Chad Morris isn’t letting his team take its win over Houston lightly.
“We want to make sure our players never take winning for granted,” he said.
After SMU beat then-No. 11 Houston 38-16 for its first win over a team ranked 11 or higher since 1983, fans rushed the field to mob player and coaches. Morris danced with his players in the locker room after the win as music blared. Offensive coordinator Joe Craddock awarded Morris a game ball for his first career top-25 win.
“Oh gosh,” quarterback Ben Hicks said with a laugh, “coach is a terrible dancer. He just needs to stop dancing in general and let everyone else dance. I thought I was a bad dancer until I saw coach dancing.”
Skill level doesn’t deter Morris from busting some moves. He danced with his team after wins before, and even at a recruit’s house on an in-home visit last winter. He admitted that his wife, Paula, said he needed improvement on his dance moves too.
“When you come into the locker room and the guys are all going and the music’s blaring, you just jump in there with them and you just make a fool of yourself,” Morris said.
On Saturday, Morris vowed to “turn the town red” after the game. He and defensive coordinator Van Malone both said they didn’t get to sleep until about 4 a.m. On Sunday, they said they never felt better.
“Sleep must be overrated,” Morris said.
The fool-making and late nights of celebration only lasted a day, though. Morris did not let his team spend too much time on the win. It’s one game of 12 on the schedule.
“It was a big one, but it was just one,” he said. “There’s more to come and there’s a lot of hard work still left ahead. We haven’t arrived. We’re a long way from that.”
Hicks, a former Houston commit, threw a career-high 3 touchdown passes and had his first rushing touchdown in Saturday’s win. He also did not commit a turnover or take a sack for the second straight game. Between those two games, SMU scored 78 total points.
With Houston going through a coaching change in December 2014, Hicks took a visit to SMU on a about two weeks after Morris was hired. For two hours on a Sunday afternoon, Morris and some of SMU’s assistants met with Hicks and his family in the Ford Stadium press box to sell him on the staff’s vision for SMU. He flipped his commitment and enrolled early for the spring 2015 semester.
Saturday’s win was an obvious sign of the Morris’ plans coming alive, but Hicks sees it as the start of the vision, not the completion.
“I didn’t come here to beat Houston one time and be happy with it,” Hicks said. “I’m not satisfied. We’re an under-.500 team right now. We have a long way to go. Yeah, it’s exciting to beat Houston and beat the No. 11 team in the country, but we have five games to get to our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal is to get to a bowl game. Getting to that goal starts this week against Tulane.”
SMU had team meetings and practice on Sunday night and started preparing for Tulane. The Mustangs beat the Green Wave (3-4, 0-3 AAC) 49-21 last season for their only conference win. Under first-year head coach Willie Fritz and his triple-option offense, Tulane has matched its win total from 2015.
Fritz runs the triple-option offense. SMU saw the triple-option once last year, against Navy, when the Mustangs gave up 403 rushing yards and 55 points. Tulane ran for 355 yards against Tulsa last weekend in a 50-27 loss and averages 251 rushing yards per game, third-most in the AAC.
“They challenge you with shifts and motions,” Morris said of Tulane’s offense. “You have to do a great job of adjusting from a defensive standpoint. You have to do a great job of communicating and playing option-responsible football.”
