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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 14, 2011Tommy TubervilleCOACH TUBERVILLE: All right. Well, after last Saturday and really the last three weeks of what we've gone through and the team, coaches and obviously fans, everybody seeing what we've all seen, we tried to put all the pieces back together and see what we can do for these last two games. It seems like each week there are some different problems that we have, some different obstacles that we have. But it's not anything that we can't keep improving on and try to make better. We've got things that are just as tough as we go along. Oklahoma State was a very good football team. We felt like we'd get to the second half and we felt like we could score some points, we'd have an opportunity to win the second half. But it seems like the last three games we have gotten off slow. We've made mistakes, and we've been able to put ourselves out of the game pretty quickly, especially that one and the game down at Austin a couple of weeks ago. But as coaches, we look for answers and we talk with players we make changes. Last week we made wholesale changes on the defensive side trying to find some answers of how to stop somebody running the ball and throwing the ball and getting our offense back on the field. I thought defensively at times we looked decent, but we're still a long ways away. But we're looking for answers on offense, because as we know, that's where we've been the strongest, and that's how we've been able to keep in the game or win games. So with that said, we've got a lot of work to do this week with the Missouri team. Going there, they've won five games. There are four teams in this conference that are five and five. So we're all trying to win one or two more games, trying to get to a Bowl game or a better Bowl game as we go. We have two the next two weeks. We played a talented team in Missouri last year. I thought we played one of our better games of the year against Missouri here. We got off to a slow start, but we were able to fight back and get back in the game and make plays and have a chance to win it and win the game. They're a different team, different type of quarterback. They run the ball. They run a lot of different formations. They lost their running back last week to a terrible injury, but actually their starting running back came back this game after having some kind of injury the first of the year. So they were able to replace him. Defensively, they're big and strong, and they run very well. Their defensive line's probably the best that we've seen. They gave us some problems last year at running the ball. Baron Batch had one of his better games. So it will be a huge challenge on both sides of the ball. Going there, television, 2:30, but we've just got to worry about ourselves. We've got to find some way to regain confidence after three games that we're just not very good on coaching or playing. That's what we'll do this week. Get a game plan together. We looked a little slow last week. I thought we looked a little tired for some reason. We have been cutting back. We may try to do more this week just to get them as fresh as we possibly can. But it's been nine or ten games in a row now. So it's about putting a game plan in. Not worrying too much about techniques and fundamentals. With two games to go, we just got to make sure we get to the game as healthy as possible and have a good game plan and have them fresh, and hopefully start off faster than we did in the past. We lost two players in that game. Saturday we lost Aaron Fisher, he tore his ACL. He'll be operated on in the next couple of days, and we lost Donald Langley. He broke his ankle, and he'll be operated on also. So it's been kind of tough in that area, but guys have just got to step up and play. The tough thing about Aaron was he was pretty much our team captain on special teams, and he had made some crucial third down catches this year. He's really coming on his own. He had hurt his elbow a couple weeks ago and tough to lose him. Of course, Donald is the type of guy that was one of our defensive leaders that had some quickness inside that gave us some pressure on the quarterback and was probably our leading defensive lineman in tackles. We'll have some guys step up and see what happens. Questions? Q. How do you work with the players to regain that swagger they seem to have lost? COACH TUBERVILLE: I don't know whether we had it all year long. The problem was we were inconsistent in a lot of the games early. Then we get to a game and play very well against Oklahoma, sometimes you get overconfident. Sometimes you lose that edge in terms of going, hey, we've got to go play our best every game to win, but it's different. Each group's different. We've got to have good practices. Again, I think the biggest thing this week is to make it fun. Get them to the game where they've got that energy to play with passion. Then hopefully we can get some momentum. We talk about emotion. It looks like at times we don't have emotion. Well, it's hard to play with emotion when you're 25 points behind. It's almost impossible. So we've got to play better on both sides. It's not -- offense, obviously, hasn't played nearly as well as they played early in the year. Defensively we've been up and down. I would say there haven't been a lot of games where we've played a game where we came out and said, hey, man, that was a great defensive game, haven't done it in two years, so other than maybe the Missouri game last year when we really played well for three quarters. Hopefully we've got enough to dig deep. Some of the players that haven't played much can step in and play in these positions where we've had injuries and make us better. But Saturday, with a team like Oklahoma State, you turn the ball over. We go three-and-out, which is like a turnover for us, and then we turn the ball over three times in pretty much the first quarter and a half. It brings down any momentum that you think you could ever, ever regain against one of the top teams in the country. We've got to create our own energy. It's got to be from out on the field, playing and making something good happen. Q. You said that sometimes you can get overconfident. Do you think that that's what happened after the Oklahoma game? COACH TUBERVILLE: Well, I don't know whether overconfidence is the right word after the Oklahoma game. We're coming back and playing a team that everybody predicted us to win. They can read papers like everybody else. We played well. As good as I've seen a team play. Then we come home and play, and I think we let overconfident or we let our guard down, going out, let's get this done, and get it done very quickly, and we didn't even come close to that. I don't think we've regained that. For some reason, sometimes when you lose that momentum and you lose that edge, you're still searching. You go back and you're searching for the same thing that happened against Oklahoma, and it hasn't even been close to occurring. Q. Are you happy with the offensive play calling? COACH TUBERVILLE: Pardon? Q. Are you happy with the offensive play calling? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, it's the same play calling we've had for two years. We're not an offense that's very complicated. Everything we do is all formations and adjusting to what other people do. Most of it comes from the quarterback. We call a lot of plays from the sideline, and it's a run-pass combination. Whatever they do, we go to the one we think fits the best. I think it's good for Seth for what we do to give him some options of making decisions, and there are some things we lock in too. A lot of times it's just about having confidence and making that play and getting it done. I thought early in the season we were getting better and better each week. We got to a point, and when we got to that point, we haven't improved. We've digressed. You can point a lot of fingers at it, but when it all comes back to one thing, the thing that I want to do more, Neal wants to do more, and this team needs to do more is be able to run the football. Not put all the pressure on the guy having to throw the ball down the field. I think DeAndre Washington's going to be a good player. He's learning. He's getting better. He's made some progress. I thought in the Oklahoma game he really came unto his own. But he's got a lot of room for improvement when you've got a freshman back there really taking the load. Q. How important was Eric Stephens to this offense, and how much is this team missing him? COACH TUBERVILLE: Oh, you can't put a price tag on the guy that's been there, done that and played in tough games. The thing about Eric was his pass protection, too. We didn't realize the type of pass protector he was, and not letting the pocket collapse. Not that DeAndre and Aaron Crawford's doing a bad job. It's just a confidence factor of knowing, hey, I see a linebacker coming as a quarterback, I don't have to move. I know that guy's going to come to a stop. He's not going to be able to put pressure on me. It's been different. We've had to change our offense a little bit in terms of the pass plays that we ran with Eric. We don't have as much stuff out of the back field getting the ball to him out in space one-on-one with a linebacker and things. Those things have kind of disappeared for us because just the experience factor is not there. We've tried to do it. We've tried to work on it, and we'll eventually get there with DeAndre; but it took Eric a little while to come up with those things. Q. Coach, in Oklahoma they reported that Keown gave away the final two plays in the first half. Was that investigated at all? COACH TUBERVILLE: Oh, yeah. He calls plays at the line of scrimmage. He calls fronts and stuff like that. I'm sure what they did is they might have picked up on some things that he was saying as they were going and running. It was a couple running plays right at the end of the first half. But no, there wasn't any -- There are a lot of times that we get things from the other team of what they say and how they say it, and you can kind of digest it. After you hear it long enough, you can figure out what's going to happen. No, there was nothing to that. I would imagine when somebody figures something out, they'd feel good about themselves and say, hey, we knew what was coming there. I mean, we know what's coming a lot of times too, but those were two of our better plays in the game. So if they figured it out, it didn't help much -- Q. Would you talk about your own personal style in terms of emotion on the sideline? Some fans want to see the arms flailing and think that's effective. Would you take us through your own personal feelings on showing emotion? COACH TUBERVILLE: Yeah, I think there's times when you need to. There's times when players need to see that. You can't really concentrate a lot if you're jumping around hollering and screaming. I've had my dealings this year with officials, but I think you need to show your frustrations at times and support your players. Hey, you thought that was a penalty also. But most of the time you need to keep everything in perspective in terms of being able to think about game management, time management, all those things that you try to do during the game. You can't do it ranting and raving. You just can't. You've got to have an understanding of what you need to do as a head coach two or three minutes down the road instead of what's happening now, so I'm always thinking ahead. But there are times that I get a little animated, but I try to make sure that the players understand that we're under control. But I'm also talking to guys on the phone all the time too. They're wanting to know, Coach, what do you think about this on defense, when our offense is out on the field. You can't really get into the game. You're more involved in helping them what they're doing and vice versa. You need to flip over, and Coach Brown says, Coach, it's two down in four down territory. So I'm talking on one side and going to the other. So there is a lot more than what people think. You're looking down at the sideline and you're the head coach, and you have several people talking to you at the same time. All that ranting and raving stuff is a little bit overrated in terms of being able to get everything in perspective and do everything you need to do. Q. Coach, can we talk about Missouri? COACH TUBERVILLE: It's a team that if you look at them they've had some success in what they're doing with a new offense. This is not what they did last year. They were more of a throwing team. Their quarterback wasn't a runner. This year it's just totally opposite. They do a lot of the quarterback read, power plays. Then last week they came out in the second half and they go straight, no-huddle, no back, five wide receivers and they spread you all over the field. They're very multiple, so it's a complicated scheme that makes you complicated on defense. So it will be a week of adjustments, lining up, getting the right personnel in the game. But they do a lot with what they do. But it all goes back to that one guy behind the center who is very good. He can make you look real bad if you don't tackle well. Defensively, as I said earlier, they've got one of the better defensive lines in the league. They're big. They've got two big inside guys that get a lot of push. They force you to get rid of the ball. If you're a throwing team, they force the ball to go wide if you're a running team. They're linebackers. They've got a linebacker that can run from sideline to sideline. Their secondary, last year, they played a lot of man and zone on us. It's like any other team in the Big 12. You've got to prepare for a lot on both sides. It will be, obviously, a road game for us. We've tended to play better on the road, but I've coached one game at Missouri four years ago when I was at Miami. But it will be a tough place to play for us. They're the same as us. They're five and five. Trying to get to six wins and get to a Bowl game. So it will be competitive on both sides. I'm sure they're looking at last year's film going what happened to us after the first quarter, because they played very well the first quarter and then were able to get the edge for the next three quarters. It will be a game where I'm sure they've had on their calendar circled since last year. Q. Do you look at any of the film against other mobile quarterbacks you all have played this year and try to keep what you didn't do and what you could possibly do this game? COACH TUBERVILLE: We've had several of those: Kansas State, Nevada, Iowa State. They have a lot of film to look at how we didn't play very well, and some things that we'll do. But we've changed a little bit on personnel, some fronts, some coverages that we've done. We've just got to find a way to give ourselves an edge on first downs to get bad plays. This game will be more about the things that we'll do, not what -- they're not going to change a whole lot. They're not basic, but they're very multiple in what they do formation-wise. Their plays are ran out of different formations, which makes them look very, very complicated. They're very well coached. They know what they're doing. Defensively, I thought it was one of the better defenses that we saw last year other than the fact we're able to make a few plays and keep the ball away from them. Q. Were you tending to use Cornelius Douglas and Shawn Corker this week? COACH TUBERVILLE: Oh, yeah, we've got to do that. I thought Cornelius played well. Shawn's got a bad shoulder right now. He might not play for the rest of the year. It's just one of those nagging injuries. We'll probably have to take care of it after the season. But Cornelius didn't practice much last week. He had bad ribs. I thought going in we just put him on Blackmon and said, there he is. For the first time playing corner in a long time, and covering the best receiver in the country, I thought he did well at times. He gave up one touchdown in terms of manned coverage. He thought he had inside help, and D.J. Johnson fell down, and he outran him. Other than that, he competed, made some plays, broke on the ball well. I think he'll help us there. He'll stay at corner. Q. Is Austin Zouzalik back this week? COACH TUBERVILLE: No, Austin's probably out for the year. He's banged up. Q. What is the reason? COACH TUBERVILLE: Concussion. He got hit on the touchdown in the end zone against Texas. Q. Is Austin being outcome indicating things on special teams even more? COACH TUBERVILLE: He has special teams. Yeah, Torres has caught punts. He just hasn't caught a lot this year. The wind kind of got him on that one punt. He was judging it, and didn't want the ball hitting the ground. I was all for him trying to catch that, because we needed that field position. But he'll be our returner. Austin would have helped us back on that kicking the ball around on the kickoff return when you have two young guys back there, it didn't look good. Where Austin hurts is receiver, playing inside, outside, playing multiple positions. It's good to have Darrin back, close to a hundred percent. He's not there yet, but it's late in the year. Everybody's like this. You've just got to put it together and get as much consistency as you can. Q. How important is it not just in terms of confidence and things like that, but a Bowl game? What does it mean for a program in terms of practice and all that? COACH TUBERVILLE: That's our goal. We wanted to go to a Bowl game from the beginning of the year. We got off to a good start. We just haven't done very well lately. This is a better conference than it's been. I think everybody would agree that the competition is much keener each week that you play. One thing that's affected a lot of us is the one extra conference game. We don't have that extra conference game. So it's been more difficult. But it will be that much more rewarding if we can get that next game or two games. So I think there are four or five of us with five wins, and a lot of us play each other. So there's going to be a lot of good competition. There is something to play for. I think it gives all your players, especially your seniors, something to motivate the other guys, saying this is our last year. We want to go to a Bowl game. So everybody pick it up and help us get there. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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