I apologize for not getting this up last night, but I drove straight back to New Orleans after finishing my stories, did not get back until after midnight and was too spent to transcribe.
As I wrote before the season, this is the most talented Tulane team since 1998 (or 1999 if you interpret that statement as including the undefeated season). They can't get the loss to Kansas State back, but if they take care of business the rest of the way, all they likely need to make the playoffs is one more Boise State loss (at UNLV later this month or in a major upset to someone else or in the Mountain West title game). The coordinating on both sides of the ball is outstanding. The head coach is not a slave to analytics when he makes his decisions, using the numbers for sure butalso relying on the flow of the game and his team's strengths. I like everything about where the program is at the moment.
I will say this about Jamauri McClure--he needs to be used the rest of the way. Willie Fritz was an excellent coach, but his staff's waiting to start Makhi Hughes until the sixth game last year blew my mind when he clearly was Tulane's best back. He still is, but McClure is going to be a star and can help Tulane win now. Tyjae Spears was redshirted his freshman year when he was better than most of the guys playing, but there's no reason to do that with McClure. He is a playmaker. I saw it all camp, just like I did with Spears in his first year.
Sumrall, Rayshawn Pleasant, Hughes and Sam Howard spoke after the defenestration of the Blazers.
SUMRALL
"Glad to get the win. Happy for our guys. 2-0 in the conference now, 4-2 on the year after starting 1-2 with a tough opening slate. Our guys from the opening kick until the end really played pretty quality football. There's plenty of areas to clean up and a lot of things we have to address to get better in the next week during the bye, but it's always good to go into the bye with a win."
On Alex Bauman:
"It looked really bad live to me. I was extremely concerned. X-rays showed no fracture. Might be like a sprain, potentially a low-ankle sprain, not a high, and maybe an MCL. We're not really sure yet. Well have to find out more tomorrow, but they did imaging on X-ray for tib/fib, ankle, foot, knee, all of it, and everything looked good is my understanding at halftime. They even said hey, we could put it in a sleeve, but the score, whatever it was, I was like, no, he's good, let's get him healthy. We'll know more the next couple of days. I was worried his foot was in the ground and it had one of those nasty turns. You see that a like in tib/fib breaks, and that's a substantial injury. When you went back and watched it, the nice thing now is we have these surfaces or I Pads or whatever they're called and during the game we can look at what you couldn't look at before, and we could see his foot wasn't in the ground. His cleat came out, and that kind of saved him because if his foot had been in the ground it would have been very substantial, but it might have been a week, going into a bye week , which is nice. It might be two. I don't know yet his availability for Rice, but it doesn't look as serious as what I initially thought."
On having said he wanted this Tulane team to show up every week:
"I really emphasized to our guys, we knew this UAB team was going to play with a chip on their shoulder and play desperate to go get a win because they to some degree had their backs to the wall, so we knew we were going to get a hungry team. I told our team if they're desperate, we have to understand that our desperation has to be desperate to dominate, like we have to continue to impose our will about how we play and how we bring it and how we execute and how we prepare and how we encourage each other and all that stuff. I was very pleased with the approach this week. The team took the game very intentionally with their focus and didn't coast during the week and it showed."
On stuffing throw-back to QB on first snap:
"I called trick play on the first play. This morning I was like I bet they're going to run a trick play on the first play or maybe the first drive. I even said I thought they'd have a trick play every drive of the game. I don't think that held up, but they did have that trick play. They had several screens I thought were fairly effective against us, but the first trick play of the game I kind of had a hunch that something like that was coming early. I thought it was either going to be that or a shot on the perimeter, a double move where they tried to hit an explosive."
On Mensah and Ty Thompson both QBs playing well:
"Mensah did a nice job. He was pretty efficient. He hit 12 of 15, didn't throw it a ton. Once the score's up, I'm not interested in seeing how many times we can throw. We threw it 18 times on the day. He was 12 of 15 and had a touchdown. Ty was 2 of 3 and had a touchdown and should have had the second one. He air-mailed the one on the little run-action, Tebow jump pass kind of deal, but they both played really well. It's been fun to watch Ty get in. He's such a hard-working guy, and he's handled not winning the starting job with class, and he's really made our team better. His approach has really made everybody around him better. It's made me better. Both those guys played well. Didn't lean on the pass game as much today. Felt like we could control the game by running it. We kind of see saw back and forth which way we lean between the run game and the pass game depending on what the other team's willing to give us."
As I wrote before the season, this is the most talented Tulane team since 1998 (or 1999 if you interpret that statement as including the undefeated season). They can't get the loss to Kansas State back, but if they take care of business the rest of the way, all they likely need to make the playoffs is one more Boise State loss (at UNLV later this month or in a major upset to someone else or in the Mountain West title game). The coordinating on both sides of the ball is outstanding. The head coach is not a slave to analytics when he makes his decisions, using the numbers for sure butalso relying on the flow of the game and his team's strengths. I like everything about where the program is at the moment.
I will say this about Jamauri McClure--he needs to be used the rest of the way. Willie Fritz was an excellent coach, but his staff's waiting to start Makhi Hughes until the sixth game last year blew my mind when he clearly was Tulane's best back. He still is, but McClure is going to be a star and can help Tulane win now. Tyjae Spears was redshirted his freshman year when he was better than most of the guys playing, but there's no reason to do that with McClure. He is a playmaker. I saw it all camp, just like I did with Spears in his first year.
Sumrall, Rayshawn Pleasant, Hughes and Sam Howard spoke after the defenestration of the Blazers.
SUMRALL
"Glad to get the win. Happy for our guys. 2-0 in the conference now, 4-2 on the year after starting 1-2 with a tough opening slate. Our guys from the opening kick until the end really played pretty quality football. There's plenty of areas to clean up and a lot of things we have to address to get better in the next week during the bye, but it's always good to go into the bye with a win."
On Alex Bauman:
"It looked really bad live to me. I was extremely concerned. X-rays showed no fracture. Might be like a sprain, potentially a low-ankle sprain, not a high, and maybe an MCL. We're not really sure yet. Well have to find out more tomorrow, but they did imaging on X-ray for tib/fib, ankle, foot, knee, all of it, and everything looked good is my understanding at halftime. They even said hey, we could put it in a sleeve, but the score, whatever it was, I was like, no, he's good, let's get him healthy. We'll know more the next couple of days. I was worried his foot was in the ground and it had one of those nasty turns. You see that a like in tib/fib breaks, and that's a substantial injury. When you went back and watched it, the nice thing now is we have these surfaces or I Pads or whatever they're called and during the game we can look at what you couldn't look at before, and we could see his foot wasn't in the ground. His cleat came out, and that kind of saved him because if his foot had been in the ground it would have been very substantial, but it might have been a week, going into a bye week , which is nice. It might be two. I don't know yet his availability for Rice, but it doesn't look as serious as what I initially thought."
On having said he wanted this Tulane team to show up every week:
"I really emphasized to our guys, we knew this UAB team was going to play with a chip on their shoulder and play desperate to go get a win because they to some degree had their backs to the wall, so we knew we were going to get a hungry team. I told our team if they're desperate, we have to understand that our desperation has to be desperate to dominate, like we have to continue to impose our will about how we play and how we bring it and how we execute and how we prepare and how we encourage each other and all that stuff. I was very pleased with the approach this week. The team took the game very intentionally with their focus and didn't coast during the week and it showed."
On stuffing throw-back to QB on first snap:
"I called trick play on the first play. This morning I was like I bet they're going to run a trick play on the first play or maybe the first drive. I even said I thought they'd have a trick play every drive of the game. I don't think that held up, but they did have that trick play. They had several screens I thought were fairly effective against us, but the first trick play of the game I kind of had a hunch that something like that was coming early. I thought it was either going to be that or a shot on the perimeter, a double move where they tried to hit an explosive."
On Mensah and Ty Thompson both QBs playing well:
"Mensah did a nice job. He was pretty efficient. He hit 12 of 15, didn't throw it a ton. Once the score's up, I'm not interested in seeing how many times we can throw. We threw it 18 times on the day. He was 12 of 15 and had a touchdown. Ty was 2 of 3 and had a touchdown and should have had the second one. He air-mailed the one on the little run-action, Tebow jump pass kind of deal, but they both played really well. It's been fun to watch Ty get in. He's such a hard-working guy, and he's handled not winning the starting job with class, and he's really made our team better. His approach has really made everybody around him better. It's made me better. Both those guys played well. Didn't lean on the pass game as much today. Felt like we could control the game by running it. We kind of see saw back and forth which way we lean between the run game and the pass game depending on what the other team's willing to give us."
