Oct. 7, 1997
Tom Holmoe Press Conference
Q: What is the status of Tarik Smith?
A: Tarik's status for this game is that he's healthy (after
sitting out last week with a hip injury) and he'll practice. If
he's ready to go physically and has a good week of practice,
he'll be the starter. If he hasn't recovered fully from the
hip, then we'll go with the guy who gives us the best chance to
win this game. But if Tarik's healthy, he's our number one
tailback.
Q: Have you been happy with Tarik's performance so far this
season?
A: That's one of the issues that Tarik and I have talked about
this week. His expectations for himself are extremely high and
last year he was third or fourth in the nation in rushing when
he injured his knee. Then when he came back, I think his
expectations were that he'd be the same guy. I've told him that
we're pleased with how he has performed. It's pretty amazing to
me that he has recovered the way he has, and that he was able
to play in the Houston game. It took a lot of work for him to
get to that point and I told him that we are very happy with
the way he is performing.
Q: How would you assess the Huskies?
A: They are very good. Heading into the season, you look at
them on paper and you know that they probably have the best
personnel in the Pac-10. Then the season begins and you see
that they are pretty darn special. They have good aggressive
fronts, both offensively and defensively. Their skill guys are
doing a tremendous job. I think they are very well coached.
They play hard all through the game and their special teams are
good. So they are a fairly complete team with few deficiencies.
That's why they are one of the better teams in the conference,
if not the best.
Q: Are you concerned about the emotional state of your team?
A: Yeah, a little bit. It was a tough loss, especially after
looking at the film and realizing that we had a number of
opportunities to put that team away. Coming back, I think they
really sensed that they could have easily been 3-1 going into
this game against Washington, but we're not. So that's
frustrating for them. But I really think this team is
resilient. It is going to be very important that our guys
respond emotionally and come out and play hard, aggressive and
physical football.
Q: How do you deal with the team's emotions?
A: I think there are some things that need to be addressed as
far as our preparation. There are a couple of things that we've
spoken about. One is we haven't started quickly. In four games
now the other team has scored first and that has something to
do with being on the right edge and having the right focus, and
we will address that this week in practice. We also need to
learn how to put away a team. We had a chance to bury Oklahoma
and didn't. We had a chance to put away Louisiana Tech and
didn't. So those are things that need to be cleaned up.
I think that the team really believes that we are a good team.
They look at our offense and see that we are racking up a ton
of yards. But we're not capitalizing on a lot of opportunities
that we have. I think the defense believes that we have the
capability to make big plays, but we also shown a tendency to
let big plays hurt us. On special teams, we've also done some
great things, but we've been a little leaky in some areas.
Against Louisiana Tech, special teams could have been the
difference in the game.
So this team knows that we are capable of beating anybody. This
team knows that we can beat anybody we play the rest of the
way. Now if we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot with
penalties at key junctures of the game, then we'll continue to
be an average team.
Q: Have you had a chance to look at the game film and look at
the penalties to see if they were legitimate?
A: I think that we are playing average football lately and that
the penalties are a manifestation of our play. We don't think a
lot. Many of the penalties are foolish. Some of them are simply
a lack of finishing off plays. Though we continue to address
the penalties situation, the players seem to continue to make
the same mistakes. So we will continue and continue to stress
the importance of discipline in the area of penalties and until
its resolved.
