Wilson reflects on South Carolina State, plans for North Texas

IU Coach Kevin Wilson touched on a number of topics in his weekly press conference Tuesday. Here is some of what he had to say:

On the defense against South Carolina State:
“There were too many plays that were four and five (yards). We’ve got to keep working to get on it, tackle the gaps, getting off blocks, take the four and five yard plays and get them down to one and two.”

On penalties and mistakes:
“You coddle the young guys and say it’s excused because he’s a young guy. When you’re making a bunch of mistakes, to me it’s a couple things. One, the guy’s confidence level or maturity or thought process that’s causing him to think about things where he’s missing an assignment, missing a play and then having a penalty. Football is a game far away from perfect, so there are a lot of errors. Whether it be missed assignments, blown coverages or missed tackles, there’s always the negative that you try and eliminate the self-inflicted wounds, as Coach Hep and I used to call them at Miami many years ago. You try to decrease those each and every week. Last week those crept in really big. To say it’s a young guy as an excuse — I don’t get that.”

On the coaching staff’s responsibility for penalties:
“A lot of times you can point fingers at the players, but you also need to make sure you’re pointing a thumb at yourself in practice and what you’re doing as you move forward. It’s a double-edged deal, and I think a lot of that falls back on our shoulders as coaches.”

On North Texas thus far this season:
“We’re going into their stadium. It’ll be an exciting deal for them. It’s their second game in there. It’s a brand new facility. They have a new coaching staff, and they’re looking for their first win. They’ve played three quality opponents in Florida International — who is off to a 3-0 start having beat North Texas, Louisville and Central Florida. Houston is 3-0, doing well like they’ve been doing the past few years. And they played Alabama, so they’ve played three really good teams.”

On playing a true road game:
“I think this game is going to be a bigger challenge than most, and I’m looking forward, as we build what we are doing, to see if our guys have the week we need. We had some success on Saturday. Now can we practice hard after success? We talked last week about practicing hard after failure. Can we practice hard after success, and can we take it on the road? We are going to get a good challenge from North Texas and not just on kick returns, in all phases. Their running back is a heck of a player.”