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AUSTIN, Texas — The BYU Cougars will travel to face the University of Texas in Austin this Saturday. Texas is currently ranked in both the AP Poll (No. 24) and the USA Today Coaches' Poll (No. 21). The Longhorns are a very young team, having played 18 freshmen in their win last week over Rice, but they are always talented and have a lot of depth. BYU and Texas have met twice previously, with BYU winning both games. This will be the first meeting between the schools since 1988.
Week 2 Game Notes- BYU Cougars (1-0) at Texas Longhorns (1-0, 0-0 Big 12)
- Date: Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011
- Time: 6:06 pm CT (5:06 MT)
- Site: Austin, Texas (DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium - 100,119)
- TV: ESPN2
- Radio: KSL Newsradio 102.7 FM/1160 AM and ksl.com/BYU Radio SiriusXM 143
- Series Record: BYU leads 2-0
- Last Meeting: 1988 in Provo (BYU 47, Texas 6)
- Kickoff Weather: Sunny, temps in the mid 90s
Entering his 14th season as head coach, Mack Brown has led Texas to become a national power. During his stay in Austin, he has led his teams to wins in 80 percent of the games he’s coached (134 wins, 34 losses) and one national championship in 2005. He spoke to the media this week about his team and his initial impressions of BYU.
On Junior quarterback Garrett Gilbert:
“I thought Garrett did well. The number one thing we wanted for him is not to turn the ball over, and he came out of the game without a turnover. Number two, we wanted him to make plays with his feet. He made a great play with his feet on a bootleg, and then he had a couple of plays where he stepped up in the pocket or he scrambled out to his left and threw across his body and made great plays to a tight end and a receiver coming to our boundary. And I thought, obviously, with the three long drives in the second half, he led the team well. All those things are things we wanted to see him do. And hopefully since we had such a tough year last year, our team will be better this week, and he'll feel more comfortable.”
On the benefits of using multiple offensive packages:
“The offensive staff does a great job of packaging those plays, and it gives everybody an opportunity to play. We thought the snaps were spread out pretty well. Someone asked yesterday about the fans being disturbed when (running back) Malcolm Brown came out. You've got to understand, it's the first game. He doesn't even know some of those packages. He's not involved with them at all. But I thought he and Joe (Bergeron) did a good job. But I thought, by and large, the team handled it well. We can't have the inconsistency in our alignments. If you're using all those for an advantage, you can't be at a disadvantage by costing yourself five yards."
On his overall impressions of BYU:
“We've played Brigham Young twice. They've beaten us both times. They're a great program. They've had 10 wins in four of the last five years. They've been to 29 Bowl games. They won a national championship in 1984. They were 7 and 6 last year. They won five out of their last six ballgames, and the one loss in that run was to Utah by one point. So we feel like that they've got a great team coming in. They went on the road in the heat, in the south, and beat Southeastern conference Ole Miss 14-13, and they were down 13-0 going into the fourth quarter.
"Bronco Mendenhall is one of the great true young coaches that's out there. He's a young man that I like. He's a tough, defensive football coach and they have a tough team.
"You talk about their offense, it's very physical. You look at their offensive line, there's two juniors and two seniors on it that are 6-foot-6, 300, 310, 320 and 330 (pounds), and they are very, very physical. They will come after you, and most of those are up for national awards. Jake Heaps is the quarterback, and he was the No. 1 quarterback in the country a couple years ago and very accurate, and they've always done a great job with their passing game.
"JJ Di Luigi is an outstanding tailback and, like our offense, they move him all over the place. He'll be split. He'll be flexed. He'll be tight, and he's a very physical runner. They have a great scheme, and they're very balanced.
"Defensively, they're really well coached. They run to the ball. They will hit you. I think they knocked three Ole Miss tailbacks out of the game Saturday afternoon. They held Ole Miss to only 57 plays on offense and 208 yards. So it's a real challenge for our offense. They run a multiple look on defense like we do, 43, 34. They did score a defensive touchdown, and they held the ball for 34 minutes and 37 seconds against Ole Miss.
"So this will be like an old-fashioned street fight. It'll be very physical. We've been concerned about how tough we were in both lines of scrimmage the last couple years. This game will be about the lines of scrimmage. It's going to be about who's the toughest. It's a great test for us before we get ready to go to UCLA for a very similar game and then get ready for conference play.”
On BYU’s offense:
“Yes, Brigham Young for years, with Norm Chow and that offense way back, they won the National Championship in '84. You start looking at those things — LaVell Edwards was the head of the passing game many, many years ago, and they're still doing the same concepts. Bronco (Mendenhall) is a guy who loves Brigham Young. His dad was a coach, so they're back to the old Brigham Young stuff, except I think they're running the ball better. And they only had 116 yards rushing on Saturday, but they can get open, and their concepts are tremendous.”
On whether BYU will test his defensive backs:
“Yes, they will. Brigham Young will throw the ball deep, and we felt like our secondary played well. That was one thing as we go back and look at it. We only had two three-and-outs, the first one and then one with a second team defense at the end of the game. Rice moved the ball better than we would have liked, and that's something we've got to do, is have more three-and-outs or force some more turnovers on Saturday or Brigham Young will keep the ball.”
On BYU’s defense:
“It'll be a great challenge for us because you want to win your conference championship, and here you are with a pretty tough out-of-conference schedule. We'll know more about who we are with all these young players. I thought our crowd was a factor Saturday night, so I think it will be again. We got the slow start on offense, and that's probably pretty normal with as much new (talent) that was on the field. But you're not going to get any easy yards against these guys. They will hit you. The strength of both offense and defense is their fronts, and Ole Miss just could not block their defensive fronts. It'll be a huge challenge for our offensive line.”
Landon Walters is a history and political science major currently studying at Salt Lake Community College and is an avid sports fan. He can be reached at mavericksoccer_22@hotmail.com
