Charles Huff spent part of his latest press conference putting out a fire that’s already spreading well beyond Memphis.
With his name surfacing online in connection to the open jobs at Baylor, NC State and Maryland, the first-year Tigers coach made it clear he hasn’t been pulling any offseason strings behind the scenes.
"Yeah, no, I talked to them probably three weeks ago, I told them, I said every job that's getting ready to come open my name's gonna be up for," Huff said about informing the team of the rumors ahead of time. "We can control the volume, so I'm controlling the volume now.
None of it makes sense, not been called, not been contacted. You don't get a job in the middle of the season."
For now, though, Huff’s attention is squarely on a Memphis team sitting at 6-2 overall and 3-1 in conference play, with Army coming to town Saturday night at home. The Black Knights arrive at 5-2 and 4-1, and this one has the feel of a serious test near the top of the American Conference race.
Army’s league resume includes wins over Tulane, Temple, Florida Atlantic and Tulsa. FAU is 5-2, while Tulane is the only conference team to have beaten Memphis, which only adds to the sense that Army is capable of knocking off a good team when it gets rolling.
The matchup also forces Memphis into a very different kind of game. The Tigers haven’t had to deal with the option since last Thanksgiving, when they lost to Navy 28-17. This time, the defense will be asked to handle Army’s triple option while leaning on playmakers such as J'Mond Tapp, Taylor Burton and Elijah Kinsler.
Huff didn’t sugarcoat the difficulty that comes with preparing for a military academy offense.
"Obviously their different offensive scheme, it creates a huge challenge just because we don't see it a ton from a practice or competitive standpoint," Huff said Tuesday. "Got to find a way to balance what they do with adjusting what we do because it changes kind of how you have to align, how you have to play defense... you got to be a lot more efficient with every drive because you don't know how many you're going to get."
The stakes are obvious in the standings, too. Army and Memphis are third and fourth in the American Conference, respectively, so Saturday carries real weight at the top of the league.
One of Memphis’ biggest issues could be the pace of the game itself. Against an offense built to shorten the contest, slow starts can be especially costly. If the Tigers fall behind early, they may not get many chances to dig out of it.
Quarterback Marcus Stokes said the focus has to stay simple, even if the rhythm of the game changes.
"I think it's just controlling ourselves and controlling what we can control on the field," quarterback Marcus Stokes said about playing at the adjusted pace of a Military program. "It just comes back to doing your job and doing your one-eleventh, that's just kind of like how I see it."
Stokes is coming off a huge night, accounting for five total touchdowns and landing on both the Manning Award stars of the week list and the Davey O'Brien Award Great Eight for the second time this season.
He has become the engine of Memphis’ offense, and maybe the emotional center of the whole team. His style is aggressive, energetic and impossible to ignore, especially when he’s lowering his shoulder near the line to gain. For him, that’s part of the deal.
"I like being able to have the opportunities to put my body on the line for my teammate because I think it also, you know, proves to them... I care about this team, like this team's my family."
That edge fits the way Stokes has settled into Memphis, and into the city itself. The St. Augustine native has embraced the hard-nosed personality of the fan base and made that grit part of who he is.
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