Speaker 1: We'll recap some of the astro's decisions coming up in
just a couple of minutes. Right now, let's spend a
few minutes with our good friend, the head football coach
of the University of Houston Cougars, Willie Fritz, And he
was brought to you by the Joint Chiropractice, the official
chiropractor of the University of Houston Athletic department. Willy is
with us here getting ready for to Saturday's game with
Oklahoma State. Willie, thank you for the time. Is always
take us through Connor's situation when you needed to pull
him and where we stand right now getting ready for
this game against the Cowboys.
Speaker 2: Well, he bes in great shape. You know, we put him.
Anytime there's anything you worry about with the guy with
a concussion or whatever, you immediately put him into you know,
what we call concussion protocol. And he was doing good
on Sunday, and then he's continued to progress and been
fine all the way through and you know, practice today
and we feel great about him playing on Saturday.
Speaker 1: Obviously you have Xeon's eye and uh as his backup
and has been able to play some at the collegiate level.
How much does the playbook change? How much does the
game plan change when you make a change in the
middle of the game like that.
Speaker 2: Oh, it does a little bit, you know. Uh, you know,
you have a full compliment of plays that you run,
you know, your playbook, and now you want the quarterbacks
to learn all of it. You know, there's definitely some
parts of it that one guy might do better than
another guy. And uh, you know, so there are a
few changes, you know, probably a little bit more run
game with Xeon that you know, Connor runs the ball
very well.
Speaker 1: Also, Uh, what did you think overall of his performance?
I know it's always difficult to be the backup quarterback
as you're only one play away, but for a guy
like that to have some experience as a nice fallback
in case Connor can't go for you or can't be
at one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, he came in and we gave us
a spark. You know, you had a couple of really
good runs and uh ended up catching you know, getting
that town with you know, a nice throat to Mark Thomas,
and unfortunately we just you know, we needed to play
really well. We need that going into the game. I
don't think we played as well as we were capable of. Uh,
I do a better job of getting everybody prepared, coaches
and players, and then we got to go ahead and
ext cut on game day. But uh, you know, the
hats off to you know, then they played it extremely
well and very talented team and and uh, you know,
just we just got to do a better job of
executing and you know, and call the right things offense, defense,
kicking game.
Speaker 1: I knew you were so yeah, I knew you were
so impressed and proud of your guys in the low
turnover count and unfortunately Rude's luckily had this past week.
When you look at the game film on that, were
there some things that tech Tech was doing or was
it just a self destruction a little bit on your side.
Speaker 2: Oh, but both they do a good job of getting
after the footballs like we do and targeting it when
someone's running. If you know, any time you over to
gas Page trying to get the ball out, you're in
his blind spot. And did that on occasion. We had
a foolish interception that we threw that we didn't need
to throw. That was an easy one form. But you're right,
when you play a quality team, you play anybody. You know,
your plus one plus two, plus three got a great
chance of winning the ball game, and fortunately we're minus two.
And when that happens, you don't win very many games.
Speaker 1: I thought Willie the most encouraging part during that stretch,
unfortunately that the squad was turned the ball over was
you were holding Texas Tech to field goals, and that
had to be a positive sign that your defense, you know,
try to keep in the game as long as you could.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did. They did a good job early in
the ball game. We talk all the time about four
point plays, both offensively and defensively, when you you know,
hold the offense to a field goal to allow me
get it, you know, a touchdown seven points. You know,
the same thing on offense, you know, when you get
an opportunity to get a touchdown, and we didn't. You know,
we had to take a field goal that after we
had that long completion to Kobe Young. So you want
four point plays there too, touchdown instead of field goals.
So you know, that's a big that's one of the
bigger points in winning football games is scoring touchdowns over
field goals. And we got to do a better job
of that.
Speaker 1: Well, you're going to Oklahoma State this week. They've been
a coaching change. If I was to look at their
last week's game film as compared to when coach Gunny
was running things early in the year, would I see
a dramatic difference.
Speaker 2: No, not too much. You know, they got the same
offensive coordinator. Matter of fact, he was here as the
offensive coordinator one year back at twenty thirteen. Doesn't mean yep,
and you know so not a dramatic difference in what
they were doing prior to you know, coach getting let
go and what they're doing now.
Speaker 1: And for your guys, you don't you haven't had to
have this experience this year because it was your first loss.
But to get out of the troops, what was practiced
like this week? What was the mental focus? Did you
notice anything different you try to not reinvent the wheel
after a tough loss at home? Or do you need
to give the urgency of hey, if we want to
do some things and get back to a ball and
be competitive in this Big twelve, we need to shake
things up a little bit.
Speaker 2: No. You know, the one thing we did do is
we always take off Sunday and then Monday. We came
in a week We watched every single tape, you know,
the offense watched every single play together, and I just
kind of see, you know, probably five or six times
I heard the coaches, hey, I won a good call
on my behalf. I sat in there with them and
told them a few things I could have done better.
But we also had the guys look and see things
they could have done better. We did the same thing
with defense, did the same thing with kicking game. You know.
We usually run through the tape pretty quick and we
move on to the next opponent, but spend a little
bit more time on it just to you know, not
you know, repeat the same mistakes that we did in
that ball game. So I thought it was really good
on Monday, and I think we've had a excellent week
of practice.
Speaker 1: We'll leave it at that, coach, We'll see you at
the plane tomorrow. Congratulations on a good season so far.
Looking forward to getting up there and getting that victory
against Oklahoma State, and we'll look forward to that game
on Saturday and still Water. Thanks for the time as always, Hi,
thank you, you got to thank you. Willie Fritz joining
us here, the head coach of your Houston Cougar is
brought to you by again the Joint Chiropractor, the official
chiropractor of University of Houston Athletics. Eleven o'clock to start
time on TNT. Not a place you would normally think
for college football, but they're starting to carry some games
now and we'll look forward to having that for you
Saturday as well on our sister station nine fifty KPRC