CARBONDALE, Ill. — Here are excerpts from Saluki football head coach Nick Hill‘s weekly press conference held Monday afternoon at Saluki Stadium. Southern Illinois hosts South Dakota on Saturday at 6 p.m. on Family Weekend at SIU. Single-game tickets and discounted mini-plans are available on-line or by calling 877-SALUKIS.
On Saturday’s opponent, the South Dakota Coyotes.
South Dakota is a really good football team. It was a game last year that didn’t go well for us. Just watching the film, it’s a tough film to watch, they got after us. They like to go fast on offense and they have great skill players. They’re coming off a loss, too, sitting at 1-2 and have a lot of things to prove as well, so we’re going to get their best effort. They had a bye week last week, we’ve both had two weeks to prepare for each other, so I’d assume there will be some wrinkles they have offensively and defensively. We have to not beat ourselves and not have those five or six critical errors that we had last week to give ourselves a chance.
South Dakota has always been a defense that thrives on big plays, tackles for a loss, they sack the quarterback, they’re really active and athletic up front. They move around a lot, play a lot line games, twists, and then their linebackers are active and do a good job tackling the football. They do a good job getting you in 2nd-and-longs, 3rd-and-longs. They only gave up 250 yards of total offense (last week) and Weber State was 1-of-13 on 3rd down. Last year we didn’t score a point (against South Dakota), so we have a lot to prove and know what’s in front of us to do that.
On the bye week.
We were able to practice and get a lot of young guys reps. We practiced Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, gave them Friday and Saturday off, then we brought them in Sunday evening and had a really good practice last night. They got today off and we’ll get into our normal week and keep that schedule consistent for the rest of the season.
On his message to the team.
Our team meeting yesterday was just reverting back to Day One of training camp, what the fundamental things of our program are. That’s what we have to rely on now, it’s about daily improvement. Taking care of the process leads to the results that we want. If we stick to that, we have a good football team. We’re going to have to go out there and earn it one week at a time.
Update on injured players.
Jake Varble, our starting tight end, tore his ACL on that third down catch (against SEMO) and will have surgery and be out for the season. Cody Crider, the same thing, on that hit where he came out. This is the third time he’s torn the same ACL. Tough break for both of those guys because they’ve both put a lot of hard work into this and are both leaders on our football team. I hate it for both of them, but the next guy has to step up. I feel like we have good depth at both of those positions. Qua Brown (knee) had surgery so we should be getting him back, hopefully by the Homecoming game.
The unfortunate part of football is injuries. You know that going into it. As a coach, if you spend a bunch of time feeling sorry for yourself because you have a bunch of injuries, you’re not going to be that good. You have to get the next guy ready to go, get him coached up, because the next team, I guarantee you, doesn’t care about what your injury report looks like. I’m sure they have just as many injuries and things they’re going through as well.
On freshman tight end Logan Crouse, who moves into a back-up role due to Varble’s injury.
He played professional baseball (prior to SIU). He’s a big, strong kid who can block and I think has an unbelievable future. He’s pretty new to the game. This is a kid who, athletically, has an NFL skill set. If he would have picked to play football out of high school, probably would have been playing Power Five football. He can run as well as our receivers but he weighs 260 pounds. He’s been getting in football shape. On Sundays, we’ve been doing a developmental practice, and it’s not just for redshirting freshmen, it’s for guys who are on the verge (of playing) and he’s taken advantage of all four of them that we’ve had. Now he’s going to get called on to get, who knows, 40-50 reps in a game. We talk every week about who is going to be in this (Sunday) practice that’s going to get called upon, and Logan’s that guy.
On redshirt freshman linebacker Luke Giegling stepping in for Cody Crider.
Giegling made the interception we thought won the game (against SEMO). He made a great play on it. Giegling’s played at a high level. That’s a guy who is going to be in the right spots and do a lot of good things. He’s long — Cody is 5-10 maybe, and Giegling is 6-4. They’re different players, but they’re both smart. Crider brings a sense of calmness on defense that we’ll have to fill.
On the positives from the SEMO game.
Offensively, I thought those last two touchdown drives, where we knew we had to score, and they were able to make the plays and go down and score touchdowns to retake the lead twice in the fourth quarter. There were some tough third-down (conversions), fourth down twice, making tough catches and learning the guys we can count on to make plays. I thought D.J. Davis with 35 carries has had a great first three weeks. Not just his toughness and breaking tackles, but he has the right mentality.
Defensively, sometimes you make your biggest strides and learn things from having a game like that, a wakeup call. We learned the hard way the things that can happen. We’re finding out some calls we can’t make, some things we’re not doing well that we have to go back and make some tweaks.
On running back Jonathan Mixon’s status.
Mixon looks good out there, practiced yesterday and will be full-go all week. It will be good to get Mixon back to take some of those carries (from Davis). In week one, he was on pace to have a 100-yard game. He had two good runs against Ole Miss, too, and just got his knee banged up. We get him back and he can be a really good player
On Saturday’s opponent, the South Dakota Coyotes.
South Dakota is a really good football team. It was a game last year that didn’t go well for us. Just watching the film, it’s a tough film to watch, they got after us. They like to go fast on offense and they have great skill players. They’re coming off a loss, too, sitting at 1-2 and have a lot of things to prove as well, so we’re going to get their best effort. They had a bye week last week, we’ve both had two weeks to prepare for each other, so I’d assume there will be some wrinkles they have offensively and defensively. We have to not beat ourselves and not have those five or six critical errors that we had last week to give ourselves a chance.
South Dakota has always been a defense that thrives on big plays, tackles for a loss, they sack the quarterback, they’re really active and athletic up front. They move around a lot, play a lot line games, twists, and then their linebackers are active and do a good job tackling the football. They do a good job getting you in 2nd-and-longs, 3rd-and-longs. They only gave up 250 yards of total offense (last week) and Weber State was 1-of-13 on 3rd down. Last year we didn’t score a point (against South Dakota), so we have a lot to prove and know what’s in front of us to do that.
On the bye week.
We were able to practice and get a lot of young guys reps. We practiced Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, gave them Friday and Saturday off, then we brought them in Sunday evening and had a really good practice last night. They got today off and we’ll get into our normal week and keep that schedule consistent for the rest of the season.
On his message to the team.
Our team meeting yesterday was just reverting back to Day One of training camp, what the fundamental things of our program are. That’s what we have to rely on now, it’s about daily improvement. Taking care of the process leads to the results that we want. If we stick to that, we have a good football team. We’re going to have to go out there and earn it one week at a time.
Update on injured players.
Jake Varble, our starting tight end, tore his ACL on that third down catch (against SEMO) and will have surgery and be out for the season. Cody Crider, the same thing, on that hit where he came out. This is the third time he’s torn the same ACL. Tough break for both of those guys because they’ve both put a lot of hard work into this and are both leaders on our football team. I hate it for both of them, but the next guy has to step up. I feel like we have good depth at both of those positions. Qua Brown (knee) had surgery so we should be getting him back, hopefully by the Homecoming game.
The unfortunate part of football is injuries. You know that going into it. As a coach, if you spend a bunch of time feeling sorry for yourself because you have a bunch of injuries, you’re not going to be that good. You have to get the next guy ready to go, get him coached up, because the next team, I guarantee you, doesn’t care about what your injury report looks like. I’m sure they have just as many injuries and things they’re going through as well.
On freshman tight end Logan Crouse, who moves into a back-up role due to Varble’s injury.
He played professional baseball (prior to SIU). He’s a big, strong kid who can block and I think has an unbelievable future. He’s pretty new to the game. This is a kid who, athletically, has an NFL skill set. If he would have picked to play football out of high school, probably would have been playing Power Five football. He can run as well as our receivers but he weighs 260 pounds. He’s been getting in football shape. On Sundays, we’ve been doing a developmental practice, and it’s not just for redshirting freshmen, it’s for guys who are on the verge (of playing) and he’s taken advantage of all four of them that we’ve had. Now he’s going to get called on to get, who knows, 40-50 reps in a game. We talk every week about who is going to be in this (Sunday) practice that’s going to get called upon, and Logan’s that guy.
On redshirt freshman linebacker Luke Giegling stepping in for Cody Crider.
Giegling made the interception we thought won the game (against SEMO). He made a great play on it. Giegling’s played at a high level. That’s a guy who is going to be in the right spots and do a lot of good things. He’s long — Cody is 5-10 maybe, and Giegling is 6-4. They’re different players, but they’re both smart. Crider brings a sense of calmness on defense that we’ll have to fill.
On the positives from the SEMO game.
Offensively, I thought those last two touchdown drives, where we knew we had to score, and they were able to make the plays and go down and score touchdowns to retake the lead twice in the fourth quarter. There were some tough third-down (conversions), fourth down twice, making tough catches and learning the guys we can count on to make plays. I thought D.J. Davis with 35 carries has had a great first three weeks. Not just his toughness and breaking tackles, but he has the right mentality.
Defensively, sometimes you make your biggest strides and learn things from having a game like that, a wakeup call. We learned the hard way the things that can happen. We’re finding out some calls we can’t make, some things we’re not doing well that we have to go back and make some tweaks.
On running back Jonathan Mixon’s status.
Mixon looks good out there, practiced yesterday and will be full-go all week. It will be good to get Mixon back to take some of those carries (from Davis). In week one, he was on pace to have a 100-yard game. He had two good runs against Ole Miss, too, and just got his knee banged up. We get him back and he can be a really good player
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