Marshall University Athletics
Quotes/Video from Doc Holliday's Nov. 18 Press Conference
11/18/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
On upcoming game:
Our captains for this week will be Neville Hewitt and James Rouse on defense and Chris Jasperse and (Rakeem) Cato on offense. As I have mentioned many times, anytime you go on the road it is critical that you have great leadership, it is critical that you play with great toughness, and that is going to have to happen, not only with those four guys providing the leadership, but the rest of our guys on our football team doing the same thing. UAB is a much improved football team. They have put up over 500 yards of total offense against Mississippi State, played extremely well and right up to the wire. They have done that a lot throughout the year. They have a receiver, (J.J.) Nelson, who is probably the fastest guy in our conference. I think he had 220 return yards against Louisiana Tech, which is a good team. They have a running back (Jordan) Howard, who will be the most physical running back that we have played all year. It will be a great challenge for us on the road. We are going to have to have a great week of preparation to make sure we are ready to play that game.
On UAB:
You look at them a year ago, they had good players. Number one, Nelson, was there a year ago, and he ran by us. He was good in the return game. Howard is back. I thought they had good players a year ago. I think Coach (Bill) Clark has done a tremendous job with them. He has them motivated and playing hard. They have players. They have some good football players. He has coached them up. He has them believing in themselves and he has them playing extremely hard. You can tell that by watching them on film. They are still a three down front. They are getting better. They are getting lined up and executing their techniques and fundamentals, which he has done a good job coaching. They have three receivers that average 19 yards a catch, which is unusual. Their tailback does a good job at running the football. They try to establish the run, which they have against a lot of good people. They take shots. They take a lot of shots. Mississippi State has some really good athletes in that secondary, and Nelson is running right by them, too. We are going to have to do a great job at knowing where he is. He can run. He can run by you."
On Marshall's defense and how it has improved:
I think what has helped us is getting (Keith) Baxter back. We didn't have Baxter a year ago. Being able to put Corey Tindal at the nickel position. Getting Baxter back healthy and playing him at the corner position, allowing us to move Tindal to nickel has helped, and Darryl Roberts has been playing well too. Chuck has done a tremendous job at taking away the strengths of whatever offense we are playing and we are going to have to do that again this week.
On the importance of taking care of the football:
That is always the key, to take care of the football. That is part of the plan to win. When we have played great defense and taken care of the ball and been solid on special teams we have played really well. It will be no different this week.
On facing UAB's three-down defensive front:
Anytime you have the ability to run the ball you have a chance to win. It is going to be critical. They create a lot of issues by running that three down front. They have a lot of people coming from different directions. They create a lot of problems with their alignment and that type of thing. We are going to have to do a great job in preparation this week knowing where they are and putting hats on the right people. Because that three down stack, it is different about every game. They change it up. We have a lot of work to do this week. I thought we handled it well a year ago.
Team seeing everything in games and coaching:
You have Chris Jasperse. He is extremely smart. You have (Clint) Van Horn up there, you have (Sebastian) Johansson and you have guys who have played a lot of football. They can identify fronts. They have an offensive line coach as good as anybody. He gets them lined up. Nobody works harder than Jasperse and Coach (Alex) Mirabal and all of them do to make sure we are prepared to play.
On Marshall's physicality:
We want to be a physical football team, a tough team. I think we have been. I think they took it upon themselves a little bit. We got physically beat up a year ago against that Rice team. I'm going to call it like it is. We did. We didn't play well. Rice was more physical than we were. They took it as a challenge. I don't think the game Saturday was the only game we have been physical. I think they have been physical all year. They take great pride in doing that. We are going to have to be physical again this week, because UAB is physical. Our defensive line played well too. That is where it starts.
Preparing for UAB's atmosphere:
It is hard to prepare for. They have had better crowds there this year. They are successful. They are playing for a bowl game. I'm sure they will have a lot more people there than what we seen in the past going down there. We can't worry about that. We have to worry about ourselves. Bring our own energy and feed off each other. It is what it is. We just have to get ready to go play, play with great energy, and don't worry about what we can't control.
On playing freshmen:
He (Hyleck Foster) has been a talented guy, I have said that all along. It comes to a point where you can trust them (freshmen), to get them out there. I looked out there Saturday during some critical situations, we had (Deon-Tay) McManus at wide out as a freshman, Angelo (Jean-Louis) another wide out as a freshman, (Ryan) Yuracheck the tight end as a freshman, and I saw Foster out there as a freshman. I looked at (offensive coordinator) Bill (Legg) and said "What the heck are we doing? We have three or four freshman on the field at the same time!" Then Yurachek catches a touchdown and then Hyleck goes and does the same thing. It is positive. They are young players but they aren't freshmen anymore. They have played a lot of football for us. We trust them. Those four guys are going to be here a long time and I'm glad they are because they are going to be good players.
