UH Takes On UCLA And Emphasizes Line Play

The big uglies up front will be butting heads

The Houston Cougars have gotten the reputation, undeserved or not, of being a soft, finesse football team. When you pass the football, when you play the spread and go with one-back backfields, that can happen.

The Cougar players don’t like this reputation. The coaching staff used this to their advantage last week, pushing at the chip on their shoulders as the team powered to a win over UTEP by way of the running game. A running game, by the way, that was being stressed on the first drive of the game and not just after Case Keenum was injured in the third quarter.

The coaches say that the offense is what the offense is. If the passing
game isn’t working, then, as Kevin Sumlin has said over and over, he’s
got a group of running backs who can run the football. But until a team
actually does run the football against a big, supposedly physical team,
then nobody believes it.

People believe that the Cougars can operate a physical, power running game now.

“What
we did on the ground last week demonstrates that we’re a balanced
offense and that we have the capability of doing both things as far as
throwing the football and running the football….Our guys really met
the challenge,” co-offensive coordinator Jason Phillips said on Tuesday.
“We challenged them last week to be physical in front, and they met
that challenge. And our running backs did a great job of getting the
ball and getting positive yards.”

The key to the running game, if
you ask Bryce Beall, is that he received excellent blocking from his
offensive line and his wide receivers. The offensive line and the
receivers said that their blocking would have been useless without the
abilities of Beall and fellow running back Michael Hayes to hit the
holes and break tackles.

“He ran exceptionally well, to see the
holes,” right tackle Chris Thompson said of Beall. “Like I said, the
offensive line, the brick squad here, we just come out, get our hard hat
every day, and go to work. We’ve been tying to open holes here for some
time now, and we’ve got some guys who are really hitting the holes and
taking advantage, and we appreciate them running for us as much they
appreciate us blocking up front.”

The physical play of the line
is not unexpected, reputation of softness or not. But it’s the
willingness and eagerness of the receivers to get down and block that is
perhaps the unexpected thing about the UH offense this season. And
receiver James Cleveland says the receivers came into this season with a
mindset of focusing on blocking.

“We worked extremely hard in
the off-season working on our blocking and all during camp,” Cleveland
said Tuesday. “We actually made that the focus of our competition
instead of yards and catches and touchdowns and whatnot. We’re going to
see who had the most big blocks, the most blocks to score. That’ll be
the champion of the week, so to speak. Every victory that we accumulate,
we’ll have a blocking champion of the week, or whatnot.”

And for
a team known for a high-octane passing game and having three receivers
who each went for over 1,000 receiving yards last season, the accolades
from that passing game don’t really matter.

“If our backs continue running like that, we can run the ball more than we throw every game if we win them all,” Cleveland said.

As
for tomorrow night’s game with 0-2 UCLA, the players and coaches all
say to not be fooled by UCLA’s record. The game will be tough, it will
be physical, and the Bruins will be out to prove a point in front of
their fans at the Rose Bowl. Thompson says that record doesn’t speak to
the ability of the UCLA players that he’s seen on film.

And the
players are also clear that defeating a major conference team in one of
college football’s Mecca’s will be nothing more than just another win.

“Winning,
period, legitimizes anything,” Thompson says. “If you lose, it doesn’t
legitimize nothing but that you’re a loser. Not per se, but I think that
any win against any team is what we’re working for, and the 12 teams on
our schedule is what we’re really aiming for, and the next game is
UCLA, so that’s what we’re working on.”

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES: The Cougars announced that final season ticket totals for the season
were 11,477 as opposed to 6,300 for last season. That increase of 5,177
was the largest percentage increase in the NCAA for this
season….There truly is no word as to Case Keenum’s status, but Jason
Phillips stated that the offense wouldn’t change if Cotton Turner is the
quarterback. Chris Thompson said his job is the same no matter who is
in the game, and James Cleveland says that Turner can do anything Keenum
can do….Houston officials have announced that tomorrow’s game will now be simulcast on 790 KBME and 99.1 KODA. For those tired of the radio follies, the game will also be available on Fox Sports Houston….Bryce Beall is looking forward to the game because of how big
the Rose Bowl is and how loud it should be. “So this is a good
opportunity to see how our team competes on the road,” he said. “We
probably won’t have a loud snap count. It’s probably going to be hard
communicating. So it’s going to be good to see how we do on our first
true road game.”