lost him. Just see how it goes. That's unfortunate. He just transferred; doing well. Force us to probably play some of these young guys as receiver to keep going forward.

Other than that, came out of the game healthy. Were able to get a lot of the guys plays. Gave up some cheap things. So we played well, but so many things to improve on. The field goal protection was poor, snaps, had a fielding issue on a punt. I didn't fit a play in that one big run. We give up a blocked field goal for touchdown. We fumble the ball. Give it to them down there. Then they had the one drive.

Trying to remember what happened on the drive. Weren't trying to be greedy. I thought we struggled early, not running the ball well. Had a couple big plays in the kicking game, punt return, kickoff return, but gave up some plays.

So to be a really good team, and I think we got a chance to be much better, we just got off to a pretty good start. For sure I hope those guys can see there is a lot we can clean up and we can play so much better. To me that's exciting and encouraging, too.

I know opponent we're playing is kind of starting over a little bit and coaching staff and guys have always done well, but the kids were battling hard and I would say a little bit ugly early. Settled in and found some runs. Kirk played pretty well. Guys caught it pretty decently. A lot of things to clean up but a lot of good out there and it was a great first start.

Q. If you could talk about some of the young guys, obviously Avant had a 100 yard return, and just some of the highlights.

KEVIN WILSON: Yeah, he and Lloyd. Lloyd and Viron both played well. Lloyd, solid running back. I think you saw Billy Jack, Billy Jackson and Anthony Watkins I thought ran hard and did well, too.

The beautiful thing for me is competition in the bench. Those guys are competing. I think they're learning like we had decent balance. Not every game we're going to have that amount of yardage total, but you like to run it. We're not trying to make everybody happy, but the more people that play -- the comment we're making to coaches, if you're playing a freshman in this game, I think that means you're playing them.

Last year we played some guys early in mop-up games. As the year went along they didn't play enough and they wanted to be redshirted. Kirk didn't play any early and played a lot of the last four games. We had some guys play a few plays early.

I told the coaches, if you're putting a freshman out there, we're committing him to special teams, getting him on the field, and then he has to play well and keep earning it. All the young receivers played.

I don't think we got Jackson forward. Luke is a solid player. Conner Vaughn I been telling you, he is the most athletic and best guy out there. I know sometimes you think I'm making stuff up, but I'm actually pretty honest. He's got talent. Looking forward the word consistency. He didn't make a play today. Surprised me. I just want to see that the next day and the next day.

So it was nice to -- you know, some of those sophomore guys really picked it up will with. I thought the transfer guys came in. The linebacker guys doing well. Steptoe showed some things outside again. Unfortunate with Jeremiah. You saw the quarterbacks. Nice to get those guys going. I'm not trying to have a revolving door. Kirk played really well, but there is some athleticism with those other guys.

So we'll just try to keep figuring it out, keep the team getting better. I think we got some veterans that I think have bought in and really care. I think we have some transfers that blended in well and some talented young kids. It's a good mix on our football team right now.

Q. You had three transfers that started on the offensive line today. How would you say they played?

KEVIN WILSON: Yeah, we got a lot of work to do there. They're all kind of young. Ender is an older guy, Aguilar, but Jacob Waller is a third-year player, redshirt sophomore, and Kaden Stanton is a redshirt freshman. Then we are out there playing -- I saw Jack Tanner out there playing as a true freshman playing. Bennet Ringleb is a redshirt fresh. Kasen Carpenter is a redshirt freshman.

There is a bunch of first and second year players, and we need those guys to play like they're -- we're going on the road next week to Arkansas State. It's a tough, veteran team, a team that plays hard, and we got some guys first game on the road, first start on the road, and I need them to act like they're 21 and 22 of 19.

Got some growing up to do there. Coach Fry is a great coach. Those guys, tight ends that we talked about help that offensive line group. To me an offensive line is not worth a darn until the end of the year and you look back and see if they showed up every week and create something for you.

You're not really bad right now and you're not really -- offensive line is like a boxer. Boxers go for months and train for that. Offensive line, you have to build the volume of blocking and coming off the ball. To me it's like you gain momentum as the season goes if you're good.

These are young guys. There is a lot of work to do. Got to stay healthy and keep them coming. We got a lot to work to do. Going to be a challenged next week, the following week. Going to be challenged significantly.

Q. Did you think that like Michael was talking about the O-line, did they just kind of overwhelm Northwestern as the game went on physically or did their execution get better?

KEVIN WILSON: Well, a little bit -- I don't know about that. I think we went to some things that worked. First of all, weren't sure what we're going to get because you're guessing what they did last year. Okay, new coaches, although D-line coach was there. What they did at the previous school.

So you're guessing and jockeying a little bit. Early we went to some kick-out plays that we didn't kick out well on the edge and it bounced. Didn't get much. Inside plays, got no movement.

Finally got in. As a matter of fact it was Switzer, our receivers coach. Said, Coach, let's start running a little bit of stretch on these guys.

Anthony popped the one for touchdown and we started working the edges a little bit more and that helped us a little bit. So a little bit more of a -- we just had to adjust and the kids did a good job with it.

Q. I think after a year and a half of Presley questions you got fatigued on that topic. Tonight I thought the fourth down catch was big time.

KEVIN WILSON: That was the best play he's made since I've been here. He still struggles with confidence, pressure on himself. We got him where we wanted to get him some touches just to get the confidence and the mojo going.

But he hasn't made that play and we hadn't made that play a lot that was challenged. Maybe thrown a little bit behind. He's a smaller guy. That was maybe individually the best play all night. That was great for him and hopefully that can springboard him a little bit as we keep moving.

Q. Missed cues on special teams today, the field goal, that block for a touchdown, missed PAT cue, few other things. Touch on that and like what you thought of that play.

KEVIN WILSON: Well, disappointed because we spend a fair amount of time. So disappointing there, the protection. We always say -- and we go against rush, but it's never as hard in practices and games. It's like a different tempo. They come through you like Coach Saban's deal. They just come flying through you there.

You know, all we talked about was you don't want to put it on tape because once you do you're going to get challenged every week until you answer the call. As coaches you can talk about it, but for example our kicker with the wind was doing this one time. When he kicked it out of bounds I said, hey, do it again.

Finally he kicked a great one into the wind and I said, you got to learn what it feels like to flop. Once you flop then you can come back. It's okay in this game -- sometimes you got to go out there as a player and coach and fall flat butt on your face, boom, and then you grow from that.

We got a young team, some transfers, some guys trying to figure things out. We got a lot of work to do on special teams. Made a couple neat special teams plays. We got to win the special teams. You don't give up 14 points and win games. We're lucky there.

Q. You mentioned the transfers. I thought what you did was really good tonight was pressure the ball with Myles and (indiscernible) and Potter.

KEVIN WILSON: Correct. And again, we're not -- each year I guess will be different. We're building the program through the high school development, but when we target a transfer, when we want to target a guy that we think is going to fir this campus and this academic environment and what we need, but also target at a position where we need help.

For example last spring, with Cardell injured and only having Kirk available plus Kimmelman, I thought we needed to get Cooper or someone I can like Cooper in here. He's been doing well, so we are going to use him and play him.

You saw Steptoe out there playing. Lost some receivers. It's very sad that we lost Jeremiah, because I felt as an old guy he could help us weather the storm with the young kids coming. I mean, I don't think there is a transfer here that wasn't to on the two-deep or played a significant amount tonight. Our kicker, long snapper, all those kids played.

Q. Jeremiah was on the special teams play.

KEVIN WILSON: Yes, punt return.

Q. I think you had 22 plays double digit yards or more. 8 of them 20 yards or more and then the two long returns. Do you think you'll be a big-play type of offense and team?

KEVIN WILSON: Well, we were last year; that's last year. But to score points it's hard to methodically over and over go down the field. It is interesting.

I had a hard time with that beeping thing tonight and headphone and talking to the quarterback. It was like harder than I wanted it to be.

But I think you might see some games slow down because you're talking to quarterbacks and maybe huddling up because of all the people that have done such a good job of watching video and getting your signals.

So I think the game slows down, but I don't think because the game is slowing down you just don't go four yards, four yards. I know teams typically play a lot of plays like that, but the score -- most scoring drives have of chunk play of 15 or more yards. It's hard to go 6-8 and 3-5 and 6-8 and 3-5 and score.

It's hard to do that, especially when you're playing really strong teams. So you got to have the big plays. One-on-one pass, the play by Presley was a huge play. Popping some runs. If you pop those runs, I don't think anybody would notice I bet you those receivers were downfield blocking. Some of those runs that got 10 and 12 and 15, it's always not the O-line. They might create a crazy, but it's those tight end and perimeter guys.

So I don't think we're necessarily trying to bombs away it. But got to get the ball in space. For some reason in college football, and we struggled tonight, there is this thing called tackling that people struggle with. The more time you can make people tackle you, you have a chance. You have a chance. If you can make people tackle you, sooner or later you'll make some plays.

Q. On Connor Vaughn, can you take us through -- you mentioned consistency. With his personal journey, when did you really start to trust him and what did you see?

KEVIN WILSON: I still don't. I mean, I saw it today. What am I going to get tomorrow in the meeting room? He reminds me of my youngest son, which I love to death, but you just got to -- you don't want to choke him, but you got to keep your thumb on him all the time. You got to be guy enough to think how a guy is thinking.

So he's a guy tomorrow I'll probably be sitting at his 9:00 class making sure he showed up, how you doing, good to see you. He's a great kid, a talented kid. He is just learning how to become a man. Sometimes that takes a little time. That's our job a little bit.

He's coming through it. Again, like I always tell guys, if you're worth a crap, we're going to do it again. First time I think I said it was Ryan Brules (phonetic). About a buck 30 in the first game. I said if you work the flip, let's do it next week. Let's see how many times we can do this.

That's a slogan we got here. If you're good, you keep showing up. I'm not surprised anything he did. I just want to see if we can keep him grounded and keep him coming.

Q. Penalties were a previous problem around here for a long time, several years. I covered a lot of ten-penalty opening night football games. Tonight, 5 for 45. Do you think it's a team that will be pretty consistently clean?

KEVIN WILSON: That will be nice. And we may -- but typically conference championship teams are more penalized than other teams because they're aggressive and flying around, playing coverage tight and they get a couple cheap holding calls. Been multiple years.

So the worst thing is the negative play where it's a sock or a lost run. It's a penalty, except for a few penalties you at least get the down over. This day and age, chunk play or medium sized play, you can get back on schedule.

We talk a lot about being clean. We want to be clean. But for example, you can't jump the ball as a D-lineman if you don't jump offsides. Coach Stoops taught me that.

You got to be careful what your emphasis is. We emphasize hands inside the point of attack; we emphasize on every kicking play. There are 8 referees, 10 people blocking. Every guy is watching one guy one-on-one except two guys, so if you hold they're not going to miss that call.

We emphasize some strategies of how to minimize calls or how to get calls. But good teams don't turn it over and good teams don't make these mistakes a lot.

Q. Did you get enough of a look at it to know whether the targeting was unfortunate or just stupid penalty?

KEVIN WILSON: Live, it was obvious he was down and he pulled up and went down, and I thought right away it was targeted. He's a great kid. I think he was just fired up and not thinking.

That's unfortunate. But we'll get him. Fortunately got this one. Penalties in the first half, so have him back next week. Ty Marks had to sit out the first half of this game because he had targeting last year in the second half of the East Carolina game. That was the part of the penalty of two targeting called we've had.

Q. Coming in you said that we would see all three quarterbacks. Kirk is the only one that threw. Was that by design?

KEVIN WILSON: No, trying to be respectful. You know, when we got into the fourth quarter I was hoping we score -- I hoping to get one more drive for Kirk and get those guys sooner, and then we popped the kickoff return back.

All of a sudden not much time left. Then the score got kind of big. I'm looking like -- I think I looked one time and saw 299; thought, be nice to have 300 day running game, but if you throw a hitch right now...

The initial plan was to run the offense and maybe do a quarterback run or two or read or two. We were going to throw it, but the game got such I didn't think it was the ethically right way to go about that.

Q. What you saw of Kirk you plan to rotate him moving forward?

KEVIN WILSON: Those other guys -- we just got to be smart, keep him in rhythm, and I just -- you know, not trying to make him happy. I just think they can help us win. It was hard this game because it's really hard to game plan. Wasn't sure what we were getting.

Sometime when you're doing that you got to minimize how much you practice because you can get all over the place and be very dysfunctional.

We didn't want to overdo some things. Where I think now again, Arkansas State, coaches have been there. Maybe we can hang our hat and find some things that will be run and pass to use those guys.

Especially first couple games, keep guys engaged and fresh. Historically most teams need more than one quarterback as the season plays out. I think you look at those tail backs, receivers, tight ends, linebackers, D-linemen, good kids that need -- DBs. You got good kid that need to play. It's my job to make sure that the quarterback doesn't get out of rhythm. Kirk is smart enough -- when our egos are checked and we will see if we can manage as we go.

We're just trying to win. I think Kirk is outstanding. I think those other two can help us win.

Happy Labor Day and happy birthday to my wife and daughter.