bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie head football coach Hal Mumme during the 2007 season. This week Coach Mumme talks about the defense of Hawai'i, the team's motivation for playing another nationally televised game and what the Aggies need to do to come out with a win tomorrow night.
bc.net: Can you talk a little bit about the game?
Hal Mumme: The game didn't come out like we wanted to. Chase got hurt at end of 3rd quarter or early 4th quarter. J.J. McDermott got hurt late in game and couldn't throw, all we did was call run plays. I don't want to paint picture that it was on purpose, the Hawai'i guys called next day and apologized. They had 15 days to prepare for us and we had four to prepare for them. Then we had travel 3000 miles to go play them.
They put in a lot of defensive plays we hadn't seen.
We moved ball good but we're missing Chris Williams bad and it showed in the game. We're not scoring in red zone. Prior to his injury, we had 17 touchdowns and he caught 11 of them. He's a tough loss. We've got to have receivers step up in red zone.
bc.net: Hawaii's defense was doing a lot of substituting throughout the game, you caught them once with 15 players on the field, what kind of effect did that have on the game, and what were they doing?
HM: They were running a lot of line twists and blitzes. They were doing a lot of stuff they couldn't have done that without 15 days to prepare. I talked to their defensive coordinator after game and later on. We discussed that. It was good for him to have long break. He worked for Mike Leach at Texas Tech for three years. He knows offense inside and out so we're at a distinct disadvantage.
They brought in defensive backs and linebackers in certain situations they were running zones, and line twists.
bc.net: Davon House gets the interception on the very first play from scrimmage, unfortunately you weren't able to capitalize on that, looking back, how much did that set the tone for the rest of the game offensively?
HM: I'm not really into tones. it was bad not to capitalize on the turnover. We dropped a pass [on second down] and then Tonny Glynn stepped on Chase's foot on a draw play [third down]. So we had two bad plays in a row after gaining nine yards on first down.
bc.net: Can you talk about the play of your defense? I thought they really played about as well as you could have hoped for in the first half.
HM: They played well particularly considering they played without Chris Nwoko and La'Auli Fonoti. They found weaknesses in our secondary which they've pretty much done to every team.
We played well, we moved ball, we got first downs, we just didn't score and you've gotta score.
bc.net: How frustrating is it for Chase and the offense to have a good drive going and then have a ball tipped and intercepted? Have you ever had an offense that's had that many balls tipped and picked off?
HM: They've all been strange things too. We've tried to look for a pattern just like we did with the injuries. But it's all separate entities they're just the breaks of games. The first tipped ball from Chase was a line stunt they ran that we hadn't seen them do before and we just didn't pick it up and guy got his hand up and tipped the ball.
bc.net: You didn't throw the ball deep at all on Saturday, is that because of the types of receivers you have or was it a byproduct of the defense that Hawai'i was playing?
HM: It was kind of both, we actually did throw it deep. Kenneth Buckley caught one but he caught it out of bounds, we had tried a deep ball to Wes Neiman. So we actually threw three or four balls deep. We look deep on every play. They were playing two and three safeties every play and running blitzes with their linebackers. They were playing a bend but don't break and so you've gotta throw it in the seams which we did pretty well. But not having 4.3 guy out there hurts.
bc.net: The running game seemed to be pretty effective for you, how much pressure has the running game taken off the passing game with all the injuries that have happened to the receivers?
HM: Quite a bit. We had 120 rushing yards out of Tonny Glynn, Justine Buries and Jeremiah Williams, we even had a couple nice runs by Chase. Their stats got overshadowed by 3 sacks for 40 yards but they were costly sacks. We moved ball well though.
bc.net: You've got a short week to prepare for Nevada, who you play tomorrow. How much of a motivating factor is having the game on national t.v. and getting a chance to show that you're better than the team that got shutout against BSU?
HM: I think it's a huge motivator. We need it. It's a tough week. We're going into game with one and a half days of practice.
bc.net: Their freshman Colin Kaepernick is a real dual threat quarterback [running and passing], Bill Curry from ESPN compared his ability to that of Vince Young, how do prepare for a player like that?
HM: I think with them you gotta stop run, that's what they want to do first. If they get that [running game] going you're going to have a long night. That allows them to do sprint outs and playaction passes.
bc.net: What else does Nevada do well that concerns you as you prepare for them this week?
HM: They've started running options with Kaepernick, that's a tough deal.
You've also gotta worry about #56, he's a good outside linebacker. You've gotta worry about him on blitzes.
bc.net: What are some things that you think you'll be able to do against them?
HM: We have got to have a good night throwing ball around. Keep ball like we did last week but finish with scores. If we can do same thing, they don't score as fast as Hawai'i.
bc.net: What is the injury situation with the team? It looked like Nick Cleaver came up hobbling on a play, obviously the injury to Chase...
HM: Chase hasn't been able to work out all week, hopefully he'll be fine. I don't know about Nick. Nick has an ankle that won't get well. Nick had nice night at hawai'i he caught three or four balls. Hopefully we'll be able to use him like we've been doing. What really hurts with his injury is on blocking.
