We need swagger back, says Brown
Longhorns
for the regular-season finale at Kansas State. Case McCoy played the entire game, completing 17 straight passes at one point as Texas watched a third-quarter lead dissipate into a 42-24 defeat.
Brown said the offensive staff talked to both quarterbacks Monday and then told him that they’d like to go ahead and have him announce that Ash will start in the bowl.
“The final decision would be Major’s,” Brown said. “I would ask the proper questions, but he’s got to make that decision.”
Ash has made significant strides from his rocky debut in 2011, when he wound up starting six games as a true freshman because Garrett Gilbert struggled and eventually transferred to SMU.
Ash finished this season with a .677 completion percentage (193 of 285) for 2,458 yards, 17 touchdowns and seven interceptions. But he faltered badly in three games over the second half of the year — losses to Oklahoma and TCU, and at Kansas, where McCoy came off the bench in the fourth quarter to direct two touchdown drives and salvage a 21-17 victory.
“David is 8-3 (this season), and at Texas we want to be 13-0,” Brown said. “We need to have that position to get a swagger back and step up. The standards are higher than eight (victories). That’s what the kids need to understand and our coaches do understand.
“We’re ready to take that next step and get it back to where it should be.”
Brown also said Monday that he doesn’t expect Applewhite’s offense to look notably different in the Alamo Bowl since the game plan already was being set before Harsin left.
“We’ll be pretty much who we’ve been all year,” Brown said. “But I do see some changes coming in the spring. We won’t talk about those today because we want to get through the bowl game first. We’ll still have a lot of who we are and what we are in the spring. But I think all these guys have their own ideas, and they’ll move forward.”