Blazers Break out In UAB’s Record Setting 59-21 Rout Of Tulsa
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - November 3, 2024
UAB 59, TULSA 21
WHAT IT MEANS: The losing streak is snapped at six. That’s big news for a UAB team trying to build some sort of momentum heading down the stretch. It’s also UAB’s first win over a FBS opponent this season.
WHEN THE GAME TURNED: Opening kickoff? The Blazers took control early and never let go. Jalen Kitna moved the offense on the first drive and the Blazers scored on a 20-yard pop pass from Harrison Barker to Armoni Goodwin. After a defensive stop, the Blazers scored on 14-yard pass to Bryce Damous. That was the start of a big day for the Blazers.
WHY UAB WON: It certainly helped that Jalen Kitna and Kam Shanks had career days. But, this was won in all three phases. The UAB defense shut Tulsa out for nearly the entire first half. Special teams made several big plays and not all of them were provided by Shanks, who set a school record with 139 punt return yards. The offense, often blessed with advantageous field position because of defensive stop and special teams success, was outstanding.
WHAT ARE THE KEY STATS: Tulsa lined up to stop the run, which left things open for Kitna and the passing game. UAB finished with 424 passing yards and seven passing touchdowns. Seventeen of UAB’s 23 first downs came through the air. UAB’s defense was outstanding, particularly in the first half. Tulsa had 189 first half yards but 121 of that came on the final two drives before halftime. By that, time UAB had already built a 45-0 lead.
WHO GETS THE GAME BALLS: Jalen Kitna had his best performance – by far – in a UAB uniform. The junior quarterback was 25-of-32 for 409 yards with school-record tying six touchdown passes. He is the first UAB player history to throw six touchdowns in a FBS game. John Whitcomb did it twice when UAB was a Division I-AA (now FCS) member.
*Kam Shanks not only set the school record in punt return yardage but he also set the new school standard with 311 all-purpose yards. He had five catches for 153 yards and three receiving touchdowns, carried the ball twice for 19 yards and added another touchdown on a 58-yard punt return. Shanks also had an 84-yard punt return for a touchdown negated after the instant replay official ruled he stepped out of bounds near midfield.
*Amare Thomas had eight catches for 84 yards with two touchdowns. He extended his streak of games with a touchdown catch to four.
WHAT DID COACH DILFER SAY IN HIS POSTGAME APPEARANCE ON BLAZER SPORTS NETWORK FROM LEARFIELD
Opening statement: Yeah, I'm really happy for the kids to get a payoff for the hard work. They've really worked hard through the storm that we've been in. I'm really happy for the Children’s Harbor families. You know, you get to see your heroes out there running around with their names on your jersey is a big deal. So, I told the team I was equally pleased with last Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday when we practiced during the bye week and Monday and Tuesday this week and their buying in and how they were in meetings and their note taking and their attention to detail and their daily matters. I think as we get better at all those things, you'll see better football. So, really pleased and happy for them.
On the UAB passing attack: Yeah, we wanted to run it better than we did, but we were going to with the pass. That was always the plan. We threw it a lot in practice this week. We threw it at a high level. Don't take anything away from Cam and the offense, Jalen Kitna was amazing today. You know, he saved a lot of bad play calls, turned them into big plays. Obviously, his connection with the receivers has grown over the last four weeks. But we really wanted to put the game in his hands and the receivers hands and trust that. They want to play close to line scrimmage. They want to take away the run. They want to force you to throw. We were welcoming for that challenge.
On the importance of getting a win: I think it's really important. I think getting payoff for hard work. You know hard it is to be 19 years old and bust your tail every day and do the right things in class. And all the things we ask these kids to do and then bad things happen on Saturday. Like it's hard to buy in and keep doing it. I'm really happy that they had some payoff, because the season has felt like it's almost unreal. They're so much better than the scores have been. They practice better, they invest more and they're not getting the payoff for it. So, it was nice today to see them get to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
On Children’s Harbor: I think this was a get -to week. You know we talked about perspective during the week and the how fortunate we are to be able to get to do this and how lucky we are that we get to impact some families that are going through a really hard time. Again this has been a hard year and you can get really dark and be negative in your thinking. It's hard for these kids to ignore the outside noise and just kind of flip the perspective. We get to do this and we have an opportunity this week to really help some families and turn the thing around and we're really hoping this is a launching point for us.
On what happened in the bye week:
We were more physical. We did get a chance to give some guys a rest. Some of them were defensive players and they played better today because they got some rest, they got their bodies back. I think we're more vertical oriented in our passing game, there's more push on the ball down the field. I don't know if you noticed, but we rotated offensive linemen today. We kind of rolled four new guys in there. I think that's something we practiced in the bye week about, just keeping them fresh so we can finish drives. So we're tweaking constantly. We have been tweaking, maybe the tweaks are starting to stick a little bit.
On UAB defense: They're awesome. It was like, I don't know, 20-something to nothing and I said ‘Guys don't be thinking this is an offensive thing. This is special teams and defense. This is how you have games like this. As your defense gets stops, I think we had three and outs or short drives off the get-go, forcing a punt. Special team shows up (and) you flip the field. It wasn't just the punt return for a touchdown when they called back, but there were multiple special teams plays where we started with the short field. So offensively, when you have short fields, one, you can be more aggressive. And it showed up in how we called the game and these guys making plays. But this was way more about defense and special teams than it was offense. I think offense benefited from it. I mean, that's the easiest way to say it, is offense benefited from it and then took advantage of the opportunities.
On connecting with the Children’s Harbor family: I'll start with administration, Ted (Feeley), especially Mark (Ingram). We do a really great job this week of getting the kids ready for it. It's an all hands on deck approach where everybody's kind of doing their part to get the kids prepped for the meaning of the week. Ted does an incredible job organizing the families and making sure that the players are aware what days we're gonna be doing stuff. I showed the video of Emme (Nichols) from 2017, I think that kind of helped the kids understand the gravity of it. So it's just it's a rolling fully engaged deal throughout the week. Every single day the kids are putting Children's Harbor at the forefront of everything we're talking about. So I think that preps it and then gosh, our kids were awesome on Thursday.
I had to go up and do an interview. I was in my office and I looked out and we're probably 25 minutes post practice and there were still about 30 guys out there playing with their families and this is after a long day. But they took the extra time, they're playing in the end zones, they're taking pictures, they're goofing around with them. It brought joy to my heart to see our players that engaged.
On moving forward: Well, one, I'm going to coach them harder. You know what I mean? You can coach them a little harder after a victory. We still were sloppy, six pre-snap penalties, four drops, a personal foul again, a couple of blown coverages, some missed blocking assignments up front in the run game. So we got to clean some stuff up. And I think they'll want to clean it up. That's one thing about this group. They're not going to come in and get defensive if we talk about things they're going to get better at. But I do think this can really grow your confidence because you finally get a taste to feel and taste it after working so hard during the week. I mean, this is what we look like in practice. We look like this in practice against Tulane, Navy, Army, games that weren’t really even were competitive. You never would have thought that if you watched us practice. So I'm just really happy for them, because man, I didn't know what I was gonna say if we came out here again and had a great week of practice and then, you know, knucklehead it around. I think it makes our jobs easier as coaches to say, like, look at, like, good things can happen and expect good things to happen.
WHERE IS UAB’S NEXT ASSIGNMENT: UAB carries the momentum into non-conference game against UConn. The game will kick off at 1:30 p.m. next Saturday at Protective Stadium.