Head Coach Mike Sherman
Courtesy: Texas A&M Athletics
Release: 08/29/2011 |
Coach Sherman's Aggies (0-0, 0-0 Big 12) are scheduled to open the 2011 season against SMU (0-0, 0-0 C-USA) September 4th at Kyle Field. Sunday's game will be broadcast live on FSN.
Individual game tickets are now available for the SMU and Idaho games. Conference game tickets, subject to availability and excluding the Texas game, go on sale to the public Sept. 6 at 6 p.m. online and by phone and at the ticket windows on Sept. 7 at 8 a.m. 12th Man Foundation members are able to purchase conference games (excluding Texas). A $150 entry level contribution gains fans access to conference games currently. For membership or ticket information, visit our website, www.12thmanfoundation.com or call the AT&T Aggie Ticket Hotline, 888-99-AGGIE (888-992-4443).
The 12th Man, the Texas A&M student body, will begin student ticket pull on Monday, Aug. 29 at 7 a.m. at the windows in the Zone Plaza. The Student Sports Options brochure is available at http://mysportspass.tamu.edu and should answer most questions regarding Pull as well as Road Game Pull. Students can register for sports options at http://mysportspass.tamu.edu. Camping for the SMU ticket pull may begin at 8 pm on Saturday, Aug. 27.
A full transcript of Coach Sherman's press conference, along with selected quotes from players, are available below. Audio clips are available in MP3 format to the right.
HEAD COACH MIKE SHERMAN
What impresses you most about Jeff Fuller?
"Probably the most impressive thing is the improvement he's made from his first year to right now. I think his willingness to continue to work on his craft and try to be best he can be is the single most impressive thing that I've noticed with him. He constantly tries to get better."
How good can he be?
"I think he can be very good. There's some things he works on every year. We have him work on different things every single year. Just watching him from the time early in camp, some of the things we asked him to work on, as far as his releases from the line of scrimmage, he's really improved on those things from a year ago. I think he can be very good.
Is there still a pretty good battle going on between Coryell Judie and Dustin Harris at cornerback?
"We have confidence in both of those players. Coryell being the senior and Dustin being the underclassman, I think we could play with either one of them. Coryell is coming off shoulder surgery so he's going to have to have some breaks in the context of the game. We'll start with Coryell and then go with Dustin. But Dustin could start anywhere, on either corner, and again he'll play some offense for us obviously."
Have you named a backup quarterback?
"For this game will be Jameill Showers as the backup quarterback. I think we have three backups and they are all capable, with (Matt) Joeckel and (Johnny) Manziel as well. But if Ryan were to go down Jameill would play."
What was it that separated him from the other two?
"I think they all understand the offense pretty well. Jameill I thought when the play broke down made some plays with his feet, was able to extend the play and create time to allow us the opportunity to make another play."
How has Caleb Russell emerged this fall and separated himself at the Joker position?
"Well, he's had a bit of an intestinal virus for a little part of camp, so he's been out a little bit. He kind of picked up where he left off in the spring. He has a tremendous burst off the line of scrimmage. He's using his hands extremely well and he's very difficult when he's playing over a tight end-he causes our tight ends a lot of havoc-because he's so strong. He still has a ways to go as a football player, but he's made so much progress, it's not even funny how far he's come."
What's your rotation at wide receiver? How deep do you think you can go in a normal game situation?
"I would hope that Nate Askew would be ready to play. Brandal Jackson would be ready to play. Kenric McNeal will play in some of our packages. Mike Evans is emerging but he's still a young kid. We have to make a decision this week whether we would in fact play him if we were in that position, with an injury or what not. But I feel good about our backups. They can go in the game and help us. It's something that we probably didn't do enough of last year. Jeff (Fuller) and (Uzoma) Nwachukwu and (Ryan) Swope got a major bulk of the snaps. It would help us if we could rest players just a little bit, particularly with the elements we'll be dealing with this time of year."
On why the national trend has been to go to fast, up-tempo offenses...
"I couldn't answer that question. We went up-tempo after my first year just because I thought we needed an edge. I knew we were playing with bunch of young kids and I thought we could condition the heck out of them and get them ready to play. I thought by going with a faster tempo we could get an edge where we could wear some people down and win the third and fourth quarter, because we were still young and undersized at times, so I thought we could beat them with some effort. That was the year we went 6-6 in regular season. So that was the reason and the genesis of it here. I can't talk about other places."
Do you see some similarities in SMU's defense and what you guys do? I know Tim and their DC are buddies and they kind of share defensive ideas...
"Hopefully not this week (laughter). There's a lot of similarities in the sense that they were a 4-3 team. Tom Mason came in and has done a heck of a job there. They really ramped up their defense and they played a lot better, very similar to the same turnaround we had here when Tim came in and was able to do the same thing. There are a lot of similarities between the two packages. Their defensive guys play extremely hard. They're very aggressive. They will come after you with all kinds of pressure. So there are a fair amount of similarities between the two."
Read more at AggieAthletics.com
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