TU: Philip Montgomery's Weekly Presser

Philip Montgomery held his weekly press conference on Tuesday to discuss Tulsa’s upcoming opponent, Louisiana-Monroe, and to address the loss of its top-ranked receiver Keevan Lucas (due to a torn patella tendon in his right knee) and offensive tackle Blake Belcher.

On the loss of Lucas:

“Obviously, it was a big factor not having him in the game the other day. He’s such an emotional leader for us, and such a great kid. And you know, he had his surgery this morning. Everything went well.”

On the loss of Belcher:

“Blake Belcher had his surgery last Friday before we played. He’s got an ACL [injury]; he’ll be out the rest of the season. Willie has been playing the last several games. [He’s] played really well, but it’s always tough to lose an upper classman like that, especially a guy you know you had plans on leaning on. But his surgery went really well. [He] should bounce back.”

On the defense holding it down vs. Houston:

“With the defense, I thought it played extremely well. We gave up, obviously, some big plays here and there, but overall I thought their performance was outstanding.”

On upcoming game vs. Louisiana-Monroe:

"They always do an outstanding job, especially schematically. They get the most out of the kids. Offensively and defensively, they always play an extremely tough schedule. I mean, as you look at who they’ve played so far this year, they’ve played: Georgia, Alabama, and then Georgia Southern there, that I think won the conference last year. And so, they’ve played three extremely tough opponents… And so, we’ve got a good football team coming in here that we’ve gotta be well prepared for, because they’re gonna put pressure on you on both ends of it, offensively and defensively.”

On this week’s game plan:

“We’ve got a couple of different scenarios [and] we’re going to play those out as we go through practice this week. Got a chance again to kind of move some guys around and give them an opportunity to step up in some different spots. You know, other guys roles have to increase, whether you’re talking about Conner, you’re talking about Keyarris, you’re talking about Josh, you’re talking about any of those receivers across the board. So, we’ll go out and work through a couple of different things and see how they play out.”