Defense buries Miners

Head coach Kevin Sumlin said that the team who controlled play at the line of scrimmage would come away victorious, and the Cougar defense shut down the UTEP Miners in the trenches.

“What a coincidence, they had 100 yards rushing versus the 262 yards that Buckram has last year,” linebacker Marcus McGraw said. “I think we ran for 300 yards. The tides have turned. That’s what we had to do, and we won the game.”

The Cougars defense had to be prepared for anything because of the uncertain status of injured Miners running back Donald Buckram.

“I think as a staff we worked well together on the adjustments,” defensive coordinator Brian Stewart said. “They are a running team, but with Buckram out, we weren’t sure. So, we always prepared for Buckram to be in there.”

Despite the defense’s performance against the run, Stewart still feels there are other areas that need some fine-tuning.

“I wish we would have gotten more sacks and tighter coverage on some of those third down plays because the pressure was there,” Stewart said.

Stewart said that he felt that the coverage and rush were out of sync, and that they allowed the Miners receivers too much space.

“We were playing a little too far, and they do have some good receivers, but I feel like we gave them a little too much respect,” Stewart said.

The Cougars finished with seven tackles for a loss and did a good job of getting pressure in the backfield. But they also missed on several opportunities to pick the ball off.

“We missed some opportunities,” linebacker Matt Nicholson said. “I dropped a pick, some other guys dropped some picks, some missed tackles. We just need some sharpening up on a few plays.”

Stewart does not feel like the Cougars have shown their hand at all on defense after two weeks and still have plenty of tricks to spring on UCLA

“We have a lot of things to do. Got a lot of stuff in the toolbox,” Stewart said. “Fundamentally we try to play whatever we think will be successful against the team. So you saw some stuff against them that we didn’t run last week and that we don’t plan to run against UCLA. There is some base stuff, but we try to play the stuff that will beat the team we’re about to play.”