University of Connecticut Athletics
UConn Football Hosts Media Luncheon
10/29/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
October 29, 2002
STORRS, CONN. - The University of Connecticut football team held its weekly media luncheon on Tuesday at the Putnam Dining Hall on the Storrs campus as the Huskies prepare to play Florida Atlantic. The following are some excerpts from the event.
Head Coach Randy Edsall:
Could he take on a task like FAU head coach Howard Schnellenberger is at his age?
No. It's a credit to coach Schnellenberger and what he's doing. I give the man a lot of credit for doing the. It shows his love that he has of football and South Florida as well. He's got a lot of work ahead of him but he's done a good job already. They're talented on defense. They run extremely well on defense. They have good skill people on offense. He's been able to put some things together and I think that you'll see that program really starting to surprise some people very soon as those kids get more mature.
Is this week more about preparing for FAU or getting your team in order?
That's what it is. That hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly what I told the team yesterday. That's kind of what I tell them every week. This week, and just like every week, it's more about ourselves. Forget who you're playing. Take a look at last week. It didn't matter that it was Vanderbilt. Take a week before and it doesn't matter that it was Temple. What we have to do is concentrate on ourselves and if we do what we're capable of doing and if we go out and execute, we're going to be OK. That's the focus that we have to have each and every Saturday and this one is no different. Yes, you have to look at the film and you have to know the tendencies that they have and the players that you're competing against, but ultimately this week, like every other week, it's about us. It's about us learning the game plan. It's about us studying the opponent's tendencies. Then going out and preparing during the week in practice and executing the game plan and having a minimal amount of mistakes during the game. If we do that, we have an opportunity to win. But, that's how we're approaching this week, just like we've done in the other weeks.
On third down conversions being a trouble spot of late:
That's one of the areas that we're going to work even more on this week. We've got to improve in our third down conversions on offense. We're at only 26-percent. It's not one person breaking down. If it was, then you can remove that individual from the equation. But, sometimes it's protection. Sometimes it's not getting of coverage. Sometimes it might be making the wrong read. It's a combination of things. Sometimes it's good execution on the defense's part. Sometimes we fail to give enough credit to the other teams that we're playing...Another thing we've got to do a better job at is in our red zone defense. We're giving up way too many touchdowns down there. When people get the ball down there we've got to make them kick more field goals and get turnovers. Those are a couple of points that we need to improve on for this week. We've had emphasis on those things before but we've got to continue to do that if we're going to get better.
Is everybody healthy?
Yeah, we really are. We've got a bug going around which you expect this time of year, but from an injury standpoint we're in pretty good shape, unless something happens during the week.
On if he'd consider giving Terry Caulley more work:
What we'd like to do it get him about 25 touches a game and he's been pretty close to that in every game. I don't want to give it to him 40 times and have him on the 38th play get something where he's out for a whole year, because he's tired and worn down. As we go into the game we have a plan for what we want to do and how we want to use him. A lot of it depends on how he is during the game. If he can handle more then we'll give him more. But, I don't think you're going to see us give him the ball 40 times in a game the rest of the year. I don't see that. I don't think he's ready for that yet. We'll use him as much as we have to to help us win but I'm not going to put him in a situation where he's got an opportunity to get hurt because he's taking excess hits at this point in time in his career.
Junior strong safety Chris Meyer:
On the emotions of recent games:
All the games that we lost this year, besides the Miami and Georgia Tech games, were so close. You feel terrible when you lose by such a little amount because it just gets taken away from you.
On Florida Atlantic:
They have good athletes and they make plays on the films that I've been watching. You can't take a team like this lightly. Even though they're I-AA and a start-up program, you still can't take them lightly because they're probably looking at us like "we want a Division I win and what better time to get it than this week."
On whether he things the team will respond well to the Vanderbilt loss:
I don't know how to answer that because today's the first day of real practice. I want to see how everything goes today. But I know everybody's disappointed about the loss, frustrated and really pissed off. I wouldn't be surprised if we came out here wanting to dominate in every phase of this game.
