|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 18, 2010Joker PhillipsCOACH PHILLIPS: First, our injury report, Moncell, the turtle had a hamstring, I didn't know turtles had hamstrings. Winston Guy had a laceration on his hand, got it fixed at half-time, and was back in the game. Stuart Hines got an ankle, Randall Cobb got an IV at half-time and then got heartburns and doctors just wanted to check him out. But by the time they had checked him out and cleared him, we had just scored and we just thought that we were going to just keep him out for the rest of the game. Offensively, we had been talking about, you know, finishing and playing fast in the second half and doing those things, and we kind of neglected to tell them to start fast like we had been. So it's like get a hole, cover holes up, and damn, you get one part of your game fixed and then another one, another hole appears, and another hole appears. We thought we had corrected starting fast, and we tried to work on finishing and now we went back to starting slow. But a lot of that has to do with preparation, especially on offense, Thursday's practice offensively, we didn't -- it was a lot of mental errors and we did not practice as fast as we had been, so a lot has to do with the way we prepared on Thursday. Defensively we had been stressing all week to see if this defense could start slugging people and played outstanding, routed the defense, came out, played 60 minutes of great football. We gave up one at the end but in the defense, did an unbelievable job of making this team go backward. Didn't create turnovers like we had been doing but we didn't give up big plays, didn't give up yardage. Special teams, finally got the kick that is we needed, that's what we've been talking about, making sure we got great kicks. I think man suit kicked all but one in the end zone and kicked one out-of-bounds, which cannot happen and late in the game we wanted to see our coverage team cover and we thought they did an outstanding job of covering, which has a lot to do with personnel. We have a lot better personnel in the game this week, was able to get some defensive guys in the coverage teams. Winston Guy did an unbelievable job of covering the kicks, and that's what your safeties should be able to do. They have to be able play defense but they also have to be special teams guy. Those guys are hyper-tech guys that should be physical enough and big enough to take on people, and they also need to be fast enough to play on your coverage team. Really proud of our special teams effort and also our defense. Offensively, I'm proud of the way we finished. Q. Talk about the blocking. COACH PHILLIPS: Block? Well, I mean, Locke has done a really good job of trying to improve himself this off-season. We have talked about him pressing, pressing the blocks, and hugging blocks is what we are talking about, hugging blocks. He had one run where he broke out on the right side, the visitor's side, near the goal line. It was just him and a safety, or a corner. And I went to him and he made a move about ten yards from me. Nobody's going to make -- anybody miss making a move ten yards from him. I went to talk to him about pressing him. If he gets up on the guy and gets a little bit closer to him and makes his move then, now he has a chance to break the tackle. And then couple of plays later, probably the best run I've seen him run is one where he bounces to our sideline and looks like he's about to go out of bounds and he steps on the guys' toes and puts hit foot on the ground and gets vertical and gets us about six or seven yards. That's a great run and you probably didn't notice that. That to me is a great run. And the last one he ran for the touchdown is a really great run, also. He's hugging his blocks, and that's the thing you have to do is make the receivers right. You have to make the offensive line right. You make the offensive line guys right by hugging their blocks. Q. Inaudible. COACH PHILLIPS: The way he warmed up, the way we came out at pregame, I talked before the game was, I mean, we looked like we were sleepwalking during the warmup, during the pregame. I challenged him before the game, you've got to play with intensity, you've got to play with excitement and you've got to play with passion. I didn't see that out of us the first quarter. We didn't do that. I wanted to pull him up and give him a reminder of what we had just talked about in the locker room, because we synched it, we did. We synched that. We cannot relax. And they will see next week, you can't relax. You play like that, like we did in this quarter next week, you'll be down two or three touchdowns. We cannot relax and not play with excitement, not play with passion, not play with enthusiasm. Q. Inaudible. COACH PHILLIPS: Definitely. We had five penalties up until that point in the first quarter. We had five penalties. We had a guy that didn't go on the field and had the field goal team -- that's lack of focus and we wanted to get this team back focused. And it was evident during the pregame, that we weren't. We just tried to address it pregame in the locker room before the game, yes, and then we thought we needed to address it at that time. Q. Did you think they were thinking about -- COACH PHILLIPS: I wasn't thinking about him. We talk about playing, I mean, living in the moment, and the moment was playing Akron. Hopefully we'll start thinking about Florida, hopefully some of them have DVRed this team and watch them tonight, but we can't look ahead, there's no way. Q. Have you played -- how does Derrick Locke compare? COACH PHILLIPS: Similar to Higgs in that he's a home run hitter from any part of the field. Probably catches the ball better than Higgs. Probably able to return kicks a little bit better than Mark, but Mark was a pretty durable back, also and pretty explosive back. But he's a good, all-around player because he can play receiver, and he can play -- he can actually return punts tonight, which is what we were hoping to give him a couple of opportunities before conference play started and we were able to give him a couple of opportunities tonight. Really liked the fact that he went in there and stood in there and was able to catch one with people around him. That gives dividends for us down the road. Q. You say in the moment; now that the moment -- COACH PHILLIPS: My guys who play with me will understand this statement. You guys might not understand this statement. Coach Clayborn used to say, we'll be stretching, and we would count to ten after -- once he thought we were deep into the stretch and he would wait five seconds and say now we start. We were thinking now, dang, that's 15 seconds. Well, now we start. Conference play starts and it's going to be one of those battles that you can't relax. You cannot relax and be -- not be focused at any point in the game. You cannot come out and sleepwalk through a quarter, you can't do that, because you'll be down 14, 21 points. Q. Do you have all of your questions answered heading into the conference games? COACH PHILLIPS: One of the things I liked, we were able to play a lot of people. There were a lot of really good young players that we'll need to count on: The big fella inside, Rob, he played really well for us. Delic got some snaps. Mister (ph) got some snaps and was able to return a couple of kicks for us which was big for us. Those kickers, those young tight ends, we were able to get a lot of young people reps which will allow us to have depth throughout the season hopefully and if some injuries should occur, got some guys we think can step up and make big plays for. We did get some questions answered. Mike Hartline, second week in a low he's thrown for 70 percent. Our receivers are making plays. Had a couple of drops early in the game, which is again lack of focus of the whole football team early, but we were able to regroup and catch those passes. Those are things we talk about, also. Got to throw and catch, okay. We had to throw and catch, and we had a couple of drops which cost us opportunities to continue moving the football. Q. In the pregame, the problem -- COACH PHILLIPS: Had a problem at half-time? No, it doesn't worry me. Randall, he'll be ready to play this week and if he has a problem, we'll get him IVed and get him back in there. He'll be ready. No big deal. I mean, it happens every week with a lot of players, get IVed at half-time. That's nothing unusual. Q. He's thrown four turnovers in three games now -- COACH PHILLIPS: These guys (Laughter). I was not even going to mention it. No, we stress it a lot. That's our plan to win; our plan to win is to win the turnover battle. We have to win the turnover battle. We haven't turned it over and we've created four up to today; we didn't create any today. But you look, when we watch games on Saturday morning, the teams that turn it over are usually the teams that are looking sloppy and usually teams that are on the losing end, and those are things that we have been stressing. Late in the game, that's the thing I was stressing to say, don't turn it over, don't turn it over. I think it does a lot for our football team when the ball is not on the ground. Sanders made a that great play on the punt that we hit, the ball was on the ground and he got on it, recovered it, so that helped us out in that area. Q. Aumiller? COACH PHILLIPS: Aumiller, yeah, I knew you were going to ask that, you always try to get his name in there. No, Jordan had a -- oh, yeah, he had a bruise. He had a bruise and was able to get back in the game. We just wanted to get some other guys some reps. We need him next week and we need him for the rest of the season, and I need you to be in here to ask questions about him. So if he's not on the bus, you probably won't show up, anyway. (Laughter). Q. What about Evan? COACH PHILLIPS: He got dinged a little bit, a little queasy, but he was able -- he was able to go back in the game if needed. Q. With Locke last year -- what happened on the play? COACH PHILLIPS: You get tackled. What happens is if he's not real close to his box, if he's cuts inside and the defender is able to get off or receiver -- or the blocker loses leverage on the guy, because the guy is able to take a flatter angle. But if he hugs the block, is really close to the block, it's harder for the defender to get off the blocker in time. He has worked really, really hard on that aspect of his game. I asked him to go -- I'm not sure if he done it, but I asked him to go watch the Ingram kid, the kid at Alabama, does a real good job of pressing the line of scrimmage and hugging his blocks and coming off the heels of the blocker; step on the heels of the blocker; therefore, the defender can't get off in time to make the play. He did a really, really good job on the last two runs that I explained to you about. But the one run that he had a chance one-on-one to make the guy miss, he didn't step on the guys toes. Q. Inaudible. COACH PHILLIPS: Definitely. Exactly. That's the easy way to say it. Maybe I should have said it that way. Thank you, guys. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|