The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Dana Holgorsen Joins Matt As the Cougars Get Ready for Cincinnati

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

University of Houston Head Coach Dana Holgorsen joins Matt coming off a big win over UNT and going in to a game against Cincinnati

Your hoops. The Houston Rockets. Your hits. And the Astros. And your honest opinions. All the chickens play. All in for Houston all day. This is Sports Talk 790.

Our friends of the joint chiropractic bring you our weekly visit with Dana Holgerson, getting a week off after the Cougars got a week off, knocked off North Texas. And I'll tell you what, Dana. First of all, congratulations. Be nice to hear your voice. and see, these little walks you get on Thursdays, I'm going to be nearly as bad with the weather about to get the next couple days.

Well, it's around 92 and just sunny and gorgeous right now. I heard it's going to cool down a little bit, but I haven't seen that yet. No. We've been out there for three days, and it's been pretty hot. I was hoping it would stay hot for this weekend's game. We finally got a home game at 2.30, but it's going to be a nice day. All right, so I want you to grade yourself on the

speech before the game, because I'm thinking about if you were to walk in the Astros Clubhouse, how would Dana Holgerson tell the boys about tonight's game five? So give me like 10 seconds of what you would tell the local nine if you were getting ready for the game, and you were in there in chart. AJ said, hey, I brought Dana Holgerson in to kind of get you guys fired up.

You're going to be sorely disappointed. My new Rocky pregame speech is just really honestly don't exist. You know, I'm just, I'm a firm believer. and messaging, which we do throughout the course of the week, and typically the messaging doesn't change. We kind of got a feel for what we've got to do to be able to win the game. And you get those guys in there, you call them up, and you save Lord's Prayer, and we get a win on three,

and then we go out there and we do it. I tell you all those pre-game thing, if you're really getting somebody really fired up right before the game, that wears off right after kickoff. So it's almost like you've got to do your best work on like Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, we practice on.

Yeah, we go Monday night. Then we go Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday afternoon. You know, and then pretty much the haze in the barn at that point. But, you know, I just try to be consistent with what the messaging is. And, you know, the messaging this week, we got a really good team coming in on Saturday. Cincinnati's a top 25 team there. four and one with their only loss against Ohio State. But it's really kind of the same thing as it was against North Texas at this point with the Houston Cougars.

We just, we got to worry about us, and we've got to worry about just improving week to week. All right, so let's get honest here. Clayton, too, was really, really good. Not only was he accurate, move your team down the field. He had a terrific run late in the contest that kind of sealed things. Unfortunately, he pulled a little bit of the hamstring. I'm assuming since it hasn't been much headlines that he's 100% like. and loaded. Is that right?

I wouldn't say 100, but he's awful close. You know, unfortunately, fortunately he's got a ton of reps, a lot of snaps and a lot of reps up until this point. You know, it was good to watch him go in there and execute. We felt very, very, very confident that he would do that, just with the amount of reps that he's had. I thought he played really well. You know, last week didn't get a lot of reps and have absolutely gotten to the points where he's been getting reps going to understand the game plan for sure. But it doesn't really need the reps based on the fact that he's got all the reps here for the last, you know, since we've been here in January.

He's got a good bit of him. So he's going to be ready to go. He's going to be locked and loaded and ready to go. Dana, honestly, you've had a lot of victories in your career as a head football coach. And I don't know where you put the North Texas game, but there was obviously a lot of stuff going on with Derek situation and whether or not guys really were vested in the program. Was there a little bit of the, you know what, I'm proud of you boys, not only for being North Texas, but kind of showing America that, you know, this team hasn't given up on the season. No.

You know, people are saying we're throwing the towel in and we're, I don't know, I guess people are using like a tanking deal. I don't even know what that is in college athletics, but it's really, you know, just, I was just proud with the way the guys, they just attacked the week and they put their head down and they blocked it all out. And they worried about themselves and we played hard. I thought it was a good team win. We dominated on special.

teams, which is good to see. And then offensively and defensively, we improved. And that's just what we're at as a program right now. It's where we are as a football team. And it's where we're at as a program is your job just to continuously try to get better. Has the team, I'm assuming that the off time took care of some nicks and bruises with some guys. Is that fair to say? Oh, yeah. You know, and I heard you say, Matt, it was an off week. I can assure you it wasn't that. But we did have some downtime, you know, which was really beneficial. And from a mental standpoint, it was really beneficial as well. Just, you know, when you play that many games in that short period of time,

the mental fatigue is what was more concerning to me than the physical aspect of it. So I came at a good time. You know, we gave them the weekend off. We, you know, went out and did some recruiting, which was all real positive and real good. But just getting back and getting ready to go, these guys were fired up. Our GPS numbers have been really good here. this weekend. It's going to be a battle on Saturday. Cincinnati is a really good football team.

Yeah, I should correct myself, Danny, because when I say off week, I go to Vegas for four or five days. These young men are in class for a couple days. Yeah, I'm usually on a beach or something like that myself. But we were at high school football games. I did take Friday afternoon and went and watch the Astros win game one. Looking forward to being able to watch that game tonight, game five. I hope they're going to get us a victory right here. But, you know, the Hayes in the Barn at this point,

and I got my radio show tonight, and then I want to watch him to that game. Tell me about Desmond Ritter. What do you like about him? He's the quarterback for Cincinnati. Yeah, they got a big backfield now. I mean, they play Big Ten football is what they do. I mean, Fickles is a Ohio State guy, Big Ten guy. I mean, they're going to be physical, you know, on the offense side.

I know they throw the ball a good bit, too. about 50% each, but they're going to try to establish the run with got big backs. I've got, you know, three or four different guys that they're going to try to be involved in the run game. And then they're going to play good defense to be found on special teams. So it really reminds me a Big Ten football. You know, got to watch a little bit of football here this past weekend. And, you know, that's the type of stuff that they do.

Staying with that strategy, I think their tight end leads their team in reception. So is that become a bigger focus of? practice this week is going after guys when frankly sometimes you don't even see time-ins in football games yeah well we we got a pretty good one i think that's that's starting to come into a zone right now christian trehan uh one of our our leader receivers and and snap guys as well so it's good for our defense to be able to go against us we're multiple uh you know we're obviously trying to run the football as well uh and uh just being able to practice at that uh against that with the tight ends and stuff is going to help our defense

moving forward. Well, leave it that. Dana, thank you for the visit as always. We'll see you on Saturday. Best of luck and good luck and it's nice having you guys home for a little while. This will be a nice little run here the next few weeks after this is a Yukon. Yeah. It's awful nice to be able to play

a home game. You know, the scheduling gods weren't very kind to us and the American didn't do us really any favors by putting our first home game in October. Hopefully we've had to change in the future. It didn't really fair to our fan base. But with that said, here we are. We're home. We'll play Saturday at 2.30. I apologize for all the construction and the noise in the background. There's just all kinds

of building going on here at the University of Houston, which we're not going to apologize for. No, I was going to say, what are you putting out? You guys, football facilities, baseball's looking good. Hell, the Fertita Center's a freaking amazing facility. I mean, you got it all right now. Well, we don't get it at all. That football facilities would have got to be next. So we got plans for it, but that's not what you currently hear. This is academic buildings and parking garages, which is needed as well. We get to 11 wins and get to a championship. I'll help you write a check.

Is that fair? There you go. There you go. Thanks, Dana. We'll see you later. Okay. Dana Hogerson joining us from the University of Houston here on Sports Talk 790.