Head coach Mike Bloomgren broken down Rice football‘s performance against North Texas and preview the UTEP game.
On learning how to start strong and finish games
We played well enough to win for about 47 minutes, but that’s not how long a football game is.
Our football team plays much better… when we get that early score. It carries over to all the other phases of our football team.
On Wiley Green‘s performance
He played a really solid game. He did a lot of things with his feet, he improvised on a couple and protected the ball to the best of his ability.
On the involvement of Juma Otoviano
It was not the intention for him to have 19 carries, but he ended up having a really hot hand. We saw him play physical. We saw him break tackles… He’s also somebody we know can be in that wildcat package, but he has the ability to throw the ball down the field as well. We could see more from Juma as this season continues.
On the play of Anthony Ekpe
Mason Fine is an outstanding quarterback and we hit him 10 times and sacked him three. Anthony Ekpe had those three sacks. I thought he was pretty unstoppable on some of those third downs. It was really exciting to see him dominate a game like that and I thought those hits paid dividends as the game went on.
On “Jack Fox doing Jack Fox things”
Jack Fox Had a career-long 76-yard punt against North Texas, averaging 47.3 yards on seven punts with five punts downed inside the 20.
For the fourth time this season he’s on the Ray Guy Award’s Eight List this week. We think he’s a deserving candidate of that award.
On the UTEP game and Homecoming
It’s a huge game for our football team, a huge game for our program and we’re working as such. We are attacking this week no different than we have other weeks. We’re putting in the work.
It’s our homecoming. We hope to have all our letterman and alumni back. We want our letterman to know how important they are to this program, so we hope they all come back and watch it and I hope we put on a show for them.
