I have to admit, I have been behind all day getting the domain names changed for the site but am now happy to say that www.http://wildcatbluenation.com is now working. Also a special thanks to the folks at www.godaddy.com for getting the problems resolved superquick instead of having the site down for 24-48 hours. That said, I have not been able to keep uop on the site as much as possible so have to give a huge thanks to Matt May and our friends at www.thecatspause.com for making the following transcript available.
Players not on team
Phillips: “Tim McAdoo will go off to junior college, so that’s a two year commitment, could be a year and a half commitment until he gets his AA. Farrington Huguenin will go to prep school in North Carolina. Actually he will play at a school that’s not a prep school, but he will also be taking classes from another school. So he’ll try to get that done in a year. Jabari Johnson has been ruled academically ineligible. Jabari, it’s close enough that he will not go to junior college or prep school, he’ll continue to take the tests and do correspondence. The next guy is Tim Patterson. His evaluation has not come back through the NCAA, but the issue we have with Tim Patterson, if you guys can remember he had knee surgery in December. It’s only about eight months out. He will continue to rehab that. We only have 104 in. We’ll continue to evaluate his injury and see if he can get himself healthy enough to come in and compete. If not, we’ll hold him until January. So that’s still up in the air.
“The other guy that everybody has been waiting to hear about is Mister Cobble is ruled ineligible for this year. He did not pass enough hours, so he will continue to be on our football team, be on scholarship and continue to try to get himself eligible for the 2011 season.
Start of fall camp
Phillips: “We’re excited about it. We’ve prepped our players and let them know it’s probably the hardest camp they’ve been to, so we want to get this thing as fast as we possibly can. We only have 104 in camp, and so therefore we’ve got to get kids reps, especially at the quarterback position. We’ve got to get those guys as many reps as we possibly can, therefore we’ve got to get a lot of reps on the field, so we’ve got to go fast.”
Conditioning of team under strength coach Rock Oliver
Phillips: “We’re in better condition this year. I think we’ve lost a lot of fat. We’re a leaner team, we’re a stronger team. I think the way we look now will help us through injuries. The ones who needed to lose weight lost weight; the ones who needed to gain weight did gain weight except for Randall Burden. He’s still called “Birdman” not because he’s a big guy.”
Loss of Mister Cobble on defensive line
Phillips: “We were counting on him, there’s no question about that. But Operation Win means we want to win in the classroom, and we had over 30 guys that had a 3.0. We had three that had a 4.0. So the majority of our team is buying in. I said the guys who don’t buy in, they’ll either be not with us or they’ll be the best conditioned player. He’s going to be a well conditioned player when it’s all over with because he’s got to get the message. He’s got to get with us.
“Depth wise, I think we’ll be OK inside. I really do. There’s four young kids that just walked on campus including Donte Rumph who we think will give us some depth. He’s not a young guy. He’s an inexperienced guy at this level, but he’s not a young guy by any means. So we think we’ll be fine in that area.
“We’re treating it just like it’s a season ending injury. If you followed us for the seven years, the thing that we have done here is when somebody has gone down, the next guy has stepped up.”
Player at center on offensive line
Phillips: “Jake Lanefski, Marcus Davis, Matt Smith, and Sam Simpson will be working at center. Jake is the guy that has played the most, but he hadn’t played at center, OK, but he’s worked all summer trying to get snaps with the quarterbacks and it’ll be different for him and snapping and trying to get his first step and second step on the ground. But he’s athletic enough. He now is right around 300 pounds, so we feel good about that competition. Matt Smith has played in a game, Marcus Davis has started a game.
“We lost four guys, but one thing we were able to do is to create some depth because of some experience by the guys that were backed up because we played a lot of guys at that position. They got some snaps and some experience.”
Impact of newcomers Mychal Bailey and Donte Rumph
Phillips: “We’ve got to find out early if they can help us. We’ve got to make sure they can help us first of all, because they’re running out of time. Rumph comes in, in a position of need with us losing Cobble, so he comes in a position of needing experience. I think we’ve got a lot of bodies at the defensive tackle. I think the thing we need is some maturity there, and I think he’ll bring that maturity to that position.
Mychal Bailey, a safety spot, I keep harping, the difference between an average and a great defense is a safety spot, and we know Mychal Bailey is a great tackler. He’s one of those YouTube heroes that everybody has seen. It’s important that he knows what to do so we can get him lined up to play some snaps for us.
“He’ll definitely have to be a special teams player with the way he runs and the way he hits, we’ve got to get him ready to play special teams and whether or not he’s ready to play some snaps at safety early is yet to be seen.”
Quarterback situation
Phillips: “Both of them have winning records as starters. That’s big in this league to have guys that have been winning games, and not only do they have winning records, they’ve won on the road, which is so tough in this league. So we have two guys that have won games and have led this football team, and we’ve got a really, really talented freshman just waiting to compete against those guys.
Improve wide receiver play
Phillips: “I think those guys will be much improved. They’re now starting to understand how to get lined up, understanding how to read coverages, understanding how to be an SEC wide receiver. Now they have leader in Randall Cobb, I think Chris Matthews is slowly becoming a leader. I think La’Rod King has the potential to be an unbelievable leader someday. So they’ve got some leadership.
“I think they’ll be much improved and be able to make plays, win games for us. I’m not sure the position at wide receiver would have been able to win games at that position. Randall Cobb won games for us, but I think we’ll be able to win games at that position this year.”
Running ‘Wildcat’ formation
Phillips: “We have to play Randall Cobb at quarterback some in the Wildcat. We have to. That’s an easy way to get the ball in his hands. That’s something that the defense has to practic
e, and it’s hard to plan for. It’s similar to trying to face the option. You can’t just spend five minutes on it, you have to spend a lot of time in preparing for that. So we have to use it. I think that’s to our advantage.
Playing time for true freshmen
Phillips: “Because of need, (place kicker) Joe Mansour, (linebacker} Avery Williamson. I think Williamson definitely. He’s a weight room freak. He’s a guy that did over 20 reps of 225 in the weight room. The strength and conditioning coach has said with all the sprints, he was winning a lot of them, and the guy is blessed with an unbelievable body, great work ethic. I think he’s a guy, again, that’s a need of ours at linebacker, so I think we’ve got to look at him early.
“A lot of those freshmen we’ve got to try to look at special teams. That’s going to be a difference in a lot of games, and we’ll have to go into our first special teams meeting, and that’s the thing we’ve got to sell, the special teams. When you’re in a big game, the difference between winning and losing is usually special teams and field position. So a lot of those young freshmen will be lined up on special teams. I think the three corners that we’ve got, Trimble, Priester and Simmons, those three guys got a chance to help us, also, get a long look early because of the way they run. I think speed is a key. You guys all know that. We’ve been preaching that since we got here seven years ago. Speed is a key, and all three of those guys can run.”
New rule banning three-man wedge on kick returns
Phillips: “The rule states that you can’t have three guys come back and form a wedge, and we’ve been a pretty good wedge football team, but our wedge has been more of a V, which we have a point guy and two guys actually shoulder to shoulder and then we have two more guys shoulder to shoulder. We’ll get away from that, simply because at times when you come back, you miss time it and sometimes it looks like three of them are together. But we will have some two man wedges on different levels to create that. So two man wedge, two man wedge.”
Quarterback Mike Hartline
Phillips: “Mike is mature. He comes from a sports family. He knows how to handle the situation that he’s in. He goes out and wins seven games his first year. I mean, the guy understands it. He’s very mature, he spends a lot of time this off season in the first four weeks with his brother down in Miami getting around the pro players, so the guy understands the business. He understands the criticism, he understands the pats on the back. That’s the thing you have to be as a quarterback, you’ve got to understand the pats on the back so you’ve also got to understand the criticism, and Mike understands that.
“He’ll start off as the first guy that gets reps because somebody has to do it, and he’s been around here the longest.”
Expectations going up
Phillips: “The expectation has definitely changed since we got here seven years ago. Our team expects it more, too. If you look last year at the last game of the season, we’re playing for second place in the East. That’s huge for where we have come from, and our players expect to play for the Eastern championship. That’s one of our program goals is to win the East. We don’t say national championship. We say win the East because if you win the East, you’ve got a chance to play for a national championship, and our players really expect that.”
Freshman kicker Jospeh Masour
Phillips: “Mansour has a really strong leg. He kicked a 59 yarder last year. But his coach said that if he had known the record was 63, he would have backed him up. But he has that type of leg. He walks around here like he owns the place already. That’s big in that position. He’s one of those guys if you line him up if you say, all right, Joe, it’s a 65 yarder, what do you think, he says, I can make it, and he runs out there and he kicks it. He’s that type of player.”
Practice Routine
Phillips: “We will not run sprints unless we’re not practicing fast because if that’s the way we practice, we shouldn’t have to. And I think Coach Oliver has gotten them in good enough condition that if we’re practicing the way we need to practice, then I don’t think there’s any need to run sprints. And I think that’s a motivator for a young man. He knows if he goes hard, goes hard in practice, then we won’t run sprints.
“I think there’s three ways to motivate. Motivate with fear, and we did that when we first took over. We tried to scare the living daylights out of them, and the lead guy was Rock Oliver, and he scared me a couple times. The second way is incentives, incentive. I think it’s an incentive when they know if they practice hard, practice fast, that we will not run sprints. And the last thing is what we’re trying to do now, and we think that’s long term, and that is the relationships. We’re trying to build relationships that our players will want to go hard because they don’t want to let us down because they know we care about them.”
Keep following www.http://wildcatbluenation.com for the best in Kentucky basketball and football news, rumors, and opinions. By Kentucky fans for Kentucky fans