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Oct. 11, 2005
Marshall will meet UAB for the first time Saturday when the two schools take the field for an important Conference USA East Division game that will be televised on i (formerly PAX TV).
Both schools will be looking to stay near the top of the pack in the C-USA East Division race by avoiding a second league loss. UAB (3-2 overall) is 1-1 in C-USA action following a last second 28-27 loss to SMU at home last Saturday. The Blazers picked up their first C-USA win of the season with a 45-26 victory over Rice on Oct. 1st.
Marshall is coming off of a 41-14 loss at #3 Virginia Tech and is also 1-1 in conference play with a loss at UCF and an overtime win over SMU. The Herd did manage to stay with the poweful Hokies in the first half and went into halftime down only 14-7 at the half, however VT managed to pull away in the third quarter.
UAB will be the first pre-exsisting member of C-USA that Marshall will face this season and is one of six 2005 conference opponents that the Herd is playing for the first time ever. The Blazers, who were picked to finish second in the C-USA preseason poll just four points behind Southern Miss, feature one of the top quarterbacks in the country in senior Darrell Hackney who has thrown for 1,492 yards and nine touchdowns this season. UAB is a veteran team that put a scare into Tennessee (17-10, L) before posting wins over Troy, Jacksonville State and Rice.
The Thundering Herd will be celebrating homecoming and retire the #72 of Pro Football Hall of Famer and Thundering Herd legend Frank "Gunner" Gatski on Saturday. Gatski, a Farmington, W.Va., native, was a center at Marshall that went on to play in 11 pro championships, winning eight of those, in his 12 pro seasons as a member of the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions. He is the only former Marshall player enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
COACH SNYDER'S TUESDAY PRESS CONFERENCE QUOTES
Opening statement
"We're excited to come home for Homecoming. It's going to be my first as the head coach and being an alumnus here, I know how excited the folks are to come back and watch this team play. I think we did get better in some areas last week and I challenged our team to try to put all the pieces together. It's hard to be consistent week in and week out and have all three phases clicking. But two or three times in a year, every good football team has a game where they put all three phases together. UAB is a good, good football team and this would be a great week to put all three phases together."
You go from Marcus Vick to Darrell Hackney this week. What changes for you?
"Not much really. Hackney is throwing the ball extremely well too. The one thing that he's not showing is he stays in the pocket a little bit longer than Marcus does. Marcus made some plays last week with his feet, in the West Virginia game and our game, that kept drives alive. He does run when he needs to, but he's more of a power running back when he gets out in the open as opposed to being very elusive."
On the league upsets last week
"You've got to come to play every week in this conference and that's what makes this conference exciting, that nobody has stepped up and taken control of the league. But I will say this. This UAB team coming in here is a good football team. This has to be one of the better teams in this league."
On Hackney
"He does a real nice job of getting rid of the ball. He understands the system. He's been in it for awhile and he gets rid of the ball when he needs to."
Have you been stressing tackling this week?
"We're going to work on tackling. There's no question our tackling wasn't very good last week. We had been getting better at missed assignments in tackling defensively and we took a step back this past week. But a lot of that was because they have good running backs. I counted up our missed tackles and we had more than we would like, but that was a pretty good defense that we played and they had a bunch of missed tackles too. A lot of it has to do with the back. We faced some good backs this past week and we're going to face some good backs in this conference, and that was my message to them. As we go through this conference, we are going to see some good backs and you have to tackle. Yes, Virginia Tech's backs are good. There's no question. But we need to tackle better."
On UAB's backs and their running game
"They're more of a passing team, run second. The backs are solid."
It seems like they use a running back by committee.
"Yes, a little bit. They have one guy they go to pretty steadily, but they throw the ball a whole bunch. They're putting the ball in the hands of people who make plays for them."
They seem to be much more of a passing team than a running team. Does that create a problem?
"The one thing that makes them a good team, and I don't say that much, but if you're one dimensional, I'm not going to call you a good football team unless you're really good in the turnover margin and you play good defense. And they're doing that. They're No. 1 in turnover margin and they're playing good defense. That allows you to throw the ball that many times. But if you start turning the ball over and teams have success either running or throwing the ball on you and you have to become one dimensional, I think we've got a pretty good chance."
Do you want to re-establish the passing game this week?
"We want to be balanced. We want to be able to take what the defense gives us. That's what we're working toward. If they're maxing out the box and obviously we need to throw the ball efficiently, we also need to run the ball efficiently. Our goal is to become very, very balanced and be able to do what the defense allows us to do. We want to be able to dictate the game and not allow them to dictate the game to us. When you become one dimensional, it allows teams at times to dictate you."
They've allowed some big plays. Is that something you want to exploit?
"Some things need to be in place to do that. Obviously you need to be able to run the ball in order to exploit the deep ball. Once you have success running the ball and they load up the box, you can take a chance throwing deep. Again that goes back to balance. We want to be good defensively, good on special teams and be able to run and throw. That's what makes you a good football team and that's what we are working toward."
Does Hackney audible more than the other quarterbacks you have faced?
"It's hard to tell. They don't do a whole lot of hand gesturing and things like that like you see other teams do. I'm not really sure if that's the case. It could be. An important factor this week is going to be our crowd because every offense has checks at the line. Is he calling the game? I don't know, but the crowd definitely is a factor and we need everyone to be as loud as they can be. It's really hard on the offensive line and the backs. The wideouts and that quarterback can communicate with hands, but it's hard for an offensive line to see the quarterback. That's where our crowd could be a factor for us this week."
On Albert McClellan
"We felt it was important to get Albert out in an environment like we put him in, being a true freshman because he's going to be out there some more over the next four years and we felt like it was valuable experience to get him out there playing. It probably was pretty good for his confidence to get a sack on Marcus Vick. I was happy to see it. It shows what great speed Albert has."
What things did you see in McClellan to make him a starter as a true freshman?
"It wasn't things we saw, we just felt from a mental standpoint it was important to get a lot of our young people in that environment and get them used to it and we played quite a few of them."
There seems to be a trend of playing more freshmen in college football today. Why is that?
"Everybody has a different situation. We're already a young football team, so we might as well play some young guys. The thing you would like to have is a veteran team and then play the young guys. There's the perfect scenario because you've got older guys out there helping younger guys and you're getting younger guys experience for the future. You always have to have journeymen. All great football teams have journeymen that work their way through the system and you bring them along slowly. That's when you know you have a program and at some point in time, we going to be an awfully experienced football team. Then putting the young guys out there won't be such a hard decision because you'll have so many older guys around them to help them out."
How difficult has it been in the first go-around through the league?
"It's just the unknown. You don't know what you don't know. I'll have a lot better feel for SMU next year when we go play them. I'll have a lot better feel for UCF next year when we go play them. After looking at the film, I have a feeling I know what we're getting into with UAB because it's not real hard to decipher as you look at the film. You know what you're getting and it's a good football team."
Anybody jump out on defense like Hackney does on offense?
"Yes, the defensive end, (Larry) McSwain, is good. He's real good. And their DBs are real, real aggressive. They're very aggressive, which can be good and bad. But that's the reason they are creating turnovers. You have to pick your poison, so to say."
You can still win a league title and go to a bowl game. Talk about excitement of that prospect.
"It's exciting. We are getting better. I don't think there's any question there. We haven't put it all together yet, and it's hard to put it all together. I don't care what team you are. It's hard to do that. Most teams have two or three of those games where they do that, and it sure would be nice to do it this week - offensively, defensively and special teams, as well as our crowd. That makes for a great Saturday. We're excited for the opportunity and there's a lot of football left, and our guys know that."
On Bernie Morris getting into a rhythm
"When you're a young quarterback, you need to get in a rhythm and the SMU game he was able to get into a rhythm because he threw the ball 60 times. He didn't throw the ball that much Saturday, and I don't think I've ever been a part of a game where that many points were scored in such a small amount of time. Six or seven minutes, a lot of points went up on that board for the other team. Now all the weight of the world falls on your quarterback because now you can't run the ball and expect to come back. To beat a team like that, you've got to start opening it up a bit and I think he felt a little bit of that pressure. But what a great learning experience. The only way you can overcome that is experience."
