Q&A With Hundred-Catch Combo - cusa-fans.com

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Q&A With SMU’s Hundred-Catch Combo
Wideouts Cole Beasley and Darius Johnson Prepare For UTEP
By Rick Atkinson for cusa-fans.com
http://cusa-fans.com/

DALLAS – SMU meets UTEP in El Paso on Saturday, with bowl eligibility awarded the winner. The Mustangs (5-4, 4-1) come off a 31-17 win at Tulane and remain atop the West with Houston, which holds the tie-breaker. The Miners (5-4, 2-4) lost late at Marshall last week, 16-12, extending their losing streak to three.

SMU wide receivers Cole Beasley and Darius Johnson, and receivers coach Jeff Reinebold, took questions after Thursday’s practice. Beasley and Johnson lead the team in receptions with 55 and 53 catches, respectively. Beasley’s 6.1 catches per game ranks third in C-USA. His 79.1 receiving yards per game is fourth in the league. Beasley had nine catches for 135 yards at Tulane. Johnson, C-USA’s fifth-leading receiver with 5.9 catches per game, had 12 catches at Navy last month, the most by any Mustang this season.

(Beasley and Johnson were interviewed together; Reinebold, a short time later. Photos from today's practice.)



What’s wrong with the Dallas Cowboys?
Johnson: “I don’t know what’s wrong with the Cowboys. (laughing) I don’t even like the Cowboys.”
Beasley: “There are a lot of things wrong with the Cowboys. I don’t know what they’re doing right now. I thought their defense was going to be at least alright, but they’re not even looking good anymore, so I don’t what’s going on.”

How difficult has it been playing in near-empty stadiums these last two weeks, with the weather-evacuation for Houston, then at Tulane?
Beasley: “It’s not really a fun experience. You think about D-I college football you think about playing in front a lot of fans in the stands. I had more fans in high school than we had [at Tulane and for Houston, after the rain.]”

Johnson: “In high school, we had way more fans than both those games. It’s really not fun, but we’ve just got to play through it. We’re not really worried about the fans.”

Reinebold: “You’d like to think that it doesn’t make a difference, that you’re going to play the same way no matter what environment you play in. But the fact of the matter is, it’s tough. It’s a difficult situation because there’s no energy in the building, particularly when you’re in those big stadiums, those huge stadiums like Rice and the Superdome. They announced 18,000 [at Tulane] but there couldn’t have been 1,800 on their sideline.”

“You work hard in this business and this game in the off-season. Lifting all those weights, running all those sprints, doing all that work to have a chance to play in front of people. That’s one of the great things about the game. You’re judged in front of thousands of people. As great of heart surgeons as there are in the world, there are not 80,000 people who are going to sit and watch heart surgery. This is what makes college sports such a unique experience.”

Does an empty stadium affect concentration?
Johnson: “I don’t think it hurts us, but it helps if there are more fans.

It’ll be different at UTEP, being Senior Night. Plus, the Miners are always tough at home. How will SMU handle the change in environment?
Johnson: “I don’t think it will affect us that much, if we just stay focused. We’ve got to tune the crowd out. There’ll be some ups and downs throughout the game, be we’ve just got to push through it.”

More fun though, right?
Johnson: “Yeah, more fun.”

Cole, what about that tough play in the third quarter at Tulane, when the ball was stripped out and returned for a touchdown? Was that play the catalyst for SMU’s comeback, a wake-up call? (SMU scored 28 unanswered points after that.)
Beasley: “Yeah, I think it was a little bit of a wake-up call. I mean, when we were down, 17-3, we knew we had to do something. We didn’t want to get embarrassed out there. But the guy just made a good play, kind of ripped it out. I’ve just got to hold onto the football.”

Johnson: “We just returned to the sideline, knowing what we had to do. There really wasn’t that much discussion. We knew what was at hand. We were down. Like Cole said, it was embarrassing. We had to turn things around very quickly.”

Reinebold: “I think what happened with our team was that [head coach] June [Jones] did a great job at halftime. He brought them all together and, it wasn’t a Knute Rockne speech, it was just, ‘Hey, listen, guys. If you want to play in December these are things you are going to need to do. And he just reinforced the importance of protecting the football, finishing drives, playing the run better on defense and playing together - not looking at the score, 17-3. You just go out as if it’s 0-0 and we go out and play.”



UTEP is second in scoring defense in C-USA, allowing 22.4 points per game. What’s the reason for their success?
Reinebold: “They’re very athletic. They can run. When they recruit, they go out and look for guys that have speed. Speed is a great equalizer in sport. I think they’re OK in the front. They’re not great up front, but they’ve got guys in the back end that can run. Their linebackers can run. … Andre Patterson, their defensive coordinator, comes to UTEP with an NFL background. He coached at Green Bay, he coached at Dallas, he coached at Minnesota, he coached at Denver. He’s been around. He understands how to place people, structurally. They don’t make a lot of mistakes, which is unlike UTEP teams of the past. If you remember last year, they made huge mistakes in the secondary. They’re much better organized, much better coordinated. And they play extremely well at home. … They’re a different team when they’re at home. They play off the energy that’s in that stadium.”

Johnson: As long as we execute, I believe we can score – on any defense out there. We should be OK.”

Coach Jones looked pretty intense on the sidelines in that third quarter at Tulane, when the game looked to be slipping away. Was he?
Johnson: “No, I always thought he was calm throughout the game. That’s one thing he does, when we get down, he never gets uptight. He’s always loose and calm.”

Beasley: “I think he was getting a little frustrated because, obviously, we should have been doing better than what we were doing. We played terrible the first three quarters, then we finally turned it on. … He’s real patient with us. He’s going to will us to do the right thing. I think we’ll be alright.”

Cole, one of your teachers at Little Elm High, who also called your games from the press box, used to call you “Beasel?”
Beasley: (laughing) “Yeah, Beasel. I don’t know why he used to call me that. I guess ‘weasel’ rhymes with ‘beasel,’ so he just called me ‘Beasel.’”

He said your ability to see a lot on the field came from playing Madden video games.
Beasley: “I don’t know about all that. I do play a lot of football video games, but I don’t know if I picked up my ‘vision’ from there.”



Notes:
*Gameday – SMU @ UTEP, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2010, 8 p.m. Central.
*SMU’s Zach Line leads C-USA in rushing (102 ypg) and Aldrick Robinson leads the league in receiving yards (95.9 ypg).
*SMU quarterback Kyle Padron’s 22 touchdown passes rank third nationally.
*UTEP has won 5 of the last 7 meetings with SMU
*SMU won last year, 35-31, in Dallas. The Mustangs haven’t won in El Paso since 2002.