HONOLULU – University of Hawai'i Warrior football head coach Greg McMackin conducted his weekly press conference Monday, recapping the team's heartbreaking 35-31 loss to Utah State over the weekend and looking ahead to Saturday's game against Nevada.
 
Opening Statement…
I was real happy with the first half and I thought the guys played really well. Then, right at the end of the first half, we had some guys go down that we had to make some adjustments for. Then in the second half, the first run that they made for 44 yards - we held the run down in the first half, I think they had 54 yards and we weren't happy with the first drive. You sort of have to get up to speed because you have been working with your scout teams and we had talked about that with the defense before. After that, they shut them down. The only real yardage they got was the quarterback (scrambling) the ball. I'm so happy that their quarterback wasn't hurt seriously. I called him up here, he did stay overnight, but he and the trainer were getting ready to catch a plane and he's just going to have a stiff neck and be fine. The other quarterback came in, a couple of things happened. Number 1 is that we missed a responsibility, you have to really be playing sound responsibility, on that long run – I'm talking about that long run. He's a different kind of thrower, the first guy is an option guy, he throws good short. But this guy came in and threw, as you saw, a couple in there that we covered or we had guys around it to make the play and we didn't make the play. That was the 21 points and then they drove another one in. So you got to give Utah State credit on that. It was a disappointing, tough loss; we don't feel good about it. But we're not going to quit…if we win out we can still win 10 games. The only thing I'm focused on, because I did talk to my team today at 7:00 this morning, is we need to win two more games to get into a bowl game. These teams coming up are good football teams and if we win them all and win the bowl game, we can have the same record we did last year. So that is what we are focusing on. We take the positive route, a lot of people take the negative route, but that's where we are at right now.
 
On the injury update of the football team…
In four years I've never made excuses because (injuries) are apart of football, but we definitely have to overcome the devastating injuries that we've had. In this game we already weren't playing two starters on the offensive line, Brett Leonard and Chauncy (Winchester-Makainai), but we lost Clayton Laurel for the year. Of course we lost Royce (Pollard), who has a knee and ankle problem (so) he won't play this ball game (because) he is in a boot and on crutches. We lost (Justin) Clapp who I really admired, he had two broken ribs and he wanted to put on a rib deal on so he could go back in and he told them …“don't baby me.”  He's a tough mother and wanted to go back out. What that's done is we already lost a receiver, (Allen) Sampson previously, (Darius) Bright is hurt. Let me give you an example like I did on my show last night.  The best game we played is LaTech (Louisiana Tech) in our opinion, wasn't perfect but it was the best game that we've played. If you take the offensive line, the five guys on the offensive line and you take our four receivers that played in that LaTech game, at the same positions, we have one guy out of those nine guys that played the second half (against Utah State) and that was the game.Billy Ray Stutzman also played in that game, but we had to move him outside. We learned that a couple years ago when we were tying to put our best four players out on the field, we moved Kealoha outside and that just takes away. We had different guys playing different positions. We also have another problem, Mo (Bryant Moniz) is at the doctor right now and so is Richard Torres.
 
(Royce Pollard) has a meniscus tear.  I would think he would be back sometime. It just depends on if they want to play him with that later on because it is swollen now – he isn't going to play in this game – or operate on it later. His ankle is banged up too. He just got everything squished up on that (play).
 
On using the redshirts to play in place of the injured players…
We aren't going to take anybody off redshirt, we have four games left so we aren't going to take anybody off redshirt. It's too close now. When you have a chance to play half the season that's one thing, but it's too close now (to the end of the season). So we aren't going to take anyone off. We are going to keep the slots as they are. We may move David Graves out there to receiver. He played (wide) receiver in high school and we always thought about that, but were never in this situation. Joe Avery is going to be out there.  We're hoping that (Darius) Bright will be ready this weekend; he's about 70% last week.  On the other side, we have Trevor Davis.
 
On why Joe Avery hasn't played much at wide receiver…
He just needs to catch the football better. Hopefully, added responsibility will help him do it. He is a great kid, fast, knows the offense. He just hasn't been consistent in catching the football and there have been guys that are better than him. But he knows it all. He's smart and he's got everything so he might get his chance.
 
On Jett Jasper possibly playing…
Yeah, he's a possibility.
 
On where this loss ranks among all of the wins and losses in his career…
After the game, I thought it was one of the worst comebacks from that side. I've been in on them from the other side, but that's one reason that I won't let anyone substitute unless we have over a 30-point lead because (when) I was at Stanford and we were playing Washington State when they had Broussard and (other) good running backs. We had a 28 point lead on them and substituted and they won the ball game. When you really break the game down, you can see how it happened.  I mean, (Robert) Turbin has been getting those kind of runs all year. Our defense shut him down, he didn't get 100 yards.  We shut him down. Then they go to another phase of it with a different person who hasn't really played, he's a (junior college) guy. He had a couple bombs and things happen. We really felt bad about it, the players felt bad about it, “what the heck are we going to do?” We sure not going got lay down, quit, bad mouth, criticize,  and point our finger, because, you know, if you point your finger at somebody, you got three fingers pointing back at you. You know when there's a bunch of ants and you put water on them and they all take off and spread around. I hope people don't do that because we are going to work as hard as we can. We have some adversity and we've had it before and we've worked through it.  Our goal now is to go to a bowl game and win as many games as we can for the rest of the season. We're going to focus on that. We're going to be close.  That's what we're going to do.
 
On what you can take from the LaTech game into this week's game at Nevada…
Not really, we can prepare more from the team we just played as an option team and we've had an extra week to work on the option. LaTech is the trip of all trips and the Reno isn't all that bad. It's going to be cold and it's going to be probably rainy. We just got to be mentally tough. We beat Utah State last year in that situation.
 
We've traveled pretty good. We beat Fresno State at their place. Hopefully, we beat Nevada at their place. We beat Utah State at their place (last year). When I first came here, they only played three games on the road and they hadn't won for seven years on the road.  It's a game and it's on the road and we are just going to have to toughen up.  It's like any road game. Usually, when teams come here, we have an advantage and we're going (to Nevada) so they're probably going to have an advantage.
 
On running the ball in a cold weather game…
We used the running game when people give us the running game. We don't go in like we're going to go in running 50/50, run the ball this many times. It just depends on what their defense gives us. They're an even front and it just depends on if they're protecting pass or run. We feel very comfortable with our running game. We have (John) Lister, also, that can run the ball. Joey Iosefa and Sterling Jackson are doing a really good job, so we are not afraid to run the football.
 
On the possible advantage Utah State had with the bye week preceding playing UH..
These three teams all have an extra week. We didn't even know about the other quarterback. We were looking him up when he got in. He only had like five attempts before that. We were getting all of our information from Jeremy Higgins (former USU quarterback now with UH).
 
This guy could put it up and throw it deep and the other guy couldn't. We had other guys there but it wasn't a strategy thing. The guy threw the ball and the guy caught the ball.  They made the plays and we didn't make the plays. It wasn't trickery or that type of thing, they just made the plays.
 
On the frustration of Utah State getting all the good bounces…
You just have to make plays and that's why I give them credit because they made the plays. You know, sometimes you get a bounce that sort of shows you that it's not your day. The first fake they ran was the same play, it was a pass and we had it covered, and he was going that direction and he reversed field and came back around and just out-ran us because we knew they were going to punt, we knew (Stanley Morrison) was in. The guy just out-ran us. The tip, that's just the bounce of the ball, that's why they call if football.
 
The first half, I was really pleased with. Then the second half, none of us really enjoyed.  It was a tough loss. Obviously, we gave a certain amount of time because we got to flip the page and get ready for the next game.This is going to be another tough ball game. It will be good to be at home the last three games but these guys are a good football team.
 
On getting enough support publicly…
I don't even read the papers or listen to anything or read the blogs or anything like that.  I've given that up. (Chancellor) Virginia Hinshaw came out to see the team and I talk to Jim (Donovan) all the time. I have no problem with the administration.