Tulane to Have Their Hands Full with UTSA, says OC Craddock
This Thursday, Tulane is trying to do something that no team has been able to do in five years. Texas-San Antonio hasn't lost a home conference game in five years. That's a 23-0 record for the Road Runners in its last two years in Conference USA and its last three in the American. Since Jeff Traylor has been coach, UTSA is nigh untouchable in the Alamodome. For offensive coordinator Joe Craddock, he's been there, so preparation is the key for what should be a near-deafening environment.
"We had to work on crowd noise (this week)," said Craddock, alluding to the coaches having extra loud crowd sounds and music blaring over the Yulman Stadium speakers. "It gets pretty loud there. There's all those rumors that you hear about that place. I've been there before in a conference game. Working through mechanics has been a little bit of a challenge. It's not something that's normal, but we had to work it earlier in the year with (preparation for) Ole Miss, and we worked it again this week, so we should be ready for it."
For a game or two, the Tulane running game was stuck in neutral, but against Army, though the run-oriented Black Knights outgained the Green Wave overall, TU actually averaged more per carry than Army. We asked Craddock if that is a sign of things turning around.
"I do. My staff does a really good job of identifying who our players are and what are they good at doing," Craddock told us. "Let's build the offense around them. It's not about what we know, what we like. It's about what do our players do well.
"When we have a running back we projected to be a starter for a long time (Maurice Turner), get hurt in game one and miss four games," Craddock continued, "those run schemes (built for Turner), don't fit exactly what Javin Gordon (freshman running back) is. So, we had to tailor it a bit to Javin, but now that we're at full strength, we can run the schemes we had planned on running a lot more, we just hadn't been able to get to them.
"I feel like we're going to be able to get back and do what we've been doing with Maurice back," Craddock wrapped up, "and get that run game going, because when our offense goes, our run game goes. We want to run the football first and be physical up front."
The UTSA defense gives up almost 100-yards per game more through the air than on the ground, so we asked Craddock if that means more passing for the TU offense.
"I think we're going to stick to what we do," Craddock acknowledged. "We feel like we have some favorable matchups outside, but we're going to keep it as balanced as we can."
Tulane and UTSA matchup Thursday night on a prime time game at the Alamodome in San Antonio at 6:30.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.