Speaker 1: The joint chiropractice. They've got Houston's back to the official
chiropractor of University of Houston Athletics brings you Willie Fritz
here on the program and let's say how to coach
and coach. First of all, congratulations on the win against
Colorado and the time off. Let me ask you first
and foremost. I'm assuming you and your coaches had a
chance to go check out a lot of high school
talent over the last still week or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a lot of fun when
it was a really good game on Thursday nine, a
real good game on Friday night. So enjoyed going on.
You know, you see a little bit more in person.
You know, the interaction student athletes, you know, with their teammates,
and you know, different things like that, how they compete,
and it's fine to go out. We went out and
watched kids who were committed to us, so it was, uh,
we got a lot out of it.
Speaker 1: Pardon my ignorance on this, but I'm curious, do you
want to tell them you're coming? Do you want them
to not know? And does it matter whether they're committed
or not?
Speaker 2: Like knowing, you know, you didn't want to get it
set up, and you know, you tell the high school
coach and I like standing down on the sideline where
I can really get a good bird's eye view of
what's happening going on. And so yeah, they know that
we're coming to the ball game.
Speaker 1: Well, you had a chance to see a out of
that wall, celebrate the victory against Colorado. Coach off to
a three and oh start, and not only are you
one of the few undefeated teams still in college football,
but your squad has not turned the ball over. That's
always a focus for every coach. But what has made
it especially more satisfying over the first three weeks.
Speaker 2: Well, we didn't do a great job of it last year.
You know, it's something we really emphasized last year. We
emphasized the big time during the spring, in the summer
and preseason camp and guys just in a nice job,
partners play call it. You know. Part of it's a
little bit of good luck where you don't have to,
you know, put the ball in arms away. You know,
I think our offense coordinator, coach Nangle, does a good
job with making sure there plays that you have a
minimal risk to him as far as a turnovers concern,
and then we're doing a good job of taking the
ball away. You know, you call him takeaways, not giveaways,
and our defense might have done a pretty darn good job.
We've been close to having four or five and each
of the games, and I think we're plus six right
now in the turnover takeaway category. So we just got
to continue to keep doing that throughout the whole season
and my career as head coach, and we've been plus
one or better than ninety one percent of our games
at a lot of different levels that I've coached at.
So that's something that you know helps your success is
making sure that you want that turnover takeaway. Now.
Speaker 1: I know you had to mentally and physically prepare for
three different quarterbacks. I know coach Sanders did not announce
job until he at the very last second, but was
I'm going to assume your kids were not surprised because
there was some game tape on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a game tape on him. And you know,
unless it's just completely and totally different, you know, skill
sets with the quarterbacks, you're going to get the same offense.
Maybe you might run one guy a little bit more
than the other, or maybe there's a certain pass the
guys a little bit better than the other guys at
but you know, by large you're going to get the
you know, the same style offense. So we just worked
on what they've done the first two games, and I
had an idea that the stop kid might start, and
he did, and you know, our kids did a good
job of adapting.
Speaker 1: Jim Connor gave you two hundred and twenty two yards
to the air, eighty three on the ground of the
eighty three is a career high for him? Is that
something you want to see more of? The not necessarily
the yards, but just the ability to say, you know
what I can take off if it needed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna run the quarterback every week. You know,
I've talked about it many times. It's just when you
play eleven on eleven football, you got a better chance
of being successful in the run game. When you're handing
it off the back. Now it's a little bit more difficult,
and you know, a fortunate that that Connor can run
and he's got good speed, good movement, And then there's
some times where you know everybody's covered and you see
a crease and you're the protection and he did that
one time as well. He took it and ran with
it and scored a touchdown. So yeah, we're we're very
fortunate we have a you know, a true due for
it quarterback now or we're gonna run him twenty times
a game now, but we're gonna run him five to
ten times a ball game.
Speaker 1: Is that under his circumstances or are those specific play calls?
What do you think it would be more?
Speaker 2: Probably three or four of them are going to be,
you know, where he touched it and runs you know,
either he's got pressure or you know, and there's not
a clear the receiver to throw to. But the other
ones will be called quarterback runs or option place where
you you know, you're reading somebody and it's either a
you know, give the ball the back or pull it
so you know. But yeah, we're fortunate that we've got
a guy back there that can move around.
Speaker 1: Well, you got two and nine yards on the ground
on two twenty two through the air. If I've talked
to one coach, they al said the same thing. We
love balance offense, and you got that against the Buffaloes.
Speaker 2: No, we want to be a fifty to fifty team.
You know, the pass opens up the run and vice versa.
You know, if you make them, you know have to
defend the whole field horizontally and vertically. He got a
much better chance of being successful. We think we've got
some good backs and got good receivers and tight ends,
and we're going to try to utilize all of them.
You know, you get into a game sometimes you have
more success in one thing to the other, and you're
smart to stick with that plan of attack. But you know,
we'd like to be a fifty to fifty team.
Speaker 1: I sometimes tease my radio audience about not being able
to trust college kickers, and you and I. Earlier this
Yeason talked about the fact that we were seeing more
and more successful ones. Your guy five out of six.
If you can get fifteen points a game from your
college kicker like that, you're going to be in a
really good spot this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And a bunch of more long ones too. You know.
He was ten of eleven at Old Dominion last year,
miss with fifty plus yards. So that's that's the reason
why we got him here. We want to be able to,
you know, get the automatic three points when it's gonna
be hard to convert on a fourth and sixth or seven,
whatever the case may be. You're in that little in
between fringe area, you know, right around the plus twenty
five plus thirty five yard line, and you still got
an opportunity to get points, even though they down of
distance isn't good for you by kicking the field goals,
so Ethan Saint says, did a really nice job of,
you know, kicking the last Well, I guess it was
two weeks ago, right, yep, I don't feel like it's
two months ago.
Speaker 1: You know, it does feel like that. How do you
like the early off week? You had a chance to
rest up some guys, and nicks and bruces are always
gonna be a part of a college football season, But
how do you feel, at least healthwise going to this
game against Oregon State?
Speaker 2: Much better? We were banged up, particularly on the offensive line.
We've got a few of those guys back now and
they're healthy. Uh. You know, we took you know, it
took a couple of days off of the student athletes,
and we did and we came back on Monday, and
we just really lifted during that bye week and practice Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
and came Friday, Saturday, off and came back and started
working again on Sunday because we're actually flying out tomorrow
to head out to Oregon State.
Speaker 1: So as far as organ State is concerned, a really
rough goal of things for them. They are in a
full rebuild. It feels like they also are trying to
get established back at a new conference, which will be next year.
I don't know if the travel is going to be
a huge consideration. Guys have been on plane rides before,
but just a thought or two about seeing them having
already one conference game in the books and this being
your last non conference game coming up here on Friday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we just you know, I've really had an opportunity
to study these guys when were having the bye week,
and you know, like I tell these guys all the time,
this is this game counts as one, just like last week,
just like next week, I'll count one. You work year
round for these twelve guaranteed opportunities, and you know, having
this time off, we want to be able to play
the best we can. We should be healthy. I think
we've had an opportunity to, you know, figure out our
squad a little bit. What guys do well, maybe some
things they don't do quite so. Well, we try to
stay away from that, you know, and we've been able
to do that in all all three phases during this
time off.
Speaker 1: And do you want the depth chart fluid every week
or do you like the things settled down by this
time of the year.
Speaker 2: I wouldel like it'd be, you know, pretty close to
settle down. There's always guys that you know, continue to
keep improving during the year, and maybe they're playing five
stantzing game and in another two three weeks they're playing
you know, thirty stantzing games. You know, sometimes that's based
on injury as well. A guy comes in and shows
what he can do and may be the guy out.
We want competition, we want depth, and we want to
know though, you know, what are the guys that are
going to be playing, you know, not just on defense
or offense, but you who are the best eleven guys
on kickoff team? Who the best eleven guys on kickoff
return it, who's the best eleven guys and on third
and long defensively, So you're always trying to figure your
squad out and make sure you got the right Jimmy's
and Joe's in the places where you need to have them.