University of Massachusets Athletics
Kevin Morris' Weekly CAA Teleconference
October 26, 2009 | Football
Oct. 26, 2009
AMHERST, Mass. - The Colonial Athletic Association weekly football teleconference was held on Monday morning and UMass head coach Kevin Morris fielded questions from the media. Among the topics Coach touched upon were the loss at No. 1 Richmond this past weekend, his running backs, the play of Tyler Holmes, and what he expects from Maine this weekend.
The complete transcript can be found below.
On the 34-12 loss at Richmond:
Well unfortunately, we saw a lot of turnovers. We had some forced errors and Richmond did a great job of pressuring the quarterback, but at the same time we made some bad decisions and put some balls out there that we may have wanted back. In the end, you cant have any turnovers against a team like Richmond and I think we ended up with seven total turnovers on the day, eight including a bad snap on a punt that ended up being a loss of yards and giving them great field position. You can't give Richmond any advantage at all and we certainly did that and paid the price for it.
On injuries to running backs and the emergence of Chris Zardas:
It's nice to have some backs that are willing to come downhill and run hard but we didn't do a good job of establishing the run and Richmond is an outstanding run defense so its all part of what's going on during the course of the game. We're banged up with Tony out and Jon got banged up on his hand. He'll be fine but we just kept him out because he couldn't feel his hand for awhile and then came back and wanted to go back in. He's a tough kid. He was rearing and ready to go but we felt best to keep him out at that point. Chris took over and like I said we're fortunate to have backs like that in the program. Here at UMass that's what we want to do, we want to have a good balance of run and pass and in that game we didn't get the run established well enough on first and second downs and then we're throwing the ball a little bit, made some decisions that didn't go our way, and they made some nice plays on some tipped balls. Next thing you know we're in a big hole and we couldn't get out.
On having to throw the ball in the bad weather conditions in Richmond:
I thought our quarterbacks did a real good job of holding the football and throwing the ball in terms of actual handling the ball in the rain. That really wasn't a factor, it was more pressure from Richmond and making bad decisions, as I mentioned earlier, that caused all those turnovers. I recall one ball that slipped out of the quarterback's hands all night, other than that the actual control of the ball, on the turf field, without the extra mud getting involved and the ball getting that much heavier with the mud and rain on it, you can hold the ball pretty well, and we did that. So the rain was a factor, the wind was actually a big factor and the kicking game was actually where it came into play in that football game. For one, it was a definite wind advantage going one way more than the other. So that affected the playing calling on both sides more than the rain itself, although it was coming down quite hard at some points.
On the quarterback situation:
Going forward Kyle Havens is our starting quarterback. We just felt at that point in the game we needed to get something going offensively. At that point we hadn't been able to establish good consistency because of the turnovers, so we brought Scott Woodward in and Scott had some success, actually put one touchdown on the board, albeit late, and had a decent drive coming back late at the very end. At this point, it's Kyle Havens. We thought Scott Woodward came in and did a great job and we'll evaluate it from there.
On the play of Tyler Holmes:
Tyler's playing great football for us. He played really well in the Richmond game. Over the course of that ball game we just had so many short fields to deal with and obviously Richmond's a very good football team and they're going to take advantage of them and they did to put enough points on the board. There was a couple times you look up at the scoreboard and the score hadn't changed over a long period of time even though we kept turning the ball over. That was a testament to how well our defense was playing in those adverse situations that we were putting them in. Tyler was leading that group. He had 18 tackles on the day, an interception on a ball that was going into the end zone and made a great play on that. Tyler's just really stepped up and continued from the Kansas State game on and really played great football for us. As a young sophomore, really just a redshirt freshman, just played a couple games at the end of his true freshman year. So he's still really young but emerging as a leader on our defense and a kid that's a go-to guy at the heart of our defense.
On what he sees from Maine:
Maine is a good football team. They come to play every week and we know that when we go up to Maine the UMass-Maine game is always a very physical football game and I don't anticipate anything less. Warren Smith having a really nice year putting the ball in the end zone, running the ball as well. I thought when they put Brusko out at wide-out that was the end of the quarterback run game but that hasn't been the case at all so Warren Smith is a weapon all the way around. Derek Sessions is a very talented athlete and as coach mentioned they'll split him out, they'll put him in the backfield, they'll get him the ball any way they can because he does great things with it. You mentioned Landis Williams, he's an outstanding football player with great speed and he does good things with the ball and then they have the big target on the other side offensively in Jones. So they have a lot of weapons there and we're going to have to continue to play good defense and we've been playing pretty solid and we certainly need to do that again and see if we can force some turnovers as well. Defensively, it's one of those classic Maine defenses, very solid, they're going to stop the run. Brandon McLaughlin is very physical. He's a big kid, 6-3, 240, and he plays that big but he'll also play the deep safety roll so he can do it all for them. Jordan Stevens is very active up front, and then Dante Dennis is having a great year and leading their team in tackles. Not to mention Jerron McMillian as a true secondary guy in the safety position, so we certainly have our work cut out for us. A lot of our work is going to be on our own this week. You know, taking all those lapses in execution last week against Richmond and seeing if we can't focus in offensively and get those things squared away so we can come out and put together a good game plan and a good play-to-play style of execution because we're going to need all of that. Maine also has a full bag of tricks on special teams that they've been using all year long, particularly against Syracuse. They had another fake punt against Richmond. They've got two weeks to get ready for us so we've got to be ready to get hit from all angles this week up at Maine.
