C-USA Report
Skip Holtz Stays on Point
By Jamie Lay (Posted Sept. 10, 2008)
Talking to Skip Holtz during the last three weeks I’ve had the opportunity to listen and observe how he operates. He’s very much like Bill Belichick. Though Holtz is eternally optimistic and Belichick is a bit of a curmudgeon, they both rarely deviate from a central message when talking in public about their respective teams. Holtz has been particular with his words as if his team is always listening.
He acknowledges the competition:
“That happens when you play two teams like Virginia Tech and West Virginia back to back. We have so much respect for those teams.”
He inflates the reputation of the team’s next opponent:
“You are talking about a [Tulane] team that finished in the top 3 in most defensive categories a year ago. They are playing great defense this year. They return a great nucleus and six starters on defense. This is a football team that on Saturday walked into Alabama, a team which absolutely dismantled Clemson on national television a week ago, and only gave up 172 yards, which is less than we have held either of our two opponents to.”
He keeps everything in the past (and even corrects himself when he mistakenly uses the present):
“Patrick Pinkney is playing…has played absolutely incredible in completing about 80 percent of his passes. He was up for one of the national players of the week. He’s done a great job in the first two games.”
This has helped Holtz to dispel the conventional notion that a team from a mid-major conference can’t challenge a ranked team two weeks in row. That the players return to campus after the first win and get caught up in the whirlwind of national attention and celebrity lose focus. Holtz, though, understood the pitfalls success and wasn’t letting it happen again. He knew his team was talented enough to defeat major conference opponents when they challenged Virginia Tech and upset UNC at the beginning of last year. What they needed to learn, Holtz acknowledged, was how to deal with winning. This year, he said, they were ready for it.
“I felt like we had incredible focus in the team meeting on Tuesday,” Holtz said. “Our team had an incredible focus about where we were, so much so, that by the end of the week it wouldn’t take an out-of-body experience to win. That we just had to go play our football game and do the same things we had been doing all week. I think our team had a great focus. That’s when I felt really good about our football team and what we were doing this week.”
The next test for the Pirates, now ranked No. 14 in the AP poll, is surviving a schedule that includes N.C. State in Raleigh on Sept. 20 and Virginia in Charlottesville on Oct. 11 before conference play. In 2000, Southern Miss was the last C-USA to upset two Top 25 teams. After beating Alabama, Oklahoma State, Memphis, USF, Tulane, the Golden Eagles were No. 14 in the BCS. They lost the next three games to Louisville, Cincinnati and East Carolina but upset TCU in the GMAC Mobile Bowl to finish 8-4.
For now, Holtz will have to keep his players away from rocking chairs, front porches or hammocks, any place one might go to reflect on past success. And continue to preach the same message.
“We’re going to have to play at the same level if we want to have the same results,” Holtz said. “It is very difficult to play three, four, five weeks in a row at a very high peak level. That’s the challenge we have as a team and as a staff for this week.”