The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Willie Fritz Joins Ahead Of Texas Bowl Match up vs LSU

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

Willie Fritz Joins Ahead Of Texas Bowl Match up vs LSU

132 on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. It's our final visit of the season here with the man joining us is going to help our cougars. Hopefully knock off the LSU Tigers this Saturday at the Texas Bowl. Willie Fritz with us. Coach, long time, no talk. Happy holidays to you and the family. What a great season it has been overall,

wrapping things up with a bit win in Baylor. Take us through what you've been doing besides signing some great kids in the recruiting world. How has it been in the time between the battle game and what you got coming up this Saturday? Really good. Yeah, you're right. It seems like we haven't taught for quite some time. But it's, you know, it's been awesome. We signed, I think, a great high school class, signed the number one player in the nation at all positions. Kishan Anderson from up the road and Legacy Sports Academy High School in Spring, Texas. And signed him, you know, I think five other kids, six other kids from, you know, greater Houston area and a couple kids just outside

the metro and a few kids from state of Louisiana, you know, by and large, everybody's within driving distance, which is our goal when we go out and recruit. We're very fortunate that we don't have to get on a plane. First time I get on a plane to recruit will be the first time I've gotten on a plane to recruit since I've been here. So a great, great freshman class. And then we've come back and started practicing. You know, we went ahead and had five practices. And then we took the kids a week off. And then everybody came back in Sunday.

We just completed practice number two a couple hours ago and, you know, working hard on, you know, LSU and what they do. And, you know, picking up where we left off hopefully. Willie, you have done this before. I'm sure you've gone against teams, whether it's bowl games or, you know, current situation that you've been in yourself. about what the other side of things. You've got coaching situation change.

Lane's going to take over to LSU. Their interim coach is going to be leaving to go to Ole Miss when the game is all said and done. How much, and I'm going to assume the answer is still plenty, but is there anything about game film that can be deceiving because of players that are not playing and coaching changes at this point? No, you're right. You've got to really look at it closely.

One thing is they made the change with the coaching staff, You know, I think with maybe five games left in the season. So you've got some games that you can look at, you know, it was the same play caller, you know, offensively, defensively, special teams-wise. You know, the thing that's always different in a bowl game is the time, you know, between the last game and when you play the bowl game. And, you know, just like us, we're going to have some wrinkles in there.

You know, they're not going to be prepared for offense, defense, kicking game and there's going to be some stuff they're going to do against us. You know, we're not going to be prepared for it because they've never shown it before. But, you know, there's always a wrinkle here and there when you're playing the bowl game, especially when it's over a month

since the last game that you played. I know that every team goes through a few changes. You've got kids that don't want to play in the bowl game. You've got kids that are thinking about transfer portal. It sounds like to me, and you don't have to get into great detail, but it feels like you're going to have full of a roster, is maybe anybody in the country going to this game on Saturday? Yeah, we think we're going to have everybody, which we're really, really excited about.

You know, it's a big deal for us. You know, we're playing to have 10 wins in a season. There's not very many teams in the country that will have 10 plus wins. You know, so we want to be one of them. And all the kids, we've done a good job of recruiting the right kind of guys. You know, they're excited about represent. the university and our team one more time. So we would feel like we're going to be, you know, I have a full squad out there.

And, you know, other than the kids who got injured early in the season, everybody's going to, is preparing right now and everybody's going to participate in bowl. You have an environment of riches with Kishon obviously coming in next year. But Connor made the decision last year to leave A&M and was looking for a place. He chose the University of Houston. And I think you'd be generally speaking very pleased with his performance this year. with many different guys, but for Wigman in particular, tell me about the first time he stepped on the campus

and where he has grown as far as you're concerned about who he is as a quarterback and the confidence that he, I think he's rebuilt after less than spectacular season in college station the year before. Well, a lot of issues and problems with college station as he's banged up or got injured, tried to play through those injuries.

We were very aware of that and made sure that we got him healthy, but he's been just awesome. really, really nice young man, good a young man, good leader, very competitive. You know, I think he's had an excellent season for us. You know, just, you know, you want to have that quarterback, but be that type of leader. You know, sometimes you don't get that. And I hear stories about some guys that. I think a little bit of a prima don't know, maybe at that position.

But Connors, you know, really has entrenched with the offensive line, all the guys. on the team. He's just an excellent leader for us. And we're really, really happy that we got him here at the University of Houston. Willie, I'm very curious about how LSU is going to prepare for this. They have been to previous Texas Bulls and like you've got some guys auditioning for jobs. You've got kids that are moving on and you've got quarterback changes left and right. Would it be fair to say that maybe the first quarter you'll see it in their eyes and we'll see it as fans about how vested they're into this game, depending on what kind of start you get on your side of the ball?

Oh, I think those kids are going to be very, very excited. Coach Wilson does a super job. I've known him. He's a New Orleans guy, and I was there Tulane for eight years. We did a lot of recruiting, you know, camps in collaboration with LAS here, especially when Coach Orgeron was there. You know, so they're going to have him fired up and ready to go. I know a few of the coaches on their staff.

Coach for me before Alex Hackens or offensive coordinator, you know, a really good coach. Kevin Peel is a D-Line coach for him. He's coach for me a bunch of places. They're going to have them ready to go. I got to do a good job making sure our guys are ready to go. This is, you know, it's a big ballgame for us. We've sold out our allotment of tickets.

LSU's done the same. We're going to have a really good crowd and NRG. So it's exciting. I know it's going to be exciting for both teams. And I love that this. school has for its city. I do like the fact you guys are making a staycation out of it. We're getting the kids away

from campus to get that feel of being at a bowl game even though you're still staying in 7-1-3. Oh, yeah. We're staying in, you know, Hill in America's downtown. We're going to be doing a bunch of things with them. We're doing going, doing a little go-car racing tonight with the kids.

And, you know, we want to have fun. You know, we want to have the right kind of fun. And they know that. But the main thing is playing great. Saturday night at 8.20. I tell them all the time. All of this is for us to play great at 820. So when it's time to prepare, prepare,

when it's time to have some fun, let's have some fun. But we're just blessed and honored to represent the University of Houston in this bowl game. Well, this is some of your last visit, so let me ask you this. The game will end. Your wife is going to ask you to do some honey-dos because you've basically been away from that for quite a few months. And then after that, what's the next 60 days for you and your staff like here? Well, we've got the portal. That's going to open up on January the 2nd through the 16th. And that's going to be, take a lot of our time. We've got the National Convention,

the American Football Coaches Association. You know, I'll go out to Charlotte, North Carolina for a day or two for that and some of my coaches will as well. And when that finishes, you know, we get into high school recruiting. So we'll be out. about driving around town and seeing all the great high school football players and coaches here in the state of Texas. So there's always work to do. So luckily I love my job, so it's labor of love. And I've said this before many times, even when you've not been on my show, I feel like with

so many Houston kids that this would be a, and people have their own opinions about the portal. So we'll leave it for a different time. but if you've got some homesick children, the University of Houston could be a great place to finish out a college football career. Well, I've mentioned it before. One of the reasons we got Tulane turned around

and did things there that nobody thought we were capable of ever being able to do is we had a bunch of New Orleans kids that went far distances to go to school, thought the grass was green or somewhere else, found out it was only green and came back home. And sooner or later that out, lays a little bit more money, in my opinion, but I just think there's going to be that opportunity for us to grab some kids and maybe went someplace else. A lot of the kids we got on our team that we got out of the portal. We're all kids from this area for the most part,

besides two or three guys. That's one of the main reasons like Connor Weigman came to University of Houston. He's from Houston. He's very close to his family. And he wanted to come back home and we're fortunate enough to get them, but there's a lot of guys that are in a similar situation. So you're right. We're going to use that to our advantage. Well, Lee, thank you for the visits each and every week throughout the course of the year. We wish you to know the very best. Best of luck Saturday against the LSU Tigers. I work with nothing with LSU Tiger people, so I need you to win this one especially badly because I can give them so much grief over the next handful of days. We're going to do our best job of it, man. I appreciate you. Go Coogs.