Todd Monken Talks Bowling
Hattiesburg, Miss. - It's been more than a week since Southern Miss lost the championship game against Western Kentucky, but find out how Conference USA Coach of the Year, Todd Monken is planning to bounce back in their bowl game against UW.
Head coach, Todd Monken said, "It really absolutely stinks the way the bowl is set up now where you have few non-power five, whatever that is, with power five to get to play each other. I think that absolutely stinks to not have that opportunity to where it's matched up where they play each other and the other five play each other. I think that's terrible. It's an injustice to the other teams to not have an opportunity, and we have one of those opportunities, and we're excited about it. We want to play Divison-1 football. We get to play a really good Washington team with a heck of a football coach whose done it at another place and is doing it there, so we're excited. I'm excited as a coach. I get to go up against a really, really good football coach and I challenge myself, how do I do it better than he does it? How do my players do it better than they do it? And that's the thing. But, I'm excited for our players. We wanted to go there, we wanted to be in a position to play a team from a power five conference and we got it. The Pac-12 has had a really good year. I don't know if there's one dominant team, but they got a lot of really good football teams and they're number one in scoring defense in the Pac-12, so that stands out. They're good on defense, they're athletic, they've got skill players and they're good up front on offense. They just started a true freshmen quarterback, that's the problem. It's not that they don't have talent. I think their running back is a true freshmen. You got that combination of youth on offense, but they've played really good on defense, that's what kept them in games and the last couple games to get bowl eligible. They move the ball. It's going to be a real challenge, really well-coached team. You can see where they're headed."
The bowl game is on December 26 and will be televised on ESPN.