University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Jeff Bower's Weekly Press Conference
10/30/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 30, 2006
Opening Statement "I thought we played well enough to win the game, defensively. I thought our kids played hard, and we did some good things on defense. We certainly did not do anything on offense. We had a good second quarter and not a good first quarter. The second half was poor; I think we had 45 total yards in the second half or something like that. We were not good at all on offense. We had that big interception return, which was a big play in the game. We gave up a long kickoff return; we got blocked and we got out of our lanes. That was a hug play in the game. I think, overall, there was no performance on offense. We've got to be able to throw the ball more effectively; we say it every week. We're not throwing the ball well at all. I don't think Jeremy played well in the game; he made some bad decisions. Also, we get the chance to catch a touchdown pass in the second quarter and drop it. We've been in that situation before too. We were poor on offense and on special teams. We can't give up that big return; I thought our punt return unit did a good job. Jasper Faulk did a nice job there. We didn't do anything to win the ball game, offensively."
Players of the Week: "On offense, Chris Clark had 49 snaps, 80%, two cuts, two knockdowns; he played really well. On defense, we have co-players of the week. Martvius Prince had 70 snaps, 83%, 98% effort, two tackles for loss, a forced fumble, a pass breakup and two knockdowns. He played really good. Also, Eddie Hicks had 59 snaps, 92%, 98% effort, four tackles with one assist, an interception for a touchdown and a tackle for loss. On special teams, Jasper Faulk had four returns for 114 yards, averaged 28.8 and had a long return of 39. I thought he really did well."
On Injuries: "We're pretty good injury-wise. Hopefully, we'll get Richmond back this week; he didn't play. I think Josh Barnes played about ten snaps in the game and he wasn't real good. We limited his snaps in the game. I don't know about Cooley's status on whether or not we'll have him back. We're going to try to get him back on the field on Wednesday, and we'll see how he looks. Other than that, there's nothing new, so we should be looking a little healthier going into this ball game."
On Memphis: "They're 1-7, but they do a lot of good things. They move the ball on offense; I think they had 500 yards against Marshall. Their quarterback is doing a good job; turnovers have hurt them on that side of the ball. They have a lot of different personnel groupings, misdirection and a lot of formations to get ready for. Defensively they made a switch; they changed to a 4-3 defense against Tennessee. They had some personnel movement on that side of the ball. They play hard and they've got a young front; they're athletic. They're more veteran in the secondary. They lined up and did a pretty good job against Marshall on stopping the run; Bradshaw busted a big one there in the second half. I think he only had 30 yards in the first half. There was a little more blitzing in that game; they blitzed to stop the run. We haven't seen much blitz up until that game, but that's what they did. We've got to play better; we need a win. We've got to fight back and get ourselves ready to go."
On Switching Out Young and Reaves At The Quarterback Position: "No, but more than likely, we'll end up playing Stephen some. We're going to see how it goes with Jeremy, and we'll evaluate him throughout the week. There's a possibility that we'll play them both."
On Jeremy Young's Performance: "He's a little in the progression and he's missing reads. He threw the ball a couple of places he shouldn't have thrown it, and he didn't make some good throws. I thought we had a chance on Perine on a deep ball, if he just gets it out there he under throws it. He made some good throws; we've got to catch that touchdown pass."
On The Overtime Play: "I thought Jay made a good call. We had hit that pass earlier in the game to Shawn. It was a pretty good match-up. The read was good and Jeremy went to the right place. Looking at it on tape, Shawn's a little bit under thrown, which is a difference, but Shawn's got his hands on it coming down and the guy just pulls it away from him. I think Shawn really made a good effort to make the catch and just got it pulled away."
On If They Thought Changing Quarterbacks Would Have Sparked The Offense: "Yes we did but we thought we played well in the second quarter and we were just trying to hang in there with them. Maybe I should have; I don't know. It's always easy to second guess, but maybe we should have."
On If Fletcher Should Have Rested His Knee Longer: "I thought he moved pretty good. I don't know if I saw the burst but when he made that one run, he made people miss; he looked pretty good to me. We played the other kid some in the ball game. We were being careful not to over do it with Fletch; we chartered his carries and chartered his plays. He ended up with 16 carries, and we were looking from anywhere between 15 and 20 in the game. Tory had three. We didn't have a lot of plays; we had 48 snaps...not good."
On Preparations For Memphis: "We're just going to meet today, and tomorrow we'll treat like a Monday. We're going to bring them over and watch tape and introduce them some to Memphis tape. We'll start our preparation on the field tomorrow."
On tough losses: "Well, they're all tough when you lose. We've got to win out; we've got to fight back."
On If Teams Will Start Stacking The Box: "Yeah, I'll guarantee you they will. Until we're more effective throwing the ball, we're going to see that.'
On The Receivers: "I'll tell you something that probably didn't show up but did show up in the game was that we blocked poorly on the perimeter. We had two outside plays and our receivers were blocking like it was an inside play. There were five missed blocks on the perimeter that if we executed, we could have a big play. We just didn't block well."
On Recruiting Hankins: "We looked at him. He's turned into a good quarterback. I don't think he had any I-A offers out of high school, but he's turned into a really good quarterback. He's developed and obviously worked hard and is doing a lot of good things; he can throw the ball.'
On the Memphis Series: "They believe that they can beat us, no question."
On Bowl Chances: We've got plenty of chances to get into a bowl. It affects you; it affects your championship run. We've got two losses just like everybody else does. The thing we've got to do is win the next four. I remember in '02, we went down there and got beat by Tulane and cost us the chair of the championship. Anything can happen."
