Hitting the wall

Head Coach Charlie Strong met with the media on Tuesday after his Longhorns practiced. This is the third time in a week that Strong has made time for the media and his scowl signaled that today’s news conference would be different.

Strong’s opening statement told us why he wore such a dissatisfied look, “During preseason camp there’s going to be days where you hit a wall. You’re just going to have to be able to just push through it. Mentally, you’re going to have to have some toughness to you. Today we hit that wall and we were unable to push through it. We just weren’t very pleased with today’s practice. “

Strong continued, “We’re not a good enough football team to just waste days. We only have so many opportunities and we’ve got to take full advantage of the opportunities.”

Yep, it was puppies and rainbows at Moncrief-Neuhaus tonight.

After launching into a litany of why it was readily apparent that today was a subpar day, Strong recognized that today marked the beginning of the second week of practices, “It’s going to be a grind. This week is a grind.” Continuing with, “You look at it and the first week went good because everybody’s fresh and new, and here comes the second week and the battles begin. It’s just a mental battle and physical battle and you’re just trying to finish up school. This is the last week, they’re dealing with final exams.”

Strong also noted injuries to Miles Onyegbule, Duke Catalon, and Greg Daniels, although the latter two are not considered serious at this point.

After detailing his displeasure with the team’s practice effort, Strong noted a few positives about the team’s senior leadership and talked about how he expects the seniors to propel the team through the tough days ahead. One senior in particular, linebacker Jordan Hicks, drew praise, “The thing about him is he works so hard and you want him to do so well just because of how much he’s put in to it and just tried to overcome.”

Also discussed was the importance of the offensive line, “You look at your offensive line — you like to have at least seven or eight guys ready to go play and then you just continue to roll those guys during the game.” As expected Strong confirmed only Dominic Espinosa’s position, saying that the rest of the line is still a work in progress and noting that Coach Wickline does a great job because, “he’s getting guys prepared and he’s placing them in those situations where we’re going to need them.”

Texas’ Head Coach concluded by talking about how difficult it is for a lineman to come in and compete in their first year. 4th year lineman have obvious weight and strength advantages over an 18-year old freshman.

However, Strong provided a clue about which freshmen might contribute when he added, “You look at the skill position, it’s totally different than when you’re looking at linemen. With the skill guys, it’s all about athletic ability, just skill where you can make a guy miss. They’re going to get bigger and stronger but if you can outrun people and just put them in the right position, the skill guys it’s not hard for them to go play.”

Although Coach Strong’s demeanor and updates told the media it was a tough practice day, Texas fans should be encouraged by what I saw after the press conference:

— Twitter API (@twitterapi) November 7, 2011

And remember, that’s after a bad day.