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UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 12, 2011

Manny Diaz

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: Yeah, this game it starts up front again. The different challenge that UCLA provides is that they will have the speed to be explosive. One of the reasons why we're off to a good start defensively is that we have not given up the big play, and that's a big part of our philosophy.
But UCLA will be the sternest challenge in that they have backs that can go the distance, they have wide outs that can go the distance, and they have tight ends that can stretch the field and make big plays down the field. This by far will be the most explosive unit that we have gone against. I guess a mistake this week could be really more crucial than perhaps it's been in the last two.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: Yeah, they do what they do, and they've done it against everybody they've played against last, they've done it in the first couple games this year. They've got a very sophisticated running attack. They do a lot of things to ask questions of the defense, and that's basically what they're doing. There's constantly a question being asked due to a motion or a guy running behind the line when the ball is snapped. And again, the danger with them is that you don't have to get the answer wrong very often to get beaten because, boom, whether it's the quarterback keeping the ball, whether it's the back shooting through one of the inside gaps and they can go all the way. Low margin for error against this bunch.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: It doesn't. To me it's irrelevant because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. We've got to get somebody in the A gap and the B gap and the C gap regardless of what happens. We'll just work on us and we'll just work on -- because habits to me is always better than inspiration. We'll just work on playing our stuff and being where we're supposed to be and spend a lot more time doing that.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: No, not in any way, shape or form because to me the game is just all about grinding out victories. That's just -- and that's regardless of what you're getting out of the other two phases of the team. It's our responsibility to hold a team to a small number regardless of what's going on.
The way I saw the game, I felt like our offense won the game for us because they stuck with the plan and continued to run the football. And because they kept running the football, we stayed off the field in the second half and we were fresh in the fourth quarter more so than they were.
I thought the game on Saturday was an outstanding team victory, and I thought our defensive guys saw that, as well.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: Yeah, he did. He did well on the sack and helped us on some other plays inside. You know, now the next step will be can he handle the success because we all still have a lot of room to grow. But he changed us in there a little bit to be sure.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: He did. We're getting there. You know, I talked last week about the need to go, and we went a little better I thought in the front seven. I thought we obviously attacked the line of scrimmage better. We attacked better versus the run game, which of course has been a big point of emphasis.
There's still an entire 'nother level, there's another gear that this deal can go in, and that's what we're working on this week.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: Well, Ashton has great quickness, and that's a great skill, especially for what we want to do defensively because we do move a lot. We do some stunting and things like that.
He's got good pad leverage. He plays low to the ground, and he can make a play. He's a guy that can get back there and make a play in the backfield. I think Coach Davis has done a really good job of working on him, on his technique, and continued to stay after him. He's a guy that we feel like can be a really good player for us.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: It is. I mean, that's -- obviously we want to all be singing out of the same hymnbook, but that really is the deal. There are certain things that we have got to be. There are certain things that we have got to hang our hat on. This Texas football team has started to develop an identity on both sides of the ball and as a team. The ability to run it and the ability to stop the run is one of the first things we want to hang our hat on. Our guys are starting to believe -- Saturday night was sort of a testimony to our plan to win, on how we win a football game. When you come out with a victory like that, it's very gratifying as a coach because you preach to the players but ultimately you have to see the results to back up what you're telling them, and I thought Saturday was Exhibit A in what we've been preaching.

Q. Talk about playing in the Rose Bowl. Have you been there?
COACH DIAZ: I have not been in the Rose Bowl stadium. I mean, the Rose Bowl is one of the great venues in all of sports. I mean, back to when the NFL played there, you just think of all the NFL Films when the Super Bowl was always played at the twilight hour. It is like -- if an artist could draw a place to have a football team, you would think that's where it would be with the mountains in the background. Super Bowls would always start in the daylight and the game would end at night. There's a lot of history there. We'll be taking a lot of players to that stadium that aren't aware of all that history.
We'll be taking a lot of players who haven't been on an airplane before. They'll be wondering what the fasten seatbelt light means more so than who scored a touchdown at which end of the Rose Bowl. But it's a great place to play. It's why you come to Texas, to play in games like this.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: We'll tell them how to fasten their seatbelts. We'll tell them the buckle goes in and give them the speech. We'll have to rely on our older guys because we do pack a lot of youth on this football team, and how they manage a road game and how they manage the distractions of the airplane trip and doing all that type of stuff, we'll go to the stadium on Friday so hopefully we can get the looking around out of the way the day before. But ultimately it's just -- there's going to be an A gap and a B gap and a C gap in the Rose Bowl, and we've got to have somebody in each one of them on both sides, so we just have to focus on us and just doing our job, playing the game.

Q. (Indiscernible.)
COACH DIAZ: They'll probably be real quiet during ascent. During the first plane trip of the year there's not a lot of chatter going on when the plane takes off.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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