Brent Venables reveals main point of emphasis on defense entering second season
Every year a number of first-year coaches get off to a roaring start at their new school and others have to endure more of a slow building process before the results really start to follow. Brent Venables was more of the latter at Oklahoma, but his building process could be fast-tracked if the defense has a strong second season.
To that end, Venables joined On3 for an exclusive interview on The Hard Count with JD PicKell and broke down what he needs to see from that unit.
“We’ve got to get better,” Venables said. “Captain Obvious here, that’s the only thing to me that we can do. But I’m just talking about starting with the mindset and how you attack this game, what the standards are. Lot of guys are, I would call them scarred up, guys that have been here for at least two-plus years. Call those guys just a little bit scarred up.”
Erasing the bad habits and healing over the scars of a subpar season or two will be key.
Oklahoma wasn’t very good defensively last season, and the defense will be looking for second season improvement. The Sooners finished 99th in scoring defense and 122nd in total defense in Venables’ first season, despite the defense being his side of the ball.
To the Oklahoma coach, it’s all about learning the standards.
“We’ve worked really hard at trying to show them what excellence looks like,” Venables said. “We’ve got a great gameplan for how we need to get better and the work that it takes. And I believe in these guys. They come, they’re on the edge of their seat every day willing to put the work in.”
More than anything, what Venables will have to cultivate in his guys is a sense of belief.
Too often it becomes easy to wallow in what was and let it become what is. Instead, he wants the Sooners to have an aggressive mentality about improvement as the defense heads into its second season.
With enough focus and energy and effort Oklahoma should begin to move in the right direction.
“We need to improve our athletic ability. We’ve got to get more physical at the point of attack. We’ve got to be more precise in everything that we’re doing,” Venables said. “But we’ve got to play with confidence. Confidence comes from the work that you’ve put in, going about it every single day. We’ve still got to maintain an aggressive philosophy along the way.”
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