What Steve Sarkisian said after No. 8 UT's 31-24 win over Houston
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was happy to get out of Houston with a win on Saturday night. After building an early 21-point lead with 12:44 remaining in the second quarter, Houston countered with 21 unanswered points of its own. The Cougars tied it at 24-all after Jack Martin‘s 40-yard field goal with 7:43 left in the game.
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But CJ Baxter‘s biggest run at Texas – 16-yard touchdown with 5:37 left – was the scoring jaunt the Longhorns needed to escape TDECU Stadium.
“First of all, I’ll say I’m happy we won,” said Sarkisian. “I can remember vividly being here a year ago, not in this exact stadium, but in this situation and two years ago and not winning this game. I think it speaks a lot to this team’s resiliency, this team’s mental toughness. The ability to finish in the fourth quarter showed up tonight. I’m really happy about that.”
“I’m happy to know when I wake up tomorrow morning we’ll be 6-1 and not 5-2,” Sarkisian said. “That’s the first part. The second part I think holds true to the way we practiced and prepared. I thought we had a great week of practice, great week of preparation, and I thought we played that way at the start of the football game to jump ahead, 21-0. But the lesson learned here is we have to have a killer instinct.”
Sarkisian knows he’s going to get everyone’s best, week in and week out.
“People aren’t going to lay down against us. They are going to continue to fight. We relaxed, we didn’t execute the way we have, and a poor call on the fake field goal. (UH) got some momentum from that. Then we wind up in a dogfight tied at 21.
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On the injury front, Sarkisian mentioned that a handful of players were bit by the injury bug.
“Quinn (Ewers) has a hurt shoulder,” Sarkisian said. We’ll know more tomorrow. He tried to play through it. we didn’t feel comfortable enough with his ability to continue to play. We got nicked up. A lot of guys had to step in and play. And the game came down to two possessions. We find a way to punch it in for ours, and found a way to get a fourth down stop on defense. That was a real positive.”
“Jahdae (Barron) got cleared late in the week. (Jaylon) Guilbeau had been practicing and had a pretty good couple weeks. But when the game got going, we started to get nicked up, couple corners got banged up, so we felt like we had to start to roll some more guys out there, and Jahdae was able to go. He got out there and played well. That encouraged us to keep him out there.”
At the end, a number of players made key plays to pull out the win over the Cougars.
“A couple guys to highlight were Ryan Sanborn, he had a heck of a game,” said Sarkisian. “He had a couple big time punts for us there. Keilan (Robinson) with a couple big time returns to setup scores. Then Savion Red with a couple of those critical runs on fourth downs to extend drives. Obviously the touchdown run was big.”
