Houston’s head coach Willie Fritz speaks to reporters at his first Big 12 Media Days in Vegas. | Courtesy of UH Athletics
Houston’s head coach Willie Fritz spoke to reporters throughout Big 12 Media Days on July 9 and 10. While the first-year UH head coach presented a continuous message of optimism, he recognizes that his thirty-one years of head coaching experience do not make him immune from the challenges that coincide with taking on a new team and conference.
“Like all the other coaches who got up here, we want to win every one of these ball games we play this season,” Fritz said. “The difference between myself and the other coaches is my first year with these guys. It is just learning what they do well, and maybe their weaknesses and keeping them away from those things.”
The Cougars director surrounded himself with a supporting cast he put confidence in to establish the Cougar culture. “Firstly I looked for guys with good character,” Fritz said. “I became a coach because of my own coaches, and I want these guys to have good experiences with their coaches too.”
Senior quarterback Donovan Smith sang his praises for Fritz’s hires, noting that quarterback coach Shawn Bell and offensive coordinator Kevin Barbay increased his confidence ahead of the season.
“Fritz’s offense plays to my strengths. He has a great supporting staff that have great past experiences,” Smith said. “These coaches have watched my film and know everything about me.”
During spring ball, Smith was sidelined due to labrum surgery. Now that he is cleared going into the season, his unique experiences this spring added depth and perspective to his game. Fritz applauds his quarterback’s ability to respond to setbacks with great resilience and credits some of his innate leadership capabilities to the fact that he is the son of DeAndre Smith, the Indianapolis Colts running back coach.
“Smith was at every practice along the way and is an unbelievable leader,” Fritz said. “He’s born and bred football and we are looking for an outstanding season out of him this fall. His football IQ is off the charts.”
Despite not seeing his quarterback in action in spring, Fritz releases that nothing can replace what the team will experience in August regardless of the time they have spent on the field thus far.
“Learning about your team early in the season is a process. Spring ball is great, summer workouts are outstanding, but nothing compares to playing real games,” Fritz said. “We will find out a lot about ourselves after the first couple of weeks.”
Houston’s leadership plans to use the first games to play a lot of guys to find how many minutes guys should be playing to be most effective. The period will be crucial to establishing a winning culture, but nothing short of an uphill battle for the Cougars, who rank last in the league’s preseason media polls.
Last season, Houston finished conference play 2-7, with their only wins against teams lower than them in the final conference standings. Despite the challenge, Fritz is not discouraged from building a winning team and believes it started on Day one.
“We need to get it going quickly. The guys got to trust me, and I got to trust them,” Fritz said. “They all started with a clean slate when I came to Houston, and I got to do a good job of putting the guys in the right spots and having them do things they are capable of.”
The team will begin preseason practice on July 31. The Cougar will kick off their 2024 game schedule with a home matchup against UNLV on Aug. 31 before heading on the road to face Oklahoma in Norman on Sept. 7.
