Littrell Post La Tech Game Press Conference Notes

I listened to Seth Littrell’s post game press conference and he sounded disappointed in the way you are when your team loses, but he did not have the frustrated tone of a man who thought there was any other outcome.

Louisiana Tech is good and played to their ability. Compared to the two big upsets in the conference on Saturday, UTSA over MTSU and Charlotte over Southern Miss, Louisiana Tech took North Texas seriously. MTSU came out soft and apparently feeling themselves after reading all the good press about themselves.

Louisiana Tech seemed to see NT for the dangerous team it is. That is bad in the short term, but good in the long. North Texas has a reputation as squad that will play hard and has talent enough to pull off the kind of upset we see every week in this league.

The problem with this recognition is that it will be harder to surprise teams.

I would rather the program be respected than overlooked, though. This is a good problem to have.

I like guaging my own post game reactions with the coaches’ as it serves as. a check on my own abilities to assess this squad as a guy sitting on the couch, with only my wits and inference skills vs the coaches who were a part of the game plan and privy to details.

• Seth says LaTech is a quality opponent that required NT to essentially play perfectly in all three phases to beat. That did not happen as NT was inconsistent. This fits with my own observations that NT played a very median NT game, and that was not going to be good enough for the median LaTech game.
• Seth gives them lots of credit, talked about their switch to Cover 2 in the second half and how that opened opportunities that Mason Fine was not able to take advantage of. I noted this in the recap, but assigned blame to the O-Line. It did seem like Mason Fine was not getting rid of the ball quickly, but it was hard to see on the broadcast that was only barely looking at the game at times.
• Seth did not like the mental indiscipline and conversations with the referees. Given that NT is in week 9, this is unlikely to change. They are who they are.
• Seth discussed and was asked about Carlos Henderson, who balled out. He talked about how difficult it was to take away everything. In the recap, I said much of the same thing, as LaTech is good enough to be a threat in multiple areas. Compared to NT, which is a threat on the ground with Wilson, there is not much NT does exceptionally well to counter that. La Tech has two good WRs and a QB that makes smart and big plays. Hard to stop.