UCF News, Notes and Quotes

The Knights will host Marshall on Sunday night in front of a national television audience. UCF players and George O’Leary talked about the game and more during this week’s press conference. In order to save you some time, we’ll break everything down to the bare essentials.

Quarterback Brett Hodges and defensive tackle Torrell Troup were the two players that were brought in during the press conference. As always, Coach O’Leary was there and he was pretty upbeat after a big win over Rice. Speaking of Rice, let’s start off our News, Notes and Quotes by going over last week’s game.

Last week’s 49-7 win over Rice:

-O’Leary was happy that the team executed nearly flawlessly at all three aspects of the game. He was especially pleased that he was able to get some of the backups and younger guys in the game, most notably Rob Calabrese.

“I think that was great. Everybody from the middle of the third quarter on had a chance to play and he went out and played with a lot more poise. I think he had a couple of throws for touchdowns and I think he handled everything a lot better out there, I’m just happy for him from a confidence standpoint.” –O’Leary on Calabrese.

-Hodges talked about the increased emphasis on making pre-snap checks and how the success of those reads and audibles will help with confidence and momentum offensively heading into this week’s game. An example of Hodges making the right checks: he checked off to A.J. Guyton on the first play of the game, which went for a 76-yard score.

On this week’s game versus Marshall:

-Troup said that this was a must win. Mathematically, it’s as close to it as you can get.

- Hodges touched on the importance of this game too…“It’s huge. If we want to reach our goal that we set at the beginning of the season, which was to win a conference championship and reach a bowl and win our division, that’s the stuff we need to do. It’s a huge game for us and it’s a huge game for them too…We’re going to come into this game knowing what’s at stake as far as the goals we set in the beginning of the year. We’re going to try and execute and make plays physically and get the things done that we need to do to win a big game.” –Hodges

-O’Leary went in detail on the different weapons Marshall has on both sides of the ball, such as running back Darius Marshall, tight end Cody Slate and defensive end Albert McClellan.

-Troup also touched on Marshall’s line play… They have a very big offensive line, their physical, they can move.”

Personnel

-Guyton will likely remain the team’s starting punt returner.

-O’Leary wants to get Jonathan Davis some more reps with the squad in practice.

-The team has applied for a redshirt waiver for Emery Allen. The senior corner back broke his foot this spring and it never healed properly.

- Chad Alexander, who tore his ACL earlier this year, is having surgery next month.

Quote of the Day

“Some of our yo-yo fans are complaining because we didn’t get the shutout.” -O’Leary on whether the defense would have liked the shutout (and thus leaving starters in.)