While the SMU football team came away with a victory and spoiled Tulane’s return to the Superdome, head coach Phil Bennett said his team needs to improve to be successful against the University of Texas at El Paso.

“We can play better than that. We can be more consistent, and we are going to have to going into a place like El Paso,” Bennett said.

At his weekly press conference, Bennett said his team realized after the win that they should have played better.

“I was very proud of our guys of not only winning the game, but after the game the mindset was ‘yeah we won, but we’ve got to play better,'” he said.

“I saw something I’ve never seen here,” Bennett said. “I keep seeing this image of our offense and Justin. They were thriving on the competition. That to me shows how our makeup’s changed. They didn’t expect to lose that game; they were going to make it happen.”

SMU has now won six of its last eight games, and Bennett said with that level of success comes greater expectations to win.

Bennett said the defensive players and coaches lost their composure Saturday when Tulane went to a hurry up, no huddle offense.

“I should have called timeout, stopped the play and get reorganized,” he said.

Bennett said he is impressed with field goal kicker and punter Thomas Morstead, whom he called the hardest working player on the team, but said kickoff kicker Kellis Cunningham is still having trouble adjusting to the one inch tee that college football uses.

“In high school, they have a two-inch tee, so you get a little better leverage on the ball,” Bennett said. “He’s in between driving the ball and if he drives it, it’ll go in the end zone but it might only be 18-20 feet high. We always want a 4.0 hang time in the corner and try to get the right location. I want to get him a lot more practice in games, so that’s what we can do [to help him], keep scoring and he’ll get better.”

The Mustangs will face UTEP and starting quarterback Jordan Palmer, brother of former USC star and current NFL quarterback Carson Palmer. The Miners have made bowl appearances the last two seasons but suffered a late season loss to SMU over Thanksgiving weekend.

Bennett said his team was able to put UTEP in long yardage situations, which gave them the edge over the Miners.

Bennett said repeating last year’s win will be tough.

“We’ve gone to El Paso before with a little momentum it’s going to take a very good effort to go out there and take back a win.”

While both teams have played Texas Tech this season, Bennett said it is hard to compare the two games against the Red Raiders because on any given weekend, a team can be drastically different.

“I know we’re a much better team than when we played against Texas Tech.”

Running backs Johnnie Fitzgerald and Fred Turner will return to the backfield this weekend, Bennett said they could have played last week, but he was concerned about how they would handle the pressure of the Tulane game.

Injured running back DeMyron Martin will not make the trip to El Paso.

“He [Martin] will start conditioning this week. He will not play this week, but he will be back for Marshall,” Bennett said.

Bennett said he expects a packed crowd of 40,000-50,000 and keeping focus in that hectic environment is crucial to winning.

Bennett also commented on recent remarks by UTEP head coach Mike Price.

At Price’s weekly press conference Monday, he accused SMU of being disrespectful of UTEP because the football media book has a picture of senior defensive end Justin Rogers kneeling over UTEP player Marcus Thomas.

“Their press guide is a nice looking press guide, showing all their players on it,” said Price in The El Paso Times. “I’ve seen many press guides like this, and you’ll see that our press guide is similar. Except we don’t have opponents’ players lying underneath their team, destroyed and knocked down…they have Marcus Thomas…getting knocked down and lying on the ground and being trampled. Is that respect? Or is that disrespect? That’s not respect for our program.”

Bennett said there was no truth to Price’s claims.

“He’s off base, that’s wrong. I like Mike, don’t know where he’s coming from on that, but when I see him I’m gonna tell him I think he’s off base without any question,” Bennett said. “We both have bigger fish to fry than that. Mike’s working a lot of ways to get that stadium filled. That’s what coaches are supposed to do, look for every edge. I’m gonna look for my edge on the field.”