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UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY MEDIA CONFERENCEAugust 6, 2010Joker PhillipsCOACH PHILLIPS: A couple guys wanted me to start off by taking about guys that will not be with us. First one will be Tim McAdoo. Tim McAdoo will go off to junior college, so that's a two-year commitment, could be a year and a half commitment until he gets his AA. Farrington Huguenin will go to prep school in North Carolina. Actually he will play at a school that's not a prep school, but he will also be taking classes from another school. So he'll try to get that done in a year. Jabari Johnson has been ruled academically ineligible. Jabari, it's close enough that he will not go to junior college or prep school, he'll continue to take the tests and do correspondence. The next guy is Tim Patterson. We haven't got -- his evaluation has not come back through the NCAA, but the issue we have with Tim Patterson, if you guys can remember he had knee surgery in December. It's only about eight months out. He will continue to rehab that. We only have 104 in. We'll continue to evaluate his injury and see if he can get himself healthy enough to come in and compete. If not, we'll hold him until January. So that's still up in the air. The other guy that everybody has been waiting to hear about is Mister Cobble is ruled ineligible for this year. He did not pass enough hours, so he will continue to be on our football team, be on scholarship and continue to try to get himself eligible for the 2012 season -- '11 season. I'm a year ahead. The other thing is there's no need for me to talk about the quarterback. Derrick Locke has already announced who the quarterback will be (laughter), so I don't think we need to take questions on that. It's been a good summer. It's been a good summer. Our kids, I talked about the body comps. Our body comps have changed, and if you see our football team, what that does is it gives our team confidence, it gives a different attitude, a positive attitude, a winning attitude that we think will help us. The thing that we see body comps change is that to me tells me that our team is dedicated. It tells me that our team is committed to the things we're trying to get done here. We're excited about it. This is going to be -- we've prepped our players and let them know it's probably the hardest camp they've been to, so we want to get this thing as fast as we possibly can. We only have 104 in camp, and so therefore we've got to get kids reps, especially at the quarterback position. We've got to get those guys as many reps as we possibly can, therefore we've got to get a lot of reps on the field, so we've got to go fast. With that, we'll open it up for questions. Q. Do you think you had a conditioning issue last year with your team? COACH PHILLIPS: No, I don't think we had a conditioning issue. I just think we're in better condition this year. We didn't have any issue -- I think we've lost a lot of fat. We're a leaner team, we're a stronger team. I think the way we look now will help us through injuries. If you saw us in the spring, knock on wood, we didn't have any injuries, any issues with injuries, and I think it's because of us being a lot leaner. The bigs got small; the ones who needed to lose weight lost weight; the ones who needed to gain weight did gain weight except for Randall Burden. He's still called "Birdman" not because he's a big guy. Q. What does Mister Cobble do for you? COACH PHILLIPS: Well, we're counting on him, there's no question about that. But "operation win" means we want to win in the classroom, and we had over 30 guys that had a 3.0. We had three that had a 4.0. So the majority of our team is buying in. I said the guys who don't buy in, they'll either be not with us or they'll be the best-conditioned player. He's going to be a well-conditioned player when it's all over with because he's got to get the message. He's got to get with us. Depth-wise, I think we'll be okay inside. I really do. We've added some -- there's four young kids that just walked on campus including Donte Rumph who we think will give us some depth. He's not a young guy. He's an inexperienced guy at this level, but he's not a young guy by any means. So we think we'll be fine in that area. But we're counting on him, there's no question about that, because he's a good football player. We're treating it just like it's a season-ending injury. If you followed us for the seven years, the thing that we have done here is when somebody has gone down, the next guy has stepped up. You can remember at Arkansas Derrick Locke was the 15 tailback who came in and was really instrumental in us winning that football game. We're treating this the same. Alfonso Smith at Mississippi State a few years ago. We understand -- our players understand that the next guy has to step up and it'll get done. Q. (No microphone.) COACH PHILLIPS: Well, a big part of who I am has a lot to do with Jerry Claiborne. Everybody that knows me knows that. When he got here in '82, '81, '82, he's the guy that helped me grow up to be a man because he was definitely a kid, but he helped me understand what if took to be a man, there's no question about that. Q. Talk about your center position. COACH PHILLIPS: Center position, we will start off, we'll move Jake Lanefski who was out in the spring, he didn't get any reps at center position, but there will be a three-way battle with Jake Lanefski, Marcus Davis, Matt Smith, and Sam Simpson, four guys, not three, sorry, will be working at center. Jake is the guy that has played the most, but he hadn't played at center, okay, but he's worked all summer trying to get snaps with the quarterbacks and it'll be different for him and snapping and trying to get his first step and second step on the ground. So that will be different. But he's athletic enough. He now is right around 300 pounds, so we feel good about that competition with he. Matt Smith has played in a game, Marcus Davis has started a game, so there's some guys that -- that's what I talk about when I talk about our offensive line. We lost four guys, but one thing we were able to do is to create some depth because of some experience by the guys that were backed up because we played a lot of guys at that position. Those four guys, we rotated Larry Warford, so he got a lot of experience, we played a couple centers, so they got some snaps and some experience. Brad Durham rotated with Jeffrey so he got some experience, Billy Joe Murphy has played in some games. We moved Chandler Burden over from defensive line who hasn't gotten any experience at the offensive line, but he's played a lot of football around here, so we'll be experienced, have a lot of experience on the offensive line. Now, this year is critical in that we have some depth though. Those guys have played, now we've got to get some backups behind them to play some snaps. Q. How has Mike Summers been? A. He's key. The reason I brought Mike Summers here is because if you looked at every time I played his teams, they were physical, they all knew what to do, and he has been a guy that -- I think the offensive line needs to be a unit, a team within a team. They have to be their own unit outside the football team, and he's got that going here. He's got those guys -- they've got their own identity, and he's done a good job of developing that. Q. Talk a little bit about Mychal Bailey and Donte Rumph, two guys who have been working hard for a long time to get here and what kind of roles could they have for you this year? COACH PHILLIPS: We've got to find out early if they can help us. We've got to make sure they can help us first of all, because they're running out of time. Rumph comes in in a position of need with us losing Cobble, so he comes in a position of needing experience. I think we've got a lot of bodies at the defensive tackle. I think the thing we need is some maturity there, and I think he'll bring that maturity to that position. Mychal Bailey, a safety spot, I keep harping, the difference between an average and a great defense is a safety spot, and we know Mychal Bailey is a great tackler. He's one of those YouTube heroes that everybody has seen. Everybody from the greens that comes here says you need to watch my guy on YouTube. He's one of those YouTube heroes that knows how to run into people. It's important that he knows what to do so we can get him lined up to play some snaps for us. He'll definitely have to be a special teams player with the way he runs and the way he hits, we've got to get him ready to play special teams and whether or not he's ready to play some snaps at safety early is yet to be seen. Q. This might be a question for Derrick Locke, but you've got two quarterbacks that have played. Would you play both guys? COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, you guys can ask Locke that. (Laughter.) Yeah, that's the thing. We've got a quarterback position that's similar to the offensive line. We've got two guys winning the games. Both of them have winning records as starters, okay. Both of them have winning records as starters, so that's big in this league to have guys that have winning games, an not only do they have winning games, they've won on the road, which is so tough in this league. So we have two guys that have won games and have led this football team, and we've got really, really talented freshmen that are just waiting to compete against those guys. Now, you look at our linebacker position, that's a little bit different than will whole line and the quarterbacks. Linebackers, we had two guys, Michael Johnson and Sam Maxwell play majority of the snaps, so that position is unlike the offensive line that we were able to get some guys in the game, get them some game snaps. At that position we don't have a lot of guys that played many snaps because those guys got the majority of them. Danny Trevathan is one of those guys that did play a lot of snaps. We got to get Qua Huzzie, Ronnie Sneed got a few snaps but not a lot. He just got them on spot duty when Mike or somebody got dinged, so he's a guy. Ridge Wilson has got to come through for us and compete for a starting position, also. Q. Can you talk about the wide receivers and the difference from last year to this year, and did they complete their goal? COACH PHILLIPS: They were a little short. They were a little short, but it wasn't because of lack of trying. Those guys caught a lot of balls. I think Brian Adams caught 7,400 balls this summer. That's a lot of footballs. But they were a little short. I'm not sure if we gave them a realistic goal, but it was something that they were shooting for, and I think it helped them in getting in there and getting after it because he did give them some goals, so I think that helped. I think those guys will be much improved. If you can remember, and I know most of you guys two years ago when those guys walked in here, they were all freshmen. None of them had played wide receiver. They all had played quarterback, which Will continued to recruit athletes because usually in high school, where does a high school coach put his best players, at the quarterback position. You're looking at on. I'm not saying I was the best athlete on the team; Kerry Berry was. But they usually put their best athlete at the quarterback position, and all those guys were quarterbacks so they're still learning the position. We went through some growing pains. I got more gray hair that year than I got in all the years I've ever coached. But they're now starting to understand how to get lined up, understanding how to read coverages, understanding how to be an SEC wide receiver. And at that time Dickie was their leader; he goes down in the game 5 and they have no leader. Now they have leader in Randall Cobb, I think Chris Mathews is slowly becoming a leader. I think La'Rod King has the potential to be an unbelievable leader someday. So they've got some leadership. Coach Martin is doing a really good job with those guys, and I think they'll be much improved this year and be able to make plays, win games for us. I'm not sure the position at wide receiver would have been able to win games at that position. Randall Cobb won games for us, but I think we'll be able to win games at that position this year. Q. The flash is gone from Randall's -- COACH PHILLIPS: Who said that? Don't listen to Randall or Derrick Locke, okay? I mean, we have to play Randall Cobb at quarterback some as the wildcat. We have to. That's an easy way to get the ball in his hands. That's something that the defense has to practice, and it's hard to plan for. It's similar to trying to face the option. You have to -- you can't just spend five minutes on it, you have to spend a lot of time in preparing for that. So we have to use it. I think that's to our advantage. Q. Which of the incoming freshmen do you think could play early on? COACH PHILLIPS: Because of need, Joe Mansour, Williamson. I think Williamson definitely. He's a weight room freak. He's a guy that did over 20 reps of 225 in the weight room. The strength and conditioning coach has said with all the sprints, he was winning a lot of them, and the guy is blessed with an unbelievable body, great work ethic. I think he's a guy, again, that's a need of ours at linebacker, so I think we've got to look at him early. A lot of those freshmen we've got to try to look at at special teams. That's going to be a difference in a lot of games, and we'll have to go into our first special teams meeting, and that's the thing we've got to sell, the special teams. When you're in a big game, the difference between winning and losing is usually special teams and field position. So a lot of those young freshmen will be lined up on special teams. I think the three corners that we've got, Trimble, Priester and Simmons, those three guys got a chance to help us, also, get a long look early because of the way they run. I think speed is a key. You guys all know that. We've been preaching that since we got here seven years ago. Speed is a key, and all three of those guys can run. A couple young backs we're excited about. Derrick Locke is excited about Sanders, so you guys ought to get excited about Sanders. I think Gainer has a chance. You look at Miles Simpson, he's a freaky-looking athlete. The guy has an unbelievable body, long arms, really sturdy body, can run real well. He's a guy we have to look at early, also. Q. You've got some tight ends, Wallace and Kendrick and Smith, you've got some tight ends. COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, we do. We've got some tight end bodies. We've got a lot of inexperienced bodies, though, but Coach Nord is excited about them. He watched the spring tape, and he's -- I think when you're an outsider coming in you get a little bit more excited about what you see than sometimes than what we saw there in the past with Jacob Tamme. That's what we've gotten used to. But him coming in and seeing all those tight ends, Kendrick, Aumiller, and then in come a couple freshmen, you've got Smith, you've got Shields will line up, and Robinson, so we've got some tight end bodies. With us just carrying two fullbacks you'll see on our roster it'll be two fullbacks, but with those tight end bodies, when you go two tight ends, that's just like playing with another fullback, so we're not worried about the fullback position. Yes, Monsell (ph.) and Meisner will be lined up at fullback, but if something should happen there, we'll just go with a two tight end set if needed if we want to play with a fullback alignment. Q. Talk about recruiting in Cincinnati. COACH PHILLIPS: Cincinnati is huge for us. We have got to treat Cincinnati like it's in-state, Cincinnati and also Nashville. Those two cities have to be like in-state recruiting for us, and we've put three coaches in Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton area because of that. Q. Could you make a comment about the new rule changes here about taunting and celebrating? COACH PHILLIPS: I mean, that's not how we play. We have a section in our book, conduct policy. That's not how we play. We don't worry about those rules because if you've seen us and you've followed us in the past, that's not how Kentucky plays. We play by the rules. One of the rules in our book is speak with your pads. We don't talk. We don't taunt. We don't do any of those things. We speed with our pads. We won't even stress that rule with our players. We'll continue to stress what we've been talking about which is stress with our pads. Q. (No microphone.) COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, if you look at us in the past, that hasn't been a problem with us in the past. I think Randall had one his freshman year. That was him being immature, but he's grown up since then. We'll talk about it, but we won't spend a lot of time on it because that's not Kentucky. That's just not us. Q. Talk about the wedge rule. COACH PHILLIPS: Well, the rule of the state is that you can't have three guys come back and form a wedge, and we've been a pretty good wedge football team, but our wedge has been more of a V, which we have a point guy and two guys actually shoulder to shoulder and then we have two more guys shoulder to shoulder. We'll get away from that, simply because at times when you come back, you mistime it and sometimes it looks like three of them are together. But we will have some two-man wedges on different levels to create that. So two-man wedge, two-man wedge. You can't be on the same plane is what the rule states, but we will have some two-man wedges. Q. Can you talk about Hartline and how he -- last year he -- COACH PHILLIPS: You need to talk to Derrick Locke about that. I keep telling you guys that. Be like Spurrier, go get him. (Laughter.) Q. Preseason here on media day he's gone from being sort of the clear undefeated at the start of the year and now he's in the middle of a quarterback controversy or competition. How is he dealing with that this year? COACH PHILLIPS: Mike is mature. He comes from a sports family. He knows how to handle the situation that he's in. He knew how to handle getting thrown in the bar. He goes out and wins seven games his first year. I mean, the guy understands it. He's very mature, he spends a lot of time this off-season in the first four weeks with his brother down in Miami getting around the pro players, so the guy understands the business. He understands the criticism, he understands the pats on the back. That's the thing you have to be as a quarterback, okay, you've got to understand the pats on the back so you've also got to understand the criticism, and Mike understands that. Q. Is he at the top of the roster right now? COACH PHILLIPS: He'll start off as the starter, yes. I shouldn't say start. He'll start off as the first guy that gets reps because somebody has to do it, and he's been around here the longest. Q. How has the expectation level changed in the locker room? Do you think there's belief you can compete for an SEC title? COACH PHILLIPS: There's definitely belief. The expectation has definitely changed since we got here seven years ago. I can tell you that by those people that used to sit down in front of me. They expect more. But our team expects it more, too. If you look last year at the last game of the season, we're playing for second place in the east. That's huge now. That's huge for where we have come from, and our players expect to play for the Eastern Championship. That's one of our program goals is to win the east. We don't say National Championship. We say win the east because if you win the east, you've got a chance to play for a National Championship, and our players really expect that. Q. What does Coach Nord bring to your staff? COACH PHILLIPS: Juice. Juice, which is energy, enthusiasm, excitement, passion for this job here, and you'll see it. We'll let you guys see it on Saturday, okay. But you'll see it. He has a lot of juice, a lot of energy, has a lot of passion for this job here, and that's what I was looking for. Q. He's coordinating special teams, but he says it's going to be a staff-wide effort. COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, I think it's hard for one guy to oversee that many phases, and I think it's hard to put a huge emphasis on it, also, how important it is if all the coaches aren't involved. I think we'll have our first special teams meeting, we'll set the tempo, all the coaches will be in there, and we all will state our case of why we think it's important to our football team. It'll be the difference in a lot of games, and we've got to sell that to our players. Q. Do you think passion for special teams rubs off on people? COACH PHILLIPS: It definitely does. You saw him at the ladies' clinic, same thing. He's got a lot of fire, a lot of energy, a lot of what we call juice. The biggest thing is he has passion for this place here, and I think that's what's going to rub off to our football team. Q. During the recruiting process you guys were starting to get into recruits maybe higher profile than originally. Is that continuing? COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, it is, it definitely is. We're starting to get in some homes that seven years ago we couldn't get in. We couldn't even get them to return our calls, sometimes couldn't get them to pick up our calls. Now we're getting kids to call us. All summer we had a lot of calls from a lot of big-time recruits. For us to continue to grow through this program, that's what has to happen. You've got to get in the homes of better players, and we're starting to do that. Q. (No microphone.) COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, Mansour has a really strong leg. I think I told you guys a story, he kicked a 59-yarder last year. Actually he was lined up with 35 seconds left, and they took two penalties to get it to 59, and they were up 35 is the reason why they did it. But coach said that if he had known the record was 63, he would have backed him up. But he has that type of leg. He walks around here like he owns the place already. I think that's key. I mean, I think that's big in that position. He's one of those guys if you line him up -- if you say, all right, Joe, it's a 65-yarder, what do you think, he says, I can make it, and he runs out there and he kicks it. He's that type of player. I think that gives us a chance to -- I think that flips the field for us in a lot of areas if he's able to kick them from -- if we had Doug Pelfrey here, any time you got inside 55, you had a chance. You had a chance to score points. That was our goal this spring, find out who could score points for us with his leg, and we think Joe is one of those guys that can do it this fall. Q. Talk about the amount of talent and depth you have. COACH PHILLIPS: We think we can put that type of product on the field again like we did in '06, '07. The thing about them, they're all young. You'll lose Matthews, Hartline, all the tight ends are back, all the receivers are back. You lose Derrick Locke, okay, so you lose three guys, but all of those guys will be back. All the receivers, we did not sign a receiver this year, but we have all of them back except for Matthews. At running back everybody is back, so that's the thing we feel good about that we have a lot of youth there, too. Q. You mentioned earlier you were going to obviously going to use the wildcat. What about using it in late game situations? COACH PHILLIPS: In two-minute situations? Q. And near the end zone. COACH PHILLIPS: If it's a two-minute situation -- you're talking about if we're in the red zone? Yeah, we've got to use it. We've got to find a way to get our best players on the field. But we also got to be able to line up and knock people off the ball and get the ball in the end zone in a conventional way, also. We can't always rely on the wildcat. If you have an always, you can stop an always. You can figure out a way to stop an always. If we're always, any time we get in the red zone or near the goal line line up in a wildcat formation, you can figure ways to stop that. You don't have a lot of passing plays in the red zone, actually when you're in the five, six yard line, so they can line enough guys up to stop the run, stop the wildcat formation. Q. Talk a little bit about Rich Brooks and what he meant to you. COACH PHILLIPS: I don't think anybody will understand how much Rich meant for a few years. He's done an unbelievable job in getting this program to the level that it is now. One of the things, he left us with a really strong foundation. The thing that we want to do is continue to build on the foundation that he left us. I tried to communicate with him a couple times, but he's in some areas that you can't communicate with him. If you're looking at his Twitter, he's always fishing in some hole or playing golf in some remote area that's always tough to get in touch with him. But he'll be back here soon and we'll looking forward to see him again. Q. You said you didn't know what to do when spring began. Do you know what to do now? COACH PHILLIPS: I knew what to do now. That was just small talking. I know what to do. I know what to do. Hey, just prod them, make them go fast. That's the thing you've got to go. The head coach in my opinion needs to make sure that both schemes are sound on both sides of the ball, make sure we're fundamentally sound and doing the right things, fundamentally get ourselves sound. And then effort. I'm in charge of effort. I'm in charge of motivating our football team, so it's important for me to have the same juice that I'm asking of the coaches. Q. Talk about your practice habits in terms of after-practice sprints. What does that do for the overall enthusiasm for how practice goes and how willingness to want to come back the following day? COACH PHILLIPS: Yeah, we will not run sprints unless we're out practicing fast because I think that the way we want to practice, we shouldn't have to. And I think Coach Oliver has gotten them in good enough condition that if we're practicing the way we need to practice, then I don't think there's any need to run sprints. And I think that's a motivator for a young man. He knows if he goes hard, goes hard in practice, then we won't run sprints. But also -- I think there's three ways to motivate. Motivate with fear, and we did that when we first took over. We tried to scare the living daylights out of them, and the lead guy was Rock Oliver, and he scared me a couple times. The second way is incentives, incentive. I think it's an incentive when they know if they practice hard, practice fast, that we will not run sprints. And the last thing is what we're trying to do now, and we think that's long-term, and that is the relationships. We're trying to build relationships that our players will want to go hard because they don't want to let us down because they know we care about them. End of FastScripts |
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