'Looking Forward To A Good Week And Getting Back On Track': Tulsa Ready To Play Temple

Tulsa head coach Kevin Wilson met with the media Monday in to discuss the bye week and preview Tulsa's road game against Temple.

Opening Statement.

"Get an open date week last week, so we hadn't really got together since our last outing against Army. So again, I thought we started that game decently. We were able to have a decent first drive or second drive as an offense and big long drive and scored to tie up, able to get a defensive stop, which has been hard to do, for that team they scored their first two drives every game coming in. So from there, I think we had a 16 play drive, then we had a 13 play drive, got it to the 30. I didn't maybe make some good play calls or put us in good situations, didn't manage and get points out of that one. They had a decent drive to get to 14 and then we did our first three and out, we're not necessarily maybe make a good run call or middle of the field didn't have a go-to RPO. We try to throw a bubble screen that was poorly blocked."

"We played physical, we played good, we've had decent game control, and then all of a sudden it's 21 to seven and half, they take the opening kick, pop a big run where we misfit it. It's then 28 and kind of got into a similar mode as we were the week before North Texas. So disappointed in that, but not frustrated or down based on our showing we can play, just our ability to sustain our ability to play when something doesn't go well, just play the next play, whether you get a bad call or we make a bad call or we miss a block or miss a tackle or have a penalty. Again, for the most part, we wanted to control the game at the ball 35 minutes. We had 74 plays to 47. But when you scored one touchdown, when you throw the ball 30 times a game, you're getting three yards per pass play."

"We're not making plays on the perimeter. So our offense needs to be better. Defensively we battled. Unfortunately, as we went through and some of the coaches, our eyes got off of some of us as they motioned, some man looks where we had to pass it we cut some receivers wide open, which was which was poor, so anyway, they've got a heck of a good team, and that one's kind of passed that you look at it a little bit, all we talked about was why we have two games in a row where we played pretty good for a quarter and a half and then all of a sudden the same guys that were blocking well are tackling well, and now we're not."

So how do we get past that when something we had a little flow the last three, four-minute mark of the second half, we our first half we haven't played well, we haven't started our third quarters and we've let some games get out of hand and that what a lot of people call the middle eight, the last four minutes of the first half. So we've talked about that, whether be play calling, whether it be halftime adjustments and doing better job as coaches for sure. But again, I think our kids continue to play hard."

"Getting into Temple, and of course now we're in the normal game plan week and we'll travel up there to play at Temple this week at 2 o'clock their time, 1 o'clock here. Temple is much like us and has been on the short side. They played a very strong schedule. They played at Oklahoma, they played Army, they played Navy, they played Coastal Carolina. They had a great opportunity to beat Connecticut and had an error at the end of the game, which caused them to have a chance to win that game in the final seconds and didn't get it done. Had a good win against Utah State. They're 1 and 5. Defensively, they're planning really pretty solid, and they think they're fifth in the conference in pass defense. Offensively, the receiver leads the conference in receiving. They could play two quarterbacks, maybe battling a little bit of injury, but trying to get settled at quarterbacks. So they had an open date like us, so they have had a lot of time to kind of look at themselves and repair. I think it will be a good game and a good challenge and looking forward to a good week and getting back on track and playing strong and playing the best we can this week."