The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Dana Holgorsen Joins Matt Thomas Ahead Of SMU

Episode Date: October 22, 2019

Head Coach of the University of Houston Cougars, Dana Holgorsen, joins Matt as the team prepares to face SMU

This is Ryan Anderson. Kicks at quarter three Anderson. They need it, and they get it. Sports Stock 790 is your home for Houston Rockets basketball. I like hearing Ryan Anderson highlights. We don't get to do that very much. He made the roster. Rockets start the season Thursday at home against the hated Milwaukee Bucks.

Big Thursday in the city of Houston. Cougars taking on the SMU Mustangs, a man that hopefully will get back-to-back wins for our squad and his kids. will be Dana Holgerson. He joins us here, courtesy the Joint Chiropractic. Dana, first of all, thanks for joining us on this Tuesday. How crazy is this week having to get back after a long trip

and then having to play a game in like 48 hours? Well, the conference has realigned all these games for us and aligned all these games for us here this year. Obviously, the start to the season, they put us on a Thursday night earlier in the year coming off a Friday night

game against Washington State. You know, which I wasn't very happy about that. They could have put that game somewhere and gave us a home game. We didn't play a home conference game until mid-October. So not real happy with the conference, honestly, with their scheduling. The Yukon trip was something that was foreign to our team. None of them had ever been to the East Coast before, you know,

and it was a four-hour flight. We got there at like 7 p.m. Eastern time and, you know, had to get up at 6 o'clock Eastern time. so it wasn't at that hotel very much. It sounds like I'm making a lot of excuses, but the truth of the matter is, our guys just ignored all that. We played our first noon game,

which was 11 a.m. Central. So we kind of slept, walked through the first half, got their attention at halftime, played a little better in the second half, and won the game, you know, which is the ultimate key. That's right. After that, we got back on that airplane

and flew four hours back home. I got in here about 9 o'clock and went straight to work working on SMU. It's a tough turnaround. I haven't done a five-day turnaround in about probably since the last time I was here at the University of Houston. There's a reason why major conferences don't allow their teams to do it. Well, we will hopefully get that fixed down the road. You said adjustments at halftime. Is it a tongue lashing?

It is a, hey, I've got to show you all something. I'm always very curious, and you can always say, hey, Matt, that's between us boys. but I just love hearing what guys like yourself tell the kids at halftime when you felt like clearly you were the better football team but we're just not executing to the level that you'd want to see from your squad. Yeah, it was a little bit more of a – I didn't tongue lash him. I didn't really like just yell and scream at them. And, you know, I think all that's kind of over-exaggerated coaches going nuts

and punching things and breaking clipboards and all that. I think it's way over-exaggerated, but just a lot of motivational stuff, just a lot of talk, just a lot of light guys you can do this, you can snap out of it. You know, we're not losing. We're winning 10 to 7. You know, I know everybody thinks that we're just going to show up and beat Yukon as bad as we possibly can. Let me tell you something. That atmosphere was good.

I mean, you know, Yukon's only several years removed from being a part of the Big East and going to the Fiestaable. So, you know, they had a – a really good atmosphere is their homecoming. They had about probably 30,000, 40,000 people there is an awesome day for awesome northeast autumn fall autumn day for football. Their guys were ready to play. They kind of saw a little bit of a wounded University of Houston team with the amount of injuries that we had and a true freshman walk-on quarterback. And they're saying, they're like, this is our chance to be able to win. So those guys played hard and they played well. And, you know, they're fully funded and they got a full staff with 85 scholarships and all that as well.

A lot of people forget that, but the people we play have as many or more resources than we do. So I was just glad that our guys didn't cave. We played hard. We kept going. We kept playing. We played well enough to go win with at the end of the day, you go win a college football game on the road. It's something to be proud of. All right.

All my friends are asking, how's Clayton's hamstring? Do you feel more confident about him being able to go this Thursday? Yeah, I do. If we would have played him in that game, because of the quick turnaround, and he was probably a little bit more ready to go, honestly, against Yukon than he was against Cincinnati. But, you know, he felt good enough to go against Cincinnati, but you set yourself back when you do that. When you pull the trigger and you're not quite ready to pull the trigger with the hamstring at such a back. So if he would have went against Yukon, then they would have been probably, extremely doubtful that he would have been ready for SMU.

So, you know, I didn't want to keep dealing with that every single week. I mean, he's our starting quarterback. He's a good player. We want him to get out there and play at 100%. And until he can do that, we're not going to do that. You know, he just, he can't, even against Cincinnati, I admire him for going out there and playing the way he played. His timing was off and he was a little jittery in the pocket just because he hadn't had

any practice snaps. So he practiced, you know, he's already practiced twice this week. he's going to be out there again today. I don't see no reason to be able to hold him there this week. That looks like he's a gun. That's really encouraging. Last question, I was getting ready for the pregame show for Thursday and listening to Coach Dykes and some of the things he was saying.

They ran 109 offensive plays, Dana. You already know this, against Temple this past Saturday. I would think a number one key is there's no way in the world you want your defense on the field for 109 plays this week. No, I don't. It's just what they do and what they believe. leave in they have the depth and the players to be able to do so. They got to, you know, Michelle is a quarterback that's used to doing that type of a thing. They've got, you know, two outstanding receivers that can make big plays down field. They, you know, good enough

up front, good enough in the run game, where they can just kind of move the ball and snap it and get first downs, that sort of thing. We got to be careful about that. We're about as thin as any team in the entire country right now. Everybody, everybody knows that. So we can't afford that many snaps. And we've only snapped the ball 52 times against against Yukon last week. We're only averaging about 60 snaps a game. I've got to do what we've got to do to shorten the game because of our bodies and not being able to hold up. So ultimately, it's kind of up to the defense.

They got to get off the field, you know, especially on third downs, which we've been kind of average at. We're average against Yukon at that. But get off the field and then offensively, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to try to control the game as much as I possibly can, especially when you got such a high-powered offense coming in like SMU is. Amen to that. Dana, congratulations on the victory. Really thankful that you're able to join me today and best luck on Thursday night, friend.

Appreciate it. Okay, Matt, appreciate it. No walks today, though. I got work to do. Short week. I didn't even ask. I knew you're in the office. I just knew it.

There you go. Do you have lunch in front of you? That's the most important thing. What are you eating right now? I don't know. It's always a surprise. They bring snacks every day, which before practice, we get some sort of a snack, which is usually just like a sandwich and chips from somewhere,

hundreds of places that we can choose from here in Houston. Perfect. Thank you, friend. Appreciate it as always. See you, love. You got it. Dana Hoggerson with us here on the Matt Thomas show, courtesy of our friends at the Joint Chiropractor, the official chiropractor of the University of Houston.