HONOLULU – University of Hawai'i Warrior football head coach Greg McMackin conducted his weekly press conference Monday, recapping the team's loss at UNLV and looking ahead to UH's next opponent, UC Davis.

 

We have a very disappointed football team. I know the fans are disappointed, also. I feel a great responsibility to sincerely win games for the players, university, and the people of Hawai'i. I know there's a lot of people that are disappointed. I do want to say, however, that we have 11 games left and we didn't play very well, which I will get to later on, in (your) questions. We are going to regroup, and we are going to be a good football team. Most of the things are correctable and we can get things corrected and some things we are going to have to get better at. That is where we are at right now.

 

I know exactly what happened. What happened is that we were ready to play the game, we had good practices, the kids were disciplined. We were there too long, I think, and I don't want to do that again. Number one, I have never made excuses and I am not going to make excuses, but I thought we were ready to play and why I think that is because we came out (and forced UNLV to) three and out and punted the ball. Basically (the ball) hit our guy, it was a short punt and they got the ball. The defense came in and held them to a field goal. That shows me that they were ready to play.

 

This was a game that, basically we self-inflicted injuries to ourselves in as much as 17-7 in the first half. I wasn't worried then, we were going to get the ball. So at halftime we came out and I am expecting 17-14, here we go, and we fumbled the kickoff. Same type of thing, the third quarter, we had them at third down and long three times. We had three interference calls, which moved them down the field on third down. I felt that we were ready to play the more we turned the ball over, four times, you can't win a ball game when you turn the ball over four times.

 

The penalties we got, I thought that we turned Las Vegas' momentum around. During the game, they got excited. They have a good coaching staff and I give all the credit to Bobby Hauck and his staff and players. They did a good job and beat us in all three phases of the game and deserved to win. Like I said, we have things to fix up. We have to fix our perimeter. We had position on guys to defend and they made the play, we didn't make the plays, and we have to make plays. We have to protect the quarterback. Of all the things, I think we just got to get better there because they're really beat up. We have an injury problem on the offensive line, we have to deal with that, which we will.

 

Now is when we need everybody to help us. We were 1-2 last year and people thought that we were going to be fifth to eighth and I really believe in these players and coaches. Other people and their opinions hold no power over the destiny of what we are going to do. We are going to get it done and I promised people out there that we are going to get things done. It is going to be a lot of hard work. We have a few injury problems, but you just move on to the next guy. This is football and this is what we are going to do.

 

Well, I think both. We have lost two starters on our right side, so we are playing with two backups and I think there were some technical problems. But we do have a left tackle, Clayton Laurel, that is sucking it up, who is playing hurt and we lost Sila (Lefiti). We are a beat up offensive line and its not like we have a multitude of lineman. David Lefotu is going to get some (his) shot, but he has been injured and I don't think that Chauncy (Winchester-Makainai) is going to be back for this ball game.

 

I don't think he is out. We just met with the trainer, but he is going to have to miss a couple practices. He is a tough guy and he will be ok.

 

Miah (Ostrowski) is the one that I am concerned about and his foot was swollen when he got back. I don't think that we will have him this week. They are going to x-ray him again today.

 

Well, Washington is not a bad ball team. If people want to go back to Washington, then let them go there. We just ran out of time at Washington. We had to make adjustments and if anybody watched the TV game, so did Nebraska had to make adjustments to what they were doing. It was 17-17 and they scored 38 points against Nebraska and the thing is we were one touchdown down and had our ways. This (UNLV) game we just got beat. That concerns me. Washington didn't concern me, that shouldn't concern anybody. What it should say is these guys fought their tails off. This game I really believe the mistakes that we made were self-inflicted, in as much as penalties, fumbles. They were at key times and it was enough to psych up the other team who is waiting to be psyched up and we played right into it. We were talking about that all week. I showed them the front page of the paper, 59-7 worst game in schools history. Those kids hear all that, just like our kids hear that we are going to kick their tail. They're just kids, the coaches don't think this way. That's how I think games like that goes, that's what scares me. They worked hard, did what we asked them. We just got to get better. We are going to regroup. I believe in my players and coaches and regroup and play Warrior football. We didn't really play Warrior football this weekend.

 

It is always important. The last two games, we haven't really done that. It was more against Washington that they weren't on the field and, like I said, if you analyze the first quarters in this game, they weren't on the field a lot. One other thing, there is or never will be a quarterback controversy on this team. We put David (Graves) in at the end, several players did well at the end. Obviously, it has been noted, Aaron Brown, Justin Clapp, Billy Stutzmann, our two defensive tackles, there are things that we have to get improved.

 

Right now, (teams) can't run against us inside, they are running and we aren't containing the quarterback on boot legs. The coverage is outstanding, but when the ball is thrown, we have to make the play. I don't care if he is a 6' 4” leaper. We will do that and work really hard on that this week. They're getting into position, they just need to make the right play. How we handle is I look at myself first. When someone makes a bad play, I look at myself first and then I talk to the coordinator and make sure he is teaching it the same way that I want it to be taught. Then go to the position coach and make sure it is done correctly, then go to the player. Then we talk to the player evaluation-wise and if the player doesn't improve, we get another player.

 

We want our best players on the field. We have 65 guys (who could play) on special teams. There is no point to compete, and competition is what will make us better. This is only our third ball game out there, this is early season. We have 11 more games to play and I would hate to see people give up on us. Now is when we need the true fans to help us and all we can do is roll up our sleeves (and) work hard. We are in the same position as last year.

 

Justin Clapp did a great job. He catches the football and he knows the offense as well as anybody. He is going to be open. He made two great touchdown catches and he did an outstanding job. I am really proud of him.

 

Jim and I talked a long time ago. We wanted to fly back home and I guess there was some problem with the plane situation or something. We tried to do that and it just didn't work out. That is not an excuse, but we have to come up with another plan.

 

That would be my first choice. I didn't have anything to do with scheduling and I don't think Jim does either. It is not scheduling for success, I promise you that. If you look at Michigan, Michigan State, Texas Tech, but the point is there are no excuses. Just like there is no crying in baseball, there is no excuses in football. I have always made a positive out of it. It is great that we got to know the people on the way over there. I'll tell you one thing, I defy any team to go there three years in a row and have a camp in middle of Vegas and not have any problems. We have great kids. They worked on their academics, the did what we asked them to do and we played good in spurts on defense. Offensively, we've got to get our protection better. Special teams we fumbled the ball twice and we can't do that.

 

It is really important. We've talked this morning about adversity and this is part of what you teach as a football coach is adversity and it seems like every year around here we have some adversity to deal with. This is the extreme adversity right now. I have never experienced this before. I have been in worse losses than that. I've never been in this situation, but it's the same situation, adversity. Everybody in life has adversity so it is a way of a teaching moment, we talked about that. Getting close and closer because outside there are a lot of spears being thrown. They understand that. The last two teams that we played were in the same situation. People are disappointed and going to take their frustrations out and that is fine. I have some young kids that I am dealing with right now and I am dealing with adversity all my life. People are going through really hard times. This situation they are going to deal with adversity, come together, 'ohana, don't listen to other people and just listen in this room, believe. All those things that make a team. This seems crazy but this may make us a better team if it didn't happen. If we just walked in their and beat them like other people thought we would.

 

Absolutely, This is my most disappointing loss since I have been here.

 

I know that UC Davis beat San Diego bad, like 38-3. They play really good offense. They are spread 50-50 type team. A lot of shifts, similar to Boise State. They are decent on defense. I just know what they did last week. We've got video on them and we already started watching.