Today was the last day of media availability for the bye week. Frank Wilson, Josiah Tauaefa and Reed Darragh spoke with media after practice. Here is what they had to say.
Frank Wilson
Frank Wilson
- It was good to get out there (despite the weather). We were gauging to see how it would go. Had there been a lot of lightning and a lot of rain we probably would have altered our schedule but it was good football weather. The guys enjoyed it. They like running around in the rain.
- Pleased with the energy level over the last two days. Thought in between practice as we were going through there were a lot of good things. We got a tremendous head start on our next opponent and the attention to practice was there among the guys.
- We will practice tomorrow. On Thursday we have an event for our mentors, which are our veteran players and our mentees, we got some team building that we're going to do. They'll have Friday and Saturday off.
- The staff will continue to recruit Thursday night, Friday and Saturday games as well. Then we'll be back into our routine on Sunday.
- We will see 20 to 30 kids this weekend at schools as well as practices and some at games. We'll be very visible to those guys that we have offered scholarships to and get our fall evaluations out.
- Will be watching Southern Miss v. North Texas this weekend. I'll tape it and get it prepared to add to our breakdown of Southern Miss.
- Our team goal is to win the west and win the conference championship and put ourself in the best bowl opportunity that we can. For us right now we want to take care of this opponent. There hasn't been talk about certain bowls or whatever, we just have to take care of right now.
- Juan Perez is going to go through a foot procedure and be out for the remainder of the year.
- Jordan Wright has done well. He had been getting reps at the guard position as well as the center position. We were optimistic and hopeful that Juan would be able to go but unfortunately it just did not hold up for him. We had to do what's best for him from a health standpoint. Jordan stepped in, played well, was assignment sound and did the things we needed him to do.
- Southern Miss is a good football team, much like they were a year ago when they went into Lexington and beat Kentucky and then had them on the ropes again this year in Hattiesburg. You watch them against UL Monroe and Southern they are really good defensively. They do some exotic things from their defensive front and secondary. They're certainly someone that we're concerned about and that we will continue to need to evaluate and to study.
