Sleep is optional for UConn's T.J. Weist

Perhaps the most entertaining portion of today's press conference with UConn interim head coach T.J. Weist centered around his sleep or lack of sleep during weekends throughout the football season.

Weist said he needs to watch the game film before he can attempt to nod off.

"Me personally, I can’t go to sleep without watching the game," Weist said. "I can’t. I got the game film. Right when I got on the bus I put the game film on. I have to either confirm my thoughts of what I thought and see what happened so I can coach the players, I can coach the coaches and get a true evaluation right away. I can’t just let it sit not understand what just happened so we can get better.

"(He was) pleased in some areas because you never have a great sense for the effort, you can feel it on the field, you can feel the energy but you don’t have a feel for the overall effort because you don’t watch everyone. I was pleased with our effort. The rest of it you don’t see a lot of things on all the special teams, all the penalties that happened. I always have to judge the penalties, were the called right and where they called wrong? I may argue during the game which doesn’t help much with the referees but I still have to get the feel for what was called and what wasn’t called. It helps me to watch every play, the obvious plays when we should have made plays those were obvious when we watched the film. Watched it again and again."

Naturally I had to ask Weist that if he couldn't sleep before watching the film, how does watching what transpired in the 13-10 loss to South Florida impact his sleep pattern.

"Sleep pattern? There is no sleep pattern, there is not much sleep," Weist said. "On Friday night there is not much sleep because you are thinking about everything that is going to happen and Saturday night you are thinking about everything that just happened so you try to relax, you try to watch other games but you can’t, you are so focused on what just happened and how we can make it better and what needs to be done the next game. Not a lot of sleep, I don’t know if coaches have a sleep pattern."

Weist also reacted to Kenbrell Thompkins, a receiver he coached at Cincinnati, making the game-winning 27-yard TD catch with 5 seconds remaining to lift the New England Patriots to a 30-27 win over New Orleans on Sunday.

"I am not surprised with KT," Weist said. "He is a player that helped us win a lot of games at Cincinnati, he is a very competitive guy. His cousin is Antonio Brown, he is from Miami and he comes and works out with all the great wide receivers and he did that when he was at Cincinnati. He fully understood the NFL game before he even got there, when he got there he struggled to learn the speed of the game but I knew he would keep working to get better and there is no surprise that he made that catch and I will not be surprised when he continues to have success."

On a more serious subject, Weist said UConn players will wear a No. 77 sticker on their helmets in memory of Cincinnati freshman offensive lineman Ben Flick who died in a car accident last month.

"I think it is an appropriate gesture for us and seeing when other teams did things for us with Jasper Howard, it was the right thing to do," Weist said.