Cincinnati Bearcats College Football Pregame Quote, 12/03/2021

We’re really excited to have a home game, really excited to be in a championship. This has always been, since the day we walked in the door, the goal and the objective of our program. We’ve been fortunate enough the last three years to be in the game, and are extremely excited to have another opportunity, especially at home.

On what jumps out on the Houston team:

It’s not just [Junior QB Clayton Tune and Freshman RB Alton McCaskill], it’s the balance that they have offensively, which always makes it difficult. It’s the ability in both the run and the pass, and anytime you are a balanced offense, it makes it very difficult to defend. [Clayton Tune’s] ability to extend plays, he’s a really good athlete, that he doesn’t get a lot of credit for.

On how to scout a well-balanced Houston team:

The reason they are 11-1 is because they are the most complete a football team that we have played all year. Their ability to create energy, momentum, big plays‚Ķ The return game has been huge for them. You’ve got to prepare, and you have to be sound in everything that you’re doing. There is always an opportunity to make a big play on special teams. You can tell when you look at a program and a team, to me, that tells me what the program is really about.

On the Notre Dame job and eliminating distractions:

Yeah, it’s always nice to have any distractions out of the way. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, I hope, to a lot of others‚ĶIt’s always something that hangs over all of our heads. Something that our guys have been able to do, more than anything all year, is to do a good job with all of the distractions. From College GameDay being here, to at the beginning, some of the energy, excitement and expectations we had. They have done a really good job at handling all of it.

On how Coach Fickell feels about Marcus Freeman getting the Notre Dame job:

Extremely happy. Haven’t had a chance to talk to him‚Ķ. It’s a great opportunity, obviously. You have friends of yours, colleagues of yours who get opportunities like this, and you can be nothing but excited. At some point in time, we will get to share that, and hopefully enjoy a little bit of his success. It’s great to have some good friends in the same positions as you, it gives you people to bounce things off of, I know that.

On what Houston does defensively:

They’re probably more aggressive than anybody we have seen all year. I talked about it during the week‚Ķ How do you prepare? It’s really the same thing that you prepare for offensively, because it is really difficult to simulate what they do up front. How they get after the quarterback, how they get up the field. It’s not something we see on an everyday basis. It’s not something that the offense sees from us. It’s something that is difficult to prepare for, and its something that you won’t know until gameday.

On having a top 10 team, and making Cincinnati a top 10 program:

All [facilities, to go with the talent on the field] add up. That’s all apart of being a top 10 program. Do you have the commitment, do you have those things in line? There’s a lot of things on the dock, I don’t know if they are official yet, but things that will hopefully happen in the next one and a half to two years that give you that opportunity. I’ve said it before, you can’t be a top 10 program over one or two years, you have to have a period of time, you have to sustain a lot of good things‚Ķ It’s the consistency, it’s the ability to not have those dips. It’s the ability, when you lose 30-some seniors, to reload and handle those types of things. I feel like we are in a really good place, we have a top 10 program, and I think that we have a way to go over time, with consistency, then I think that we are on that path. For me, it’s going to be really hard for me to say. Maybe over time when I can retire, I can say, ‚Äòyou know what, we made this a top 10 program.’ But either way, we are going to continue to push, and you know what if it does become a top 10 program, then our goal will be a top five program, and at some point, in time, we’ll get there.