The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Dana Holgorsen Joins Matt Thomas on 790

Episode Date: October 17, 2019

University of Houston Head Coach, Dana Holgorsen joins Matt as the team prepares for Connecticut

That's a line drive on one hop. This is George Springer. Houston's home for Astros baseball. This is Sports Talk 790. 133 on Matt Thomas show. Our friends, the joint chiropractic. They are the official chiropractor of U of H athletics. Going to help us bring Dana Holgerson to you for a couple of minutes here on the show.

And as you'll know, if you listen to the show, we get Dana when he goes on walks around the beautiful campus at his University of Houston. by the way, I'm wearing a 2015 U of H shirt, 2013 pullover, but I'm not worrying about the years. Dana, Coach, how are you this afternoon? I'm good. You need some new gear. Hey, I got the new black coaches shirt.

I'm all into that, but we need to have a little visit next time. Maybe load up on some other stuff, but that's for a different issue for a different time. How are you holding up? Three quarterbacks, not the optimum way to go in a particular game, is it? Well, yeah, we were prepared to have about five of them take snaps. We only actually had four, you know, so, you know, Clayton went in and did the best he could with no reps over the course of two weeks. I thought he managed it pretty well, all things considering.

And Logan Holgerson went in and kind of ran things for a little while. Bryson Smith, who had the best completion percentage of all the quarterbacks, right? So he was one for one. He took some good snaps from the cop. ordered it some wildcat stuff as well. So it's not ideal, but we got guys that can get it done. And how does that affect? I mean, look, Clinton gutted it out.

I mean, I was there for the first half where I to go over the Astros, but you could just tell he wasn't 100%. Walk me through his last couple weeks and the frustration of getting this opportunity, being so good like he was against North Texas, but damn, these hamstrings and cause a big pain, literally. Yeah, they can. They're a little bit of a problem. And, you know, it hampered his playing ability.

I think we would have won that game and better on offense if Clayton was 100%. But it affected his preparation, too. He couldn't take any snaps throughout the course of the week. Logan went up there and basically ran practice for two weeks. We're going to have to get it under control or it's going to bother him the whole year. So he's working hard and he's trying to get that thing healthy. It's get better every day. but you can see with his play,

he needs to be able to run around. That's what makes him great. And just wasn't able to do that. But fortunately, we're going to be able to get him healthy here, and he'll be back to the moment. He'll pretty quick. All right, so I'm assuming at this point, it's still to be determined who starts for you Saturday.

Is that right? Is that fair to say? Correct. Yeah, it is. Just because you never know what those things. You know, I mean, you can't, if you go out there and you play when you're not ready to play, I mean, it can set you back, you know,

And that's the same thing with practice, you know. So, you know, he's going to be available, you know, and Logan's going to be available. Bryson's going to be available. Kyle Porter is going to be available. Trell Brown is another Wildcat guy that we got as well. So, you know, we've got guys that can get it done. They all need to go in there and when their numbers call.

They need to play well. If I ask Logan how much he talks to Coach Hoagerson and how much he talks to Dad, what would he say the split would be? I don't coach him. You know, that's Marquell Blackwell. I mean, he's our quarterback coach. So one of the rules that, you know, when he said he wanted to play for me and everything, I was like, well, I'm not coaching.

You know, I mean, that's just, that's a hard thing to do. But he's a good kid, and he works hard at it and practices well. He's been on the sidelines for about 19 years now, so we kind of have the feel for what we expect. I heard the call the Bryson Smith throw. I heard it was one of the best throws and maybe TDE's used games ever seen in his life. drop the play for the audience, it didn't catch it. Man, I tell you, what was impressive about it is is he was getting whacked as he was throwing it too.

So, I mean, you know, we're doing obviously a lot of run game, Wildcat run game with them, but defenses are going to know you can't just load up the box because you can throw that thing over the top. It was as good of a deep ball as I've been around. And we were about six for six in practice with that thing. So the fact that, you know, we called it, is a pretty critical situation. We needed to make a play at that point. He dropped a dime now, so we're going to probably do that a little bit more. When you were at West Virginia, at this time

of year, the temperatures start to get cool, maybe wind and weather could be a factor. I don't know what the Hartford forecast is. I haven't looked, but did you, when you were there, enjoy having teams in the South come to your stadium? And could you think Yukon's like, hey, we'll show them what cold weather's all about? Let me, I give you a little weather lesson here. So, When it's 60 degrees in Houston, that's like 40 degrees up in the northeast. Okay, I like it. Well, just because of two things, because of wind and because of moisture. Okay, so it's windy in Texas.

There's moisture in Texas, which means that temperature feels a lot different. I think the forecast is about 60 degrees up there, which is going to feel like, which is going to feel like 70 degrees down here. So we're not too concerned about the weather. I think we caught a break. It can get cold. It can snow, but the temperature aspect of it, we're going to be just fine. We'll let you roll on this note.

I would assume, no matter who takes a snap, that holding out of the football, not turning it over like it was a problem against the bearcats, that would be the number one thing you're going to tell your kids this week. Yeah, we want to end every drive with a kick. You know, and Dane Roy is probably our most valuable player at this point. one will punt in too much. But he does a great job of flipping the field and pending people down inside the 10. I think he's

done it like 10 times this year already. So either of that or we score and we get an extra point. I mean, that's a positive thing too. But, you know, I can't turn it over as many times as we did. Two of them were pretty much irrelevant just at the end of the half and at the end of the game. But

a couple of those early ones were pretty critical. Well, tell Dane he's doing a great job. I can't believe a guy that is playing college football that yet has his AARP card at the same time. It's pretty incredible how successful he's been for your squad. Yeah, he's doing a great job. I tell you, the NFL guys are kind of starting to talk about him a little bit. But, you know, he's like, well, you know, I'm old, I'm sore, I'm getting married. I want to move back to Australia. So it must be, unless they get an NFL team to go to Australia, I'm probably just going to go ahead and go on back home.

But he's a great guy, team captain, you know, just does a great job with the younger guys. And, you know, I'd rather not pun as much as we are, but when we do, I'd sure like to flip the field and ten them inside the tent. Well, it's all he did this past week. Coach, thanks for the time of a safe trip up there. We'll visit again next week.