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University of Miami coach Manny Diaz said that he got a text from safety Bubba Bolden on Sunday.
“Bubba was very active. He played very fast and very hard,’’ Diaz told WQAM during his weekly interview on Monday morning. “Bubba texted me yesterday and said, ‘Coach I really played poorly, and I just want you to know I’m going to play a lot better next week.’’’ Very impressive considering Bolden, a 6-3, 200-pound redshirt junior who last season transferred to UM and originally played at Southern Cal, was making plays everywhere on the field in the Hurricanes’ 47-34 win at Louisville on Saturday night. Bolden led all players with 11 tackles, a tackle for loss and a forced fumble.
“Our guys don’t feel like that they played very well,’’ Diaz said. “They feel like they played very hard, they feel like they competed... They know that their fight and their desire and the way they stuck together is what grinded out the win, but from Bubba on I think the guys really feel, ‘Hey, let’s get back to work. I can play a lot better than this.’’’
WQAM’s Joe Rose asked Diaz if top running back Cam’Ron Harris, who rushed Saturday for 134 yards and a career-long 75-yard touchdown, is ‘nicked up’ and if Diaz expects him to play against Florida State on Saturday. “Yeah, I would hope so,’’ Diaz said. “Cam was out there [Sunday] night in our practice.
“Cam is a great example of [UM strength and conditioning coach] David Feeley and our weight room. Cam’s speed, his ability to sustain his speed is because of his work in our weight room, his ability to go all the way is what he did in the weight room in January, February, March. “You can’t keep the guy out of the weight room and it’s fun to see the results because of it.”
UM was flagged 11 times for 89 yards against Louisville, and the Canes got punished by the coaching staff because of some of those penalties. “We have a one-fail, all-fail mentality,’’ Diaz told Rose. “When we pay the bill on Sunday for penalties everybody has got to pay the bill for one person’s lack of focus and then move on.
“We handled it with some physical discipline last night. The disappointing part about penalties is there are aggressive penalties, like Amari [Carter’s] hit out of bounds was bang-bang very close. If those were our penalties that would be one thing.
“Just on offense we had five penalties, just.. The worst kinds [are] presnap or postsnap. PreSnap is just concentration, flinching or not getting lined up right. Postsnap is like we had a guy pull a guy off a pile got a 15-yard penalty.
“I do think being on the road for the first time’’ played a part. “A combination of whether it’s the fake crowd noise, the music in between plays... I thought the Louisville fans were really into it [and] it did seem like it caused some issues for us up front. We have to make sure when we go on the road that we practice a little bit more [on noise distractions] than what we did.
“But overall the offside on defense, that’s just guys not paying attention and not staying focused and they see how it hurts the entire team.”