Luke Fickell: 'Balance' is the Best Thing About Tulsa

The Bearcats have a road bout with the Golden Hurricane for the first time in the Luke Fickell era.

Author:
Russ Heltman
Sep 27, 2022 5:51 PM EDT

CINCINNATI — UC football is traveling down to Oklahoma this weekend for the AAC opener against Tulsa, and head coach Luke Fickell had plenty of thoughts on the Golden Hurricane.

Check out some of the best quotes from his weekly press conference.

On The Positive Aspects Of Not Bein Satisfied With Saturday's 45-24 Win Over Tulsa:

There was a time when maybe it wasn't quite like that. I think our guys feel the same way. I don't want to take away from winning when I said that to you in the press conference. I promise you when I walked into that locker room the way we talked about the game was that we are going to enjoy the win and celebrate it because it's not easy to win in college football today you just got to look around every single week.

When we come in on Sunday, that's when we kind of hammer back down on now let's find ways to get better. Normally we learn lessons from other games, we take games in college football and pull them for the team meeting, and we pull clips from our own game about lessons to learn in football so that we aren’t going to repeat them hopefully, we can learn them from others, but we got to learn some lessons from ourselves for sure.

On Lessons The Team Learned From The Indiana Game:

Well, as a coaching staff, you sit there and evaluate the two-minute situation before the end of the half. That's not what I showed the kids, but if we are in that situation, there's a balance between how much you want to be aggressive, and how much do you want to say, okay, don't tank it in, and then go to the second half. So as a coach, you are always trying to evaluate those situations, that was one for me. Then the fourth down play, we felt that we had something so we snap the ball because we feel like a guy moves.

We feel like we have an opportunity to take the shot because it's an offsides, but in those situations, if in doubt, you can't. It has to be egregious, but that's also a situation for a coach when you say "Maybe this isn't the right time to do this," based on where the game is, the score, and things like that. So, when I showed the clips, we are not only showing them for the kids, but we’re also showing them for the coaches in the back of the room and front of the room.

Then the slide, I think that there's a lot of great learning lessons there for all because I'm not sure we all understand that when the clock is not under two minutes in college football it really doesn't stop. So, for Ben Bryant to be able to run himself out of bounds and get the first down. It's not like we are saving time, this isn't the NFL where you got to stay in bounds slide, and do those things.

So that was a situation that I don't know if we have ever talked about. I know Ben [Bryant] didn't know at the time, like in the split second, but those are very critical. We have to learn from them with the positives behind it.

On Arquon Bush's Injury Status:

We will find out today. He'll give us a little something today, and we'll see how he progresses throughout the week. I thought at one time he might come back in last week, and maybe he could have, but we weren't going to.

On Being Able To Tie The All-Time Series Against Tulsa At 17-17-2:

I know nothing about the series, to be honest with you, and it's no disrespect. I know what we have played the last three times we played them. Whatever it's been before that it doesn't matter. I know the last three games have been as tough of football games as we have had in the last three years.

Every game is by itself, rivalry games are different because you keep track of the history of things. I think these games were ones where you at look how they played three years ago, look how they played two years ago, look how they played last year, they are obviously a very good football team, but they're even different than when they've played us. Regardless of what the history is, we haven't played them on the road [since 2016], and that is a big deal as well.

On Indiana's Style Helping Against Tulsa Passing Attack:

I think it helps us in all that we do. When you play 109 snaps, you get a lot of work at a lot of different things. They threw it 66 times. I think the best thing about Tulsa is their balance. They're fourth nationally in passing and up there in total offense and things like that. What's made them so good, and especially against us, is that they're balanced. They can and do throw the ball really well, but they rushed for 265 yards last week and last year against us it was over 200, and the year before that close as well. What they do, they do well, and it comes down to balance.

On Ben Bryant's Non-Conference Performance

Ben [Bryant] has done everything we have asked him to do. He has highlighted the strengths of our offense, and that was one of the things in camp as we were trying to evaluate our offense, you're looking at the strengths you have. We looked at Tyler Scott and Tre Tucker as part of that. Josh Whyle and Lenny Taylor are as well and really good in the passing game. In some ways, it was playing towards Ben's strengths.

All in all, Ben has done a great job, and not just at commanding the offense. He had respect when he walked out the door [to Eastern Michigan], so it wasn't hard when he walked back in. He does a really good job at moving the ball around. He keeps everyone involved in the game, and that's a big deal because the defense can't hone in on one guy. As we continue to move down the road, people will have a better idea of what we are doing. I like where he's at because of how he moves the ball and that he takes what the defense gives him, instead of forcing things.

Check out the full press conference below.

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