Photo by: Joe Harper/bgnphoto.com
Coach Will Hall Media Availability – The South Alabama Game
11/15/2022 2:12:00 PM | Football
HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- Southern Miss head football coach Will Hall met with members of the media on Tuesday morning following practice to discuss this Saturday's Sun Belt Conference matchup with South Alabama, as well as look back at last week's game with Coastal Carolina.
This week's game time is set for Saturday, Nov. 19, at 2:30 p.m. CT at The Rock. The game can be seen on the NFL Network as well as heard on an affiliate of the Southern Miss Sports Network by Learfield.
Here is some of what Hall said to the media on Tuesday:
Opening statement…
"Great Tuesday, Lord blessed us with good weather, we really appreciate that. And great juice by our kids, great energy. You know, continuing to strive to improve, we have Senior Day this week, which is huge. We have a lot of older kids in this program that chose to stay through circumstances that are hard to put into words. When you think about your college experience, as a kid you want it to look like some of these older kids in this program. That's definitely not what any kid wants it to look like what they had to go through to get to this point. We're continuing to build this program back. We played really well in all three phases last week, but we didn't play good enough to win. You know, we're right there versus the kingpins of this league. And we got to make one more play in any area, and we win the game. That's a credit to Coastal in the program they've built over time. But we are pushing our program to get to that point too. And we're right there. We got to fix the mistakes, we got to keep recruiting and keep fixing issues that we're short on for development, for corrections and pre-recruiting. And that's what we're striving to do. And we have a huge one this week with Senior Day with South Alabama coming in here. So we're excited about the opportunity to play very well."
On Trey Lowe's performance Saturday…
"Yeah, really proud of him. He's just a high-character human being that does everything right in the way he lives his life. And really, he just ran the offense, his eyes were correct. And he did exactly what he's supposed to do. And then he made a play or two too, like the scramble where he flipped it to Frank was just a great play. He made some throws in the pocket including the first third-down conversion where he scrambled and found Brownlee. Those are two plays that come to my mind, where he made a play, and you need your quarterback to make a play to beat a great team. And then a lot of times, he just ran the offense, went through his progressions. He checked it down to Frank, and one time for nine yards, he would read an RPO right and throw it out there. He handed off the ball when it needed to be handed off on RPOs. He just really graded out half on one assignment standpoint, which allowed our offense to function. That's probably the first time since I've been here, we were able to run our offense, you saw us attack in certain ways, and then go to our counters, you know, go to our punch, counter punch, if you will, and run our offense that we've been hoping to run since we got here. We were able to make adjustments in the game. We came out in the second half and drove it into score to take the lead. And, it was a lot of fun. And I hope he can continue to do it because I have a lot of respect for him."
On the loss going toe-to-toe with top 25 teams his second year here…
"Yeah, you know, we would like to be further along. We would like to have more wins. But we're five and five, we've played a difficult schedule. There haven't been a lot of easy games on our schedule this year. And our kids battle, our kids represent this university the right way. We have some deficiencies. We know that in year two, we've been able to solve a lot of them and we got to continue to eliminate deficiencies through development and through correcting and then through recruiting and that's what we're striving to do every day and continue to push this program forward. You know that program out there, Coastal, just beat us. Like three years ago, they were five and seven. You know what I'm saying? And now, three years later, they have won 11 and now they're nine and one and so great programs are built like that. Great programs are built over time for consistency and most all groups of five programs that are winning consistently have consistency at the top. We're gonna have that here. We just got to keep going."
On how he feels about Trey Lowe not starting earlier in the season…
"You know man everything I do. I go through a process I pray about and I think about and you know you live your life second guessing everything. You know what I'm saying? I probably wish I would have proposed to my wife a little earlier too now that I know what an unbelievable wife she is. You try to go through a process. You try to treat everybody the right way. You try to pray about your decisions, and you try to do what's right, based on the information you have. Really proud of Trey, Trey, he's coming back from a horrible injury. An injury that you know is very similar to what Kevin Durant had that held him out of whole NBA season. And so it takes a while to come back and get yourself back and he has battled and worked and gotten himself back and to becoming the player you know he played the way we always thought he could play when we first got here he had an unbelievable first spring great summer and you can see that game you know he really played like what we saw when we first got here was really proud of him."
On deficiencies in the red zone…
"Well, we took two shots to (Jason) Brownlee and didn't get those. We'd like to at least go one for two there. We had a power trap wide open through the middle and, Rambo (Antavious Willis) kind of missed his cut right there. He should have walked right into the end zone. So that was two right there. And then you know, first you go from the 10 on first down and then first and 10 from the 11, which are the hardest situations in football. We were able to get down on the five one time. We took a shot to Brownlee, but he didn't get it. We were able to get down to the two, one time, and didn't get it in on third down. And obviously, if we get one of those we probably win the game. That was our deal on offense, we also dropped a pass that could have been big, and we ran out of bounds one time. If we stayed in bounds that would have been big, offensively. Defensively and special teams, we also had opportunities, but we were able to get it down in a first and goal situation inside the seven or more we were able to punch it in. We practice it, we work on it all the time. We just didn't make it happen. We'd like to go one for two to Brownlee right there at least and score. We had a roll in right there on power travel wide open. Our offense line and tight ends did a phenomenal job. We got to hit it and get in. Everything down, there's got to be meticulousness, you have to be right in every way because space is limited. Again, we got to just keep going and keep getting better. That's not something all of a sudden that we're not just addressing now, it's something we continue to address when the field shrinks, and the red zone deficiencies are shown even more. And we got to continue to work around those."
On update of Janari Dean…
"Yeah, I think he will get to play this week. He's coming out of concussion protocol, which is obviously out of my hands, we defer to the medical people. But he looks like he's on track to play this week."
On offensive line performance…
"Yeah, we really played well. We had a few sacks that were recovery sacks, where they did a great job in coverage too. They gave us a chance to win. And I thought the moves were good. Those five that started played extremely hard and the other kids that got in played hard as well. You know, that's what Coach (Sam) Gregg continues to harp on is effort and trust. You know, we can't be five pennies. We've got to be one nickel. And I thought we were one nickel in that game, not just five individual pennies. And, so it was good to see."
On the importance of the South Alabama game…
"Man, this whole league when we try to win every game, we're trying to push this program forward. Like they beat us pretty good the first game last year, they're way more advanced in their program. Something that we weren't at that point with what we were handed last year, we're in a much better situation this year. We've been competitive, in every game, but one this year. And that was not the case last year, we feel like we can play with people when we play well. And that's what we're concentrating on is, playing well and continuing to improve. And we would like to send the seniors out on a good note because everything they've been through. They really deserve it."
This week's game time is set for Saturday, Nov. 19, at 2:30 p.m. CT at The Rock. The game can be seen on the NFL Network as well as heard on an affiliate of the Southern Miss Sports Network by Learfield.
Here is some of what Hall said to the media on Tuesday:
Opening statement…
"Great Tuesday, Lord blessed us with good weather, we really appreciate that. And great juice by our kids, great energy. You know, continuing to strive to improve, we have Senior Day this week, which is huge. We have a lot of older kids in this program that chose to stay through circumstances that are hard to put into words. When you think about your college experience, as a kid you want it to look like some of these older kids in this program. That's definitely not what any kid wants it to look like what they had to go through to get to this point. We're continuing to build this program back. We played really well in all three phases last week, but we didn't play good enough to win. You know, we're right there versus the kingpins of this league. And we got to make one more play in any area, and we win the game. That's a credit to Coastal in the program they've built over time. But we are pushing our program to get to that point too. And we're right there. We got to fix the mistakes, we got to keep recruiting and keep fixing issues that we're short on for development, for corrections and pre-recruiting. And that's what we're striving to do. And we have a huge one this week with Senior Day with South Alabama coming in here. So we're excited about the opportunity to play very well."
On Trey Lowe's performance Saturday…
"Yeah, really proud of him. He's just a high-character human being that does everything right in the way he lives his life. And really, he just ran the offense, his eyes were correct. And he did exactly what he's supposed to do. And then he made a play or two too, like the scramble where he flipped it to Frank was just a great play. He made some throws in the pocket including the first third-down conversion where he scrambled and found Brownlee. Those are two plays that come to my mind, where he made a play, and you need your quarterback to make a play to beat a great team. And then a lot of times, he just ran the offense, went through his progressions. He checked it down to Frank, and one time for nine yards, he would read an RPO right and throw it out there. He handed off the ball when it needed to be handed off on RPOs. He just really graded out half on one assignment standpoint, which allowed our offense to function. That's probably the first time since I've been here, we were able to run our offense, you saw us attack in certain ways, and then go to our counters, you know, go to our punch, counter punch, if you will, and run our offense that we've been hoping to run since we got here. We were able to make adjustments in the game. We came out in the second half and drove it into score to take the lead. And, it was a lot of fun. And I hope he can continue to do it because I have a lot of respect for him."
On the loss going toe-to-toe with top 25 teams his second year here…
"Yeah, you know, we would like to be further along. We would like to have more wins. But we're five and five, we've played a difficult schedule. There haven't been a lot of easy games on our schedule this year. And our kids battle, our kids represent this university the right way. We have some deficiencies. We know that in year two, we've been able to solve a lot of them and we got to continue to eliminate deficiencies through development and through correcting and then through recruiting and that's what we're striving to do every day and continue to push this program forward. You know that program out there, Coastal, just beat us. Like three years ago, they were five and seven. You know what I'm saying? And now, three years later, they have won 11 and now they're nine and one and so great programs are built like that. Great programs are built over time for consistency and most all groups of five programs that are winning consistently have consistency at the top. We're gonna have that here. We just got to keep going."
On how he feels about Trey Lowe not starting earlier in the season…
"You know man everything I do. I go through a process I pray about and I think about and you know you live your life second guessing everything. You know what I'm saying? I probably wish I would have proposed to my wife a little earlier too now that I know what an unbelievable wife she is. You try to go through a process. You try to treat everybody the right way. You try to pray about your decisions, and you try to do what's right, based on the information you have. Really proud of Trey, Trey, he's coming back from a horrible injury. An injury that you know is very similar to what Kevin Durant had that held him out of whole NBA season. And so it takes a while to come back and get yourself back and he has battled and worked and gotten himself back and to becoming the player you know he played the way we always thought he could play when we first got here he had an unbelievable first spring great summer and you can see that game you know he really played like what we saw when we first got here was really proud of him."
On deficiencies in the red zone…
"Well, we took two shots to (Jason) Brownlee and didn't get those. We'd like to at least go one for two there. We had a power trap wide open through the middle and, Rambo (Antavious Willis) kind of missed his cut right there. He should have walked right into the end zone. So that was two right there. And then you know, first you go from the 10 on first down and then first and 10 from the 11, which are the hardest situations in football. We were able to get down on the five one time. We took a shot to Brownlee, but he didn't get it. We were able to get down to the two, one time, and didn't get it in on third down. And obviously, if we get one of those we probably win the game. That was our deal on offense, we also dropped a pass that could have been big, and we ran out of bounds one time. If we stayed in bounds that would have been big, offensively. Defensively and special teams, we also had opportunities, but we were able to get it down in a first and goal situation inside the seven or more we were able to punch it in. We practice it, we work on it all the time. We just didn't make it happen. We'd like to go one for two to Brownlee right there at least and score. We had a roll in right there on power travel wide open. Our offense line and tight ends did a phenomenal job. We got to hit it and get in. Everything down, there's got to be meticulousness, you have to be right in every way because space is limited. Again, we got to just keep going and keep getting better. That's not something all of a sudden that we're not just addressing now, it's something we continue to address when the field shrinks, and the red zone deficiencies are shown even more. And we got to continue to work around those."
On update of Janari Dean…
"Yeah, I think he will get to play this week. He's coming out of concussion protocol, which is obviously out of my hands, we defer to the medical people. But he looks like he's on track to play this week."
On offensive line performance…
"Yeah, we really played well. We had a few sacks that were recovery sacks, where they did a great job in coverage too. They gave us a chance to win. And I thought the moves were good. Those five that started played extremely hard and the other kids that got in played hard as well. You know, that's what Coach (Sam) Gregg continues to harp on is effort and trust. You know, we can't be five pennies. We've got to be one nickel. And I thought we were one nickel in that game, not just five individual pennies. And, so it was good to see."
On the importance of the South Alabama game…
"Man, this whole league when we try to win every game, we're trying to push this program forward. Like they beat us pretty good the first game last year, they're way more advanced in their program. Something that we weren't at that point with what we were handed last year, we're in a much better situation this year. We've been competitive, in every game, but one this year. And that was not the case last year, we feel like we can play with people when we play well. And that's what we're concentrating on is, playing well and continuing to improve. And we would like to send the seniors out on a good note because everything they've been through. They really deserve it."
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