Owls Brace Themselves for Connecticut

Game Notes | Conference Notes | Press Conference

After a record setting 59-0 victory over Delaware State on September 20, Temple head coach Matt Rhule held a press conference to address this team's American Athletic Conference opener against the Connecticut Huskies.

The September 27 game will be broadcast on ESPNews with a kickoff time at 4pm. Those in the Philadelphia area can listen to the game on 97.5 FM The Fanatic with Harry Donahue (play-by-play), Paul Palmer (analyst) and Harry Mayes (sidelines).

Below is Coach Rhule's opening statement:

"Thanks everyone for coming, we appreciate it. Just got off the practice field, had a good day today. I think our kids and our team are really excited to begin conference play. It was a great win for us last week, a lot of kids got to play which was important for the morale of our team. All of our sights really from the end of that game until now are set on going up to Hartford and playing the Connecticut Huskies. As we look at them, I think you see a really potent team. They have a great head coach in Coach Diaco; we had the chance to go against Coach Diaco last year when he was the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame. His defense at UConn is playing just the way they did at Notre Dame, really good run defense, play great in the red zone. Really, really just kind of suffocates you which is kind of what they did to us last year. I have a lot of respect for what he's getting done, as a head coach and the way he's building that team and his image. And I look at this team, and I told our team, they're going to erupt and we're expecting them to erupt on Saturday and come after us and it's going to be a four quarter battle like all the games against UConn have ever been. They've lost to BYU, a nationally ranked team at home, they lost to Boise State, another national power, and they lost in a monsoon. This is a good football team with outstanding player; I think they had more players on the first-team All-Conference team than we did going into the season. Two of the last five games against them have gone into overtime, last year came down to the very end when we had the chance to win the game and didn't. One was the replay with Bruce Francis out of bounds, so four of those five or six games have come down to really the very end of the game within a score. So we're preparing ourselves for an absolute battle and we hope we can hang in there with them.

As you look at their players: Geremy Davis hurt us a lot last year; he's as good of a receiver there is in the conference, if not the best. He's a big, physical guy who can go down field and catch the football. I had the chance to meet him at media day, it sounds like he's what college football is all about. He's a tremendous person, student, in the community; he does it all and he's a great wide receiver. They have Chandler Whitmer, who's back as a starting quarterback now; he can move, he's athletic, he can make things happen. Against Boise State in the second half, that offense got moving, he's able to make some plays. And he brought them back last week until they were within an onside kick of winning that game, so we expect Chandler to play well for them. They're built kind of the way UConn has been over the past couple of years; they're going to come out and try to pound you. They have a big, big physical offensive line – this is biggest offensive and defensive line we'll see all year. For our guys, we're a little bit smaller, little bit quicker, but that's how we built ourselves. It's always a challenge and it's going to be a challenge, for us to be able to withstand the physicality of who and what they are.

On defense, defense is their strength. They're going to play great defense, they're going to play great special teams. I mention the defensive line, [Julian] Campenni is a nose tackle from here in Pennsylvania, [Kenton] Adeyemi, they've got a bunch of defensive tackles that look the same; they're all about 6'2", 6'3", 300 pounds. They'll two-gap you, they'll play one-gap, and they're really good. They've got really good linebackers, run-stop and safeties. And then they have Byron Jones, who was first-team All-Conference, I think he's probably a first or second round pick at field corner. So he presents a real challenge for us. So between Davis and Jones, that's two of the marquee players in our league, so I think our kids are excited to have the chance to play against those guys.

Just the message for me is this team is going to test our will and physicality. They're one of those team: they come out and they just try to pound you, and pound you, and pound you. They play three of four running backs, they're going to keep running the football, running the football and wait for you to make a mistake. That's what we did last year: we made a mistake, we threw a pick and they won the game. Different staff, but still the same mentality. We're getting ourselves ready for a real battle and I think our kids are excited about it. We have to stop the run, we have to play well on special teams, and we can't turn the ball over."

Temple University Athletics

Owls Brace Themselves for Connecticut

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