Everything Rhett Lashlee said after SMU beat Nevada

SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee met with the media after the Mustangs beat Nevada, 29-24. Here’s everything he said to reporters in Reno.

Lashlee’s opening statement: “Hard fought win, give Jeff and his crew a ton of credit, man. They came out ready to play. They kicked our tail for a good half or more of the game. I think he’s going to do a really good job here. He’s got a toughness to him. You could feel it in their team. I think the future is bright with him here leading those guys. Not the kind of football we want to play. That probably is the most undisciplined game we’ve played since I’ve been the head coach here. Not proud of that. I think we had 11 penalties for over 100 yards that were accepted.

“Some really self-inflicted wounds. It made it really hard on our offense for about really the first half to get any kind of momentum or anything going because as soon as we get a first down, it felt like we were in 2nd and 15 or 2nd and 20 and 1st and 20 because of penalties we had. But we found a way to win the fourth quarter, I think, down two scores, ball on 2-yard line with around two minutes to go. Guys dug deep, so it’s not always how you win, it’s that we won and we’re 1-0.”

On SMU playing both Preston Stone, Kevin Jennings at QB: “Like I said, Preston won the starting job. He’s our starter, but both guys are gonna play and they deserve to play. Our plan all along, I know we didn’t share it with y’all, was Kevin was gonna play the third and fourth series. That’s fair to him. Let Preston start the game and then Kevin can see it, those two drives and get a feel for what the defense is doing. Then Preston gets to come off and see the defense a little and Kevin gets to come in and not have one drive, he’s got two because sometimes as a quarterback, ‘I got one drive,’ you press and you try to do more than you need to do. Then we were gonna put Preston back in the fifth series and go from there and see how the game went. Definitely, if you’d asked me, I would have thought we’d have played Kevin more. He had our only touchdown drive in the first half, did a great job and he’s gonna continue to play.

“You know the way the game went we weren’t getting a lot of time possession. We weren’t getting a lot of possessions. Obviously, we were down. I think it really hurt us when we opened the second half, you know, we gave up the touchdown right before half. We do go get a field goal then we get a stop and and then we have a penalty, give them the ball and it ended up taking like 6, 7, 8 minutes. I don’t know what and now we’re down two scores and you don’t want to go back and forth. So you got to go with someone and like I said, he earned the starting job. He’s got the experience so we stuck with him and it worked out, but it had nothing to do with us not fully believing in Kevin. You’re gonna see more of Kevin.”

On communicating plan with SMU’s QBs: “We told them what to expect going in. Hey, Preston’s going to start, go the first two drives. Kevin, you’re going to come in third and fourth. We’ll go back to Preston and it doesn’t matter how your drives go. That way, they’re not feeling like the outcome hangs on everything. And then coach King and I just talk between drives, and he kind of lets them know. Like I said, the game obviously went in a direction that made it hard. When you’re having limited options, if you start going back and forth, you don’t let either guy get in a rhythm, that could be a challenge. Like I said, Preston went down to start the second half. I think we started to look like SMU football a little bit. We got points, and we started moving the football, and we just didn’t want to go back and forth when time was running out on us. But yeah, we communicate.”

On how SMU’s QBs handled the game: “I am I’m proud of both of them. I don’t know if you saw Kevin’s drive we score and come off and him and Preston do some sort of handshake. I don’t know, it’s cool for them, but just the way they celebrate each other and I know I’m sure Kevin is disappointed he didn’t play more but he’s gonna keep playing because they’re both really good. Look, not a lot of people play two guys. We got two guys that led us on touchdown drives today that are capable of playing and hopefully we get in a rhythm more offensively where we get more drives and more opportunities and we can we can do that, but yeah credit both those guys for how they handle it because how those guys handle it permeates through our team and they’re team guys and they’re for each other.”

On RJ Maryland: “I think honestly and I’m gonna tell this to him tomorrow. He played as bad a first half as I’ve ever seen him play just like we kind of did. And he played about as good a second half as I’ve ever seen him play, right? That’s what’s weird about football. We tried to get him involved early in the game. I think we threw him a quick screen, got a holding penalty. 

“We just never got going and I think you saw even on the first drive of the second half, we got him a couple touches, which we ended up kicking a field goal and it just kind of got him in the flow and then It all kind of hit. 

“We had our first scrimmage of fall camp. The last thing we did was put the ball backed up so it’s ball on the 2-yard line and the offense went 98 yards for a touchdown, a really good drive. Executed some third downs. I think we actually threw a seam throw to Matt Hibner and he caught it on that drive then so right before that drive, it was a TV timeout and told him hey you guys remember that 98-yard drive first scrimmage?’ ‘Yeah.’ It’s like, ‘well, we need it now.’ So we’re gonna go down and score. We’re gonna go for two. Defense is gonna get a stop. Credit credit them with believing it and doing it. We get RJ on 3rd down matched up on the linebacker and and the rest is history for us.”

On SMU’s slow start and performance overall: “I felt like we were ready to play. Clearly, we weren’t and that’s my job. The penalties. Sometimes you’re over ready to play. It’s been a long, good offseason. We had a lot of guys like ready to play and we feel like we have a good football team. We didn’t show it most of the game today, but we do and we were really, really flat and again, I think Nevada had a lot to do with that in the first half.

“At halftime, we just talked about, ‘hey, it’s time to dig deep, play SMU football.’ I think we started to do that in the third quarter. Again, the penalty that allowed them to have an extended drive really kind of thwarted our momentum a little bit. We always call it up to start the fourth quarter, because finishing is a big part of what we want our program to be known for. We called it up, it was 24-13, I think, then. I don’t remember what I said. I don’t know if it mattered what I said, but they got it done, so.”

On SMU’s leadership: “It helps a lot. Helps a lot having experienced quarterbacks, having experienced guys on offense, and obviously on defense when we needed stops. I think we started pressing a little bit in the first half when we weren’t playing well and the script wasn’t going how we wanted it to go.

“I didn’t call a very good game at all, specifically the first half. Like, you can throw that one away, you know? But we settled down, we just started trusting each other, calling plays to make plays, guys making plays on both sides of the ball. The experience, we’re gonna need it. Like I said, I’ve been on part of teams that we’ve lost games like that, but we find a way to win games like that early in the year. It ends up really helping us later in the season. So hopefully, we’ll learn a lot of lessons from it, but we’ll be able to draw on that. Cuz there’s gonna be another time this year in the fourth quarter, we’re down two scores, and we know we can do it.”

On Jordan Hudson’s personnel foul and team discipline: “I don’t love it at all, it’s not who we are and it’s not who we wanna be. So I will look at the film, I know early in the game Jordan Hudson got spit on, so then he pushed the guy in the helmet back, which he can’t do. So they called a flag on him and the other side too.

“It’s really hard for guys to control their emotions when they get spit on, but they got to. Then, same thing later again. I’ll have to see the clip. Officials make calls and we got to live with it and they do a good job running the game So we’ll look at the film where we can be more disciplined, where we can do a better job. That’s not who we want to be so anything we did out of character will be addressed and guys will go on the field that are gonna represent SMU the right way.” 

On Brandon Crossley’s unsportsmanlike conduct and ejection: “I don’t know. The call was made and we respect it. Brandon feels like it happened the other way, but he’s out of the game because whatever we did to put ourselves in a position to where that could be thought of, that’s on us. It cost us him and it cost our team. We got to be better than that. We’ve got to have composure. There’s a difference between playing with passion and emotion. We were emotional a lot tonight. We got to be passionate, big difference.”