What Charles Huff said after Saturday’s win over Charlotte

Memphis beat Charlotte 59-8 on Saturday to pick up its first win in conference play and improve to 4-1 on the season. After the game, Charles Huff met with the media to talk about the win and what impressed him in the performance.

After a great start on both sides of the ball, Huff chose to insert the backups in the third quarter and play some of the younger players, including freshman Jordan Thompson. The running back had a big outing against UT Martin and responded with 48 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries against the 49ers.

It’s clear Huff will turn to the backups and younger players a lot this year if the team gets up by multiple touchdowns in the second half. 

Memphis scored on five of their first seven drives, and starting quarterback Marcus Stokes had one of his best games of his career, throwing for 318 yards and five touchdowns before Huff put Air Noland in.

Team’s performance 

Huff was impressed with the team’s performance against Charlotte, and he said he challenged them last week, and he was happy with the way they responded. He added that these are the types of wins that will show the team what can happen when you buy in to what the coaches are asking from them.

“Really appreciative of the players,” Huff said. “We challenged them last week to kind of get better at some things, and they did that. They responded, which is great. I think you’re starting to see who we can be. Obviously, there are some things that we need to clean up as the games go on, and we put more film out there, there are areas where teams are going to try to attack you, but I think we started to see who we can be. We’re starting to get at the right time.”

It’s the third game that the Tigers have won by 18 or more points, and it will be interesting to see if the confidence the team is playing with will carry them through the next couple of weeks in conference play. Memphis will play home games against UAB, ECU and Army and on the road against Tulane before November.

The Blazers are the only team in that group over .500.

Best week of preparation:

While Huff was happy with the way his team played, he said it came after one of their best weeks of practice. Huff said last week that he told his players to take a few days off and get away during the off week, and it appears they responded well ahead of Saturday’s game.

“We probably had our best week of preparation this week, and I’m talking on and off the field,” Huff said. “We’ve had good practices, but we’ve had our best meetings. We’ve had our best film sessions. We’ve had our best question and answer periods. We had really good days, physical days, of practice. We were able to get ahead of things because of the schedule things, but the guys handled it well. For them to see the results show up on the field, it should encourage them to try to do it again.”

Defense:

The defensive performance was one of the biggest takeaways from Memphis’ win on Saturday, and they kept the 49ers offense quiet for most of the game. Charlotte scored only eight points and it came on a 75-yard run to start the second half.

Outside of that run, the Tigers held their opponent to 134 yards of total offense. For the game, the 49ers recorded only 209 yards of offense, including only 77 yards through the air.

“Defensively, we’re starting to come into who we really are,” Huff said. “We’re a dominating defense. A dominating defense doesn’t mean you shut people out and they don’t score or gain a yard. A dominating defense means within the game there are going to be moments where you take advantage of opportunities. We were able to stop the run early. They started doing some things schematically to give them an advantage, which was really good on their part, but we punched the ball out in the red zone and get a turnover. Huge. It’s almost a double score. I think all of our turnovers today showed up in the red zone. That is huge, and that’s what dominating defenses do.”

Memphis recorded four takeaways, and safety Ian Foster recorded his first interception of the season. The defense, especially the secondary has been a question mark at times this season, but they were dominant on Saturday.

While it was an impressive showing, it will be interesting to see if they can string performances like this together through conference play.