The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Willie Fritz on UH vs. Kansas State Match Up

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Willie Fritz on UH vs. Kansas State Match Up 

So excited to make my first trip to Manhattan, Kansas on Saturday to watch our Cougars beat the Kansas State. Wildcats? Why don't my lose my mind? They're wildcats, right? Okay. I can get these things mixed up. Let's spend some. Bill Snyder's rolling over his grave, Matt.

No, he's fine. Apparently it's a great place to play a football game. Willie, you've been a Bill Sinner sitting before. Have you not? Yeah, we played up there a few years going as at Tulane. And I've been over there. I used to coach in the state, so I know a little bit about it. No coach Snyder, great guy, and did a tremendous job there.

For sure. You've done a tremendous job. Congratulations on the victory last week. First of all, tell the audience, how sick was Connor before the game, and was there any hesitation about him even starting the game last Saturday against UCF? No, he's a tough, tough kid, and he was, you know, going to fight through it. It wasn't anything super serious, otherwise we wouldn't have played him. But he just had, you know, the flu and had been battling it all week and felt a little week, you know, Thursday and Friday and Saturday he felt a little bit better.

And, you know, he fought through it. And I thought he played really, really well in the second half. You are always known as a guy that makes great adjustments, the great coaches do. so what was the tenor of the locker room get together after falling behind so early and then putting up a great second half against the nights? You know, it was just execution. We just, you know, we missed a few plays, you know,

throws, runs, blocks, tackles, you know, leverage, you know, coverage, you know, coverage, you know, with the top of some things. You know, just all fixable, you know, things who we looked at, you know, one of the advantages now in college football and they've been doing the NFL a long time. You tell him at halftime, you're able to watch the tape.

One time that was the illegal to do five, six years ago. And so you're just going to show the guy, hey, he's supposed to block this guy. Yeah, he was open. You could have thrown it. So you just kind of show all the different plays. And I think we're our guys confidence that, you know, heck, we're, you know, this has happened to us. You know, we're doing it ourselves.

It's not anything the opponent's doing. And then it just played really from about six minutes left in the third quarter of just played really, really well and did a great job in all three phases. Speaking of the three phases, the third phase, your kicker gets a special team's player of the week. And it's one of those things that you kind of, I don't even know if you know you do it intentionally, but you always seem to bring up special teams one way or the other. And sometimes coaches let that slide by, and it shouldn't be because it's such an important asset to the game. Yeah, it really is.

You know, he hit that last field goal, which really put the game out of reach. And, you know, we're just really proud of Jonathan. and he's a walk-on kicker for us. He's just, you know, he's perfect on the season with extra points and the field goals as well and just doing a great, great job. He gets out there in a momented in too big form. So really proud John Fondinas and the job he's been doing for us. We really like the broadcasters like the special teamers because they ride with us in the bus

and we're in the back together. And they're great storytellers. I mean, I don't know if the rest of your kids know, and obviously you've got great linemen, you got quarterback, You get receivers that are all the headliners. But these special teams guys, they're a different breed, but they're fun to hang out with. Yeah, they go about their business and work, you know, extremely hard during practice. And they're not, you know, they're not with the whole offense and defense.

And we're doing, you know, seven on seven at Pascali and inside and team and, you know, different drills. So those are, you know, offense, defense-specific. Those guys are over there and just over and over again. They're working on snapping and holding and kicking. and kickoffs and punts and pooch punts. And, you know, so they're really, you know, experts that they're craft and, you know, extremely hard workers. And, you know, sometimes during practice, you know, you don't want to overwork them.

So there's times that they've kind of got to sit around and wait for everybody to get finished so that they can hear all the news and, you know, notes that we have for the next day. And they have a little bit of fun. I've noticed that a few times. Willie, injury reports are now part of college athletics, and the one at the very top kind of is alarming, obviously. Jane Yates, your leading tackler, very good linebackers out. How long do you expect him to be out?

We're hoping a couple weeks. You know, just kind of a hamstring deal, and nothing that they require surgery or anything like that. So hopefully just a couple weeks. Is he going to be a de facto coach for you this week? Sometimes you get those injured players that kind of can help the guys that the game moves along a little bit. No, you know, sometimes with those injuries, you don't want the guy standing on their feet for a long time.

You know, that's not good for him either. So, no, he won't be making the trip with us this weekend. All right. So many little interesting angles between these two schools. We'll start first with Colin Klein, the head coach at Kansas State, was Connor Wingman's coach at A&M. So how are the two guys getting to know each other or just refresh each other memories a little bit? Yeah, you know, I think that they, you know, we're together for a couple of years there. As a matter of fact, when we were getting Connor to come over here to the University of Houston,

Coach Klein is one of the people I called about Connor. And he had a great recommendation on him as well as their head coach. And so, yeah, there's some background as far as football is concerned. I don't think we've done a whole lot with talking as far as what they do and those kind of different things. It's nowadays you get every piece of tape that you watch. You get to see everything. You know, back when he was the coordinator at K State before he went to texting him, and you do a lot of work during the summer as well.

So I think the coaches have done a good job of, you know, investigating and looking and seeing exactly what they do. And lastly, you've got a coach and Michael Bishop that's one of the most celebrated Kansas State quarterbacks in history of that school. How surreal for him being back in that building on Saturday? Oh, you know, he's got obviously great memories. He's the Davey O'Brien Award winner. He's in the College Football Hall of Fame. He's runner up to the highs and then Michael played for me over at Blinn and then went up to Kansas State. You know, so I'm sure it'll be a little different being on the other sideline.

but he's a pro. He'll do a great job with it. All right. So what do you want to see? What's one or two keys for a Saturday afternoon victory? Yeah, we just need to execute. You know, we didn't do his great job of that first half last week. We need to do a much better job of getting bodies on bodies and, you know, finishing the plays, you know, offense defense. I thought we played that as probably our best game,

kicking game-wise of the season. But we've got to have a three-phase game. They're a really good football team. And the crowd will be into it big time. And, you know, we just got to play well early and do that throughout the whole ballgame. Willie, we'll leave it at that. Thank you for the time. As always, best of luck.

And we'll see you on tomorrow. We're looking forward to the trip. Thank you. Go, Coog. Thank you. Willie Fritz with us here on Sports Talk 790-6-54 is our time. And Willis conversation is brought to you by our friends, the joint chiropractor, the official chiropractor of University of Houston Athletics.