Junior quarterback Greg Ward, Jr. rushed for 182 yards in Saturday’s match against Texas State University. | Justin Tijerina/The Cougar

Junior quarterback Greg Ward, Jr. was named the American Athletic Conference offensive player of the week for his performance against Tulsa.

Ward rushed for 182 yards — the most by any quarterback in UH history— with three touchdowns and passed for 273 yards.

After finding out that Ward won offensive player of the week, head coach Tom Herman said he’s critical to the offense because there’s a  high expectation at UH for him, his coaches and his players.

“The expectation around here is when you have all those things up, the level of play should be a lot more consistent and to that expectation level, and it wasn’t,” Herman said. “Greg is barely scratching the surface right now in my opinion in terms of his development as a quarterback.”

Herman said Ward is a tremendous athlete, but he has struggled with his development.

“One thing that he was getting better at was just kind of the overall development of being a quarterback and reading the defense and seeing the field and managing the offense,” Herman said. “(Ward) just kind of took a little bit of a step back, nothing panic-inducing by any stretch. (He) just needs to play better and more consistently.”

But Ward wasn’t the only offensive player taking a step back on Saturday. During his Monday press Herman said the offense has been having some issues and credited the defense as the key to victory over Tulsa.

“Our defense playing 58 snaps in the first half on the road, in their house, against the fourth ranked offense in the country and gave up 10 points,” Herman said. “To me, that was the key to the ball game. For them to respond and still have a 21 point lead at half time was crucial for us.”

Herman said he’s spent the last couple of days reevaluating what they’re doing offensively and defensively in the red zone.

“Offensively, we gained a lot of yards, not a ton of points for as many yards as we got,” Herman said. “So, we got to clean up what and how we’re doing in the red zone.”

Sports@thedailycougar.com

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“Greg Ward, Jr. named conference offensive player of the week, “barely scratching the surface”” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar