March 25, 1998
(Opening Statement)
“I would just like to say how proud we are of Tubby and all the basketball players. We wish them our best wishes in winning these next two. We are extremely proud of them and Tubby in particular has been fun to get to know. What a class guy and what a great job he has done this season. I promise you our guys will be off the field in plenty of time Monday night so we can all tune in and watch the Cats win it.”
(On: The differences coming in this spring with one year under your belt)
“The biggest changes are that our guys understand the base concepts and understand what’s going to happen. There is not all that anticipation and that anxiety about how practice is going to be run and whether this stuff will work. There was a lot of that last year. It has been a lot more pleasant in that respect in the off season. It has been a lot more fun.”
“I think we have a chance to be a very good ball club this year, buy we’re obviously thin and very young, particularly on the defensive side so there is lot’s of things that could happen there. This spring is going to be devoted to trying to get a lot of back up players to the point to that we feel very comfortable with them playing. The more of them (back up players) that come through, the less we have to rely on freshman which is a key ingredient for us next year.”
(On: The talent this year compared to last year’s team)
“If you mix the freshman in with it, we are considerably better. Of course if you don’t do that just for the spring we are obviously going to be lacking those seven or eight seniors that contributed quite a bit. It depends on which time frame your talking about.”
(On: Those players you would like to see step up )
“Let’s start on defense. At strong safety obviously we have to replace Tremayne Martin and we have three young men who will compete there, all of them are good athletes. Jeff Zurcher is a senior who got some quality playing time, particulary against run teams at the end of the year and he’s had a great off-season. He’s done a great job in his leadership abilities in the off season. It’s his time to shine and show us what he can do. Behind him is two freshmen, Chris Gayton who we recruited to play there who had a hamstring injury in the summer and we ended up red shirting him last year. He’s a big guy about the same size as Zurcher. He’s run a lot of 4.4’s for us in the 40, so he’s got speed and he’s also a very bright young man and very good student. And then we moved Kenneth Grant over to strong safety. We want to look at him because he came on last year. He came on behind Derek Homer in the backfield but he asked to move, he wanted to move over there. He’s a guy that likes contact and he also runs a 4.4 and we felt like strong safety would be a good place to start him out. That’s a key spot so all three of those guys we are looking for them to rise.
“Obviously at the defensive end spots we’ve got to have somebody rise. Robert Jones is a proven player. He was second on the team in sacks last year. I think he was only one or possibly two behind Dele Ali who was ranked pretty high in the conference and most of that was coming off the bench. The guy we really want to see rise is Matt Layow. Matt is a red-shirt sophomore. He’s put on 10 pounds and his speed has gotten better. He’s also grown about an inch and is about 6-4 now. We expect him to have a good spring.”
In the linebacking corps our real leader over there is Jeff Snedegar who’s going to see limited work. He’ll have no contact work in the spring. We want to take a long look at John Rader. We need for John to prove to us that he can come off the bench and play. Teddy Neptune is also going to get a real good look. We pretty much know what Lee Wesley can do and Marlon McCree but they will get a lot of reps because we’ll be thin at linebacker.
Offensively, we’ll look at Jermaine White at wide receiver, Matthew Mumme at quarterback, Matt Brown, Nolan DeVaughn, Aaron Daniel and Omar Smith at the offensive line position. Basically all the backup guys. We’re going to put more reps into those guys than we did last year. The spring time is for developing your whole team and we are at the point were we can do that now.”
(On: The schedule coming up this fall)
“We’re really not thinking about that right now. Obviously we are happy to have Coach Kidd and his program up here. I’m glad the NCAA loosened up those rules because those I-AA programs need these gate games. It’s good that some of us can do it, particulary with a game that will enhance in-state football. Of course Louisville is somebody we also look forward to playing. They have a great coaching staff in there now and I’m sure it will be a tough ball game.”
(On: The positives from last year that you would like to work on and continue this year)
“Obviously we have most of our offensive personnel back and we’ve got some set objectives for the spring to try to improve on that. A lot of last year with the offense was on-the-job-training so hopefully we can take that to another level. Defensively we have to develop some backup players and we want to see some guys that were backup players last year come on and be starters that we are comfortable with.”
(On: The things to do you want to see out of Tim Couch)
“We have about four objectives for Tim. The first one is to stay on his play-side-reads a little longer. The second one is being able to strike deep with a little more authority. The third one is to work on play-pass stuff we want to get better at doing. The last thing is some checks that we want to get pretty good at to stay in the ballgame with some of the people we play.”
(On: Handling the Heisman hype that Tim Couch will possibly be facing this year)
“Tim has such a level head about things. This time last year we were trying to figure out if he could play. Tim knows he’s a good player. I would like to see us take a low key approach in this deal. The Heisman has become so hyped I think it possibly hurts you more than it helps you to do a lot. Obviously you got to keep people informed. I think we have to draw a line between communication and hype. And that’s where I would like to put it. Obviously anything I can do to brag about Tim and state the case for him I’m going to do at the proper times, but I’m not going to spend very much of my time thinking about it.”
