UNIVERSITY OF TULSA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 5, 2024

Cooper Legas

Press Conference

Army 49, Tulsa 7.

Q. Preparing for this offense, what did you think about seeing it head on today and how fast they play?

COOPER LEGAS: It wasn't nothing that we didn't practice or didn't prepare for. Nothing that we didn't expect. It didn't look any faster or anything. It just falls back on us and reading our keys.

Q. It may be hard to know without looking at film, but they threw it six times for 160 yards. On most of those, were they things that you had seen and it was just misplayed for one reason or another, or were you guys surprised?

COOPER LEGAS: Yeah, I think all of us came in so worried about stopping the run, which we did well the first half very well, and we just weren't expecting pass that much, and they came out and passed the ball like a lot more than they have all season.

Caught us by surprise a little bit, made us start playing a little bit slower in the run, and I think that's why some of the runs started hitting at the end, because guys were tuned into, like, their keys, so they're not hitting the run as hard. Just stuff like that.

Q. What did you see from your group in the second half? This is the second straight week where you've struggled in the second half to get off the field. Is there anything you can put your finger on?

COOPER LEGAS: I see hunger in a lot of dudes. A lot of the young dudes, you see they come in there and they're hungry. They want to play. Then you also see the opposite sometimes.

I think it's more of a -- like we can't get down on ourselves, and no matter what the score is, just keep playing.

Coach Wilson always talks about competitive stamina, and just playing, competing every play no matter the score. And I mean, I don't know if I would even put competitive stamina like that. I think it's more of, like, how bad do you hate to lose. And I just think that we need to get back to work and go on to the next week.

Q. You've been around a lot of college football. How do you keep two bad losses from becoming a bad season?

COOPER LEGAS: You just go on to the next one. A coach I used to have would always say, focus on the route, not the fruit. That's basically focusing on us, the team, and just growing. Like you don't see what happens below the surface. If you're worried about the fruit on top of the tree, the roots could be dwindling or even -- but if you just water it every day, it keeps getting bigger and bigger.

You might not see the progress then, but the progress will show. We've just got to keep watering and focusing on those roots.

Q. I know you said it wasn't something you hadn't prepared for, but how difficult is it completely changing defensive structure in the middle of the season for an offense you don't normally face?

COOPER LEGAS: It's definitely difficult. The first day or two, everybody was like, whoa, this is just way different. I mean, there's motions, shifts. You're seeing so much stuff. Whenever you get it simplified down like on about Thursday, it seemed like everybody had it down pretty well.

Q. You're exactly halfway through the season, six games left. You have a bye week. Now is a time when you can reflect on the season. I imagine it could go one of two ways. Are you confident this team is going to --

COOPER LEGAS: Yeah, I love these dudes. I think we all love each other, and we want to play for each other, play hard for each other. A lot of the dudes on the team -- we're a young team, but there's a lot of dudes on the team where it's our last year.

We all need to get together, all the old guys, and we need to see what we need to do together.