Hawkins? Tuesday Press Conference Quotes
Head Coach Dan Hawkins
ON OPTIONS FOR RETURN MEN?“Punt return, [WR] Chase McBride is a guy and [CB] Cha’pelle Brown as a punt returner. Kick returner would be [CB] Terry Washington. [CB] Terrence Wheatley is definitely a consideration as a kick returner, his problem with that wrist of his, is it is very difficult for him to catch punts. Kickoffs are a little easier, but punts are a little harder.”
ON C MARK FENTON?“We’ll see how he does today, just pad him up and get him going, see what he can do. They [trainers] feel very good about it, but of course his body has to respond as well. His conditioning, that is a question mark too, because obviously when his leg is an issue he can do a lot of things on the bike, but he isn’t getting a lot of actual cardiovascular work. He has been lifting, a lot of upper body work and doing what he can with his lower body.”
ON TEAM HANDLING OKLAHOMA’S BLITZES?“Those guys always go through stages of development and you don’t know, exactly, how all of those things are going to come along. You get in a game, right there, where in one hand it’s easy when you don’t have a lot of expectations and everything you do is pretty good. Then all of a sudden you start having those expectations and you are dealing with another set of psychological issues right there. I wouldn’t say I was surprised, but I wouldn’t say I wasn’t surprised, you never know how each guy is going to handle it.”
ON OT PAUL BACKOWSKI?“How did Paul do? He did alright, we struggled a little bit at that position and that is why we made the switch. Hopefully, Edwin’s (
ON KANSAS QB KERRY MEIER?“You know Meier’s a little bigger guy and he is a little more physical, particularly when he takes off running. In terms of what they do with those guys schematically it is pretty similar.”
ON KANSAS RB JON CORNISH?“He’s got very good speed, and he is a physical guy too. He’ll run through you, you have to be a good tackler to get him down. He has a nice combination of size and speed, he’ll wear on you, he’s a good back. He might be the best that we have seen this year.”
ON WHETHER THERE HAVE BEEN ANY SURPRISES OTHER THAN CU’S RECORD?“No, I think you sort of have a relative awareness of what your team is about and what they are capable of doing. You get a couple of plays along the way and you kind of end up on the positive side and you are aware of what that can do, and you don’t get some of those plays and end up on the other side. You sort of come into it understanding that all spectrums are possible. I don’t think there has been a bunch of surprises, no.”
ON MISSED OPPORTUNITIES AGAINST BAYLOR AND GEORGIA?“I guess, you sort of look at that, again I just try to get those guys to kind of focus on that, and understand there are reasons why that happened, and reasons why we have to prevent that from happening in the future. I don’t know, at least for me, I don’t look back on it and lament ?holy cow, what if we had done that and done that,’ you kind of take it for what it is.”
ON DL ALEX LIGON?“That is a good question, I think he is going to try to start practicing again this week, and we will see how his knee comes around. But I don’t know if we really know if he will play again this year or not, I don’t think we really know the answer to that question, just see how his knee responds. I don’t know if he’ll be able to get a medical redshirt; I doubt it, but I don’t know for sure.”
ON CB TERRY WILSON PLAYING FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS SEASON?“Because [S] Ben [Burney], even though he was in there for just a couple of plays when he got hurt he had to come out too. It was kind of a combination of us going that route and guys getting dinged. [S] Ryan’s [Walters] hamstring started to bother him, so Ben went in then Ben got hurt so we went with