NEWS

A year after a 48-26 loss in San Antonio, Hall called it "an absolute butt whipping." His defense arrives off a six-takeaway night against Memphis.

By Kim M. Braud | October 20, 2026

NEW ORLEANS - A year after UTSA beat Tulane 48-26 in San Antonio, the Green Wave's first-year head coach told reporters Tuesday that the final score undersold what happened that night.

"The score really has no indication of what a butt whipping it was," Hall said at Tulane's weekly news conference in the team room at Yulman Stadium. "It was an absolute butt whipping, and our players obviously owned that when it happened and improved from it for the rest of the season."

Hall also confirmed that true freshman Trace Johnson will make his second straight start when Tulane (3-3, 1-1 American) hosts UTSA (6-1, 3-0) at 7 p.m. Saturday at Yulman Stadium. The game airs on ESPNU. The Roadrunners sit atop the American Conference standings as the league's only team with three conference wins.

A rematch with a long memory

Tulane's own game notes put numbers on last season's meeting. UTSA rolled up 523 yards of total offense, scored 31 points in the first half and forced four Tulane turnovers. Roadrunners quarterback Owen McCown completed 31 passes for 370 yards and four touchdowns.

Hall said this year's Tulane roster is a different team facing a different UTSA. But he did not pretend the memory had faded.

"We're a prideful program that doesn't like to lose ever," he said.

McCown is back, and Hall spent much of his answer on him.

"I think UTSA's quarterback is one of the toughest dudes I know," Hall said. "He's making plays with his feet this year. He was banged up a lot last year where he couldn't do that, and the dude's just a winner, man."

Hall described UTSA's offense as "more traditional, more like we are," with a balanced run and pass attack and a strong red zone game. That is a change from the spread, high-tempo look Tulane saw from Memphis last week.

The programs have met three times, with UTSA winning twice. Tulane won the only meeting in New Orleans, 29-16, on Nov. 24, 2023.

Johnson keeps the job

"Yeah, we'll start Trace," Hall said. "He played good enough for us to win."

Johnson, a 6-foot-1 freshman from Laguna Niguel, Calif., made his first college start in Friday's 31-17 win over Memphis. He completed 11 of 21 passes for 165 yards, with a 38-yard touchdown to Algiers native and Edna Karr graduate Destyn Hill and one interception. Hall said the interception was "a critical mistake" that Johnson "knows and addresses," and that wind made passing conditions difficult.

Hall, who played and has coached quarterbacks for more than two decades, listed what he sees in the freshman.

"He's extremely accurate. He's extremely tough, both mentally and physically. And he has the ability to make off-scheduled plays," Hall said.

Hall said he waited to put Johnson on the field until the offense around him was stable enough to carry a young quarterback. Injuries and roster turnover on the offensive line, at receiver and at running back slowed that process.

"It's unfair to bring a young man in and say, 'Hey, here's the weight of the program,'" Hall said. "That's not who we are. ... Our program can stand on its own two feet."

Hall also credited backup Dagan Bruno, a John Curtis graduate who completed his only pass against Memphis for 10 yards.

Kadin Semonza started Tulane's first five games and has thrown for 804 yards and four touchdowns. He did not play against Memphis. This week's depth chart lists Johnson as the starter, with Semonza, Zeon Chriss-Gremillion and Bruno as options behind him. Hall was not asked about Semonza's status Tuesday.

Running back Johnnie Daniels said the offense has not flinched at the changes.

"Next man up mentality," Daniels said. "Nothing doesn't change, you know. We go out there and still do what we do."

Of Johnson, he said: "Staying calm when the pressure was high on him. It just showed a lot of maturity from him."

Points, not yards

Memphis outgained Tulane 482 yards to 325 last week and won the first-down battle 27 to 12. Tulane won by 14 anyway.

Hall said that was the plan.

"Yards don't matter, first downs don't matter," he said. "All that's cute and great, but points are the only thing that determine whether you win or lose."

He credited defensive coordinator Tayler Polk and the defensive staff for what he called "an awesome total plan" to keep Memphis out of the end zone.

The defense forced six turnovers, three interceptions and three fumble recoveries, and sacked the Memphis quarterback seven times. According to Tulane's game notes, the Green Wave became the first FBS team since Louisville in October 2022 to record at least six takeaways and seven sacks in one game. The six takeaways were Tulane's most since it forced eight against Army in 2003.

Safety Kevin Adams III had two interceptions and a fumble recovery and was named American Conference Player of the Week. Defensive back TJ Smith returned an interception 76 yards for a touchdown as the first half expired, putting Tulane ahead 23-10. It was the team's first defensive touchdown of the season.

Daniels said he was watching Smith the whole way.

"It was like a movie," Daniels said. "Once I seen him, he caught the ball, I'm like, nobody catching him."

Senior defensive tackle Ed Smith IV forced two fumbles. He is Tulane's first player to do that in a game since Patrick Johnson against East Carolina in 2020. Smith, a Tuscaloosa, Ala., native who transferred from South Alabama, had missed the previous week's 20-17 loss at Army.

"Not being there the week before really was tough on me, having to watch our guys," Smith said. "Being back, I just wanted to put our team in a position to win, and I just took advantage."

He said the turnovers and the sacks fed on each other.

"A lot of the time when you get a lot of turnovers like that, they come in bunches," he said. "My boy Warren started us off, and it just grew from there." Warren Roberts Jr., a redshirt freshman from St. Augustine, forced a fumble and recovered one against Memphis.

On the pass rush, Smith said the defensive line "took it personally" that sacks had been slow to come early in the season.

On McCown, he said: "He gets the ball out quick. He's very mobile in the pocket. We just gotta get to him before he gets rid of the ball."

Smith had a one-line review of his coordinator: "Polk is a dog, and he's definitely a guy you want to play for."

Tulane leads the American in red zone defense, allowing scores on 65.4 percent of opponents' trips inside the 20, sixth best nationally. Only one opponent, Kansas State, has scored more than 24 points against the Green Wave this season.

The run that should have been a kneel

Daniels sealed the Memphis game with a 48-yard touchdown run with 1:34 left. Asked Tuesday whether he considered going down to run out the clock, he admitted he should have.

"I should have got down, but my mindset was just get the first down, get the first down, win the game," Daniels said. "I just seen green grass."

Daniels, a senior transfer from Mississippi State, leads Tulane with 58 carries for 290 yards and three touchdowns this season.

Home field

The Memphis win was Tulane's 10th straight at home, dating to the start of the 2025 season. That streak is tied for the fourth longest in program history. Hall is 4-0 at Yulman Stadium as a head coach, a record that includes Southern Miss's 27-24 win there in 2022, when he coached the Golden Eagles.

"It's a hard place for people to come into and play," Hall said. "Our crowd is awesome. Our students have become electric. Our band is great, and we love playing at home."

Remembering Charlie Hall

Before leaving the podium, Hall paid respects to Charlie Hall, one of four Black players who integrated Tulane football in the fall of 1971. Charlie Hall, a Lake Charles native, was a Walter Camp All-American defensive lineman in 1973 and entered the Tulane Athletics Hall of Fame in 1981. He died this past weekend at 74.

"I was blessed last year to come back here for so many reasons, but one of them was I actually got to meet Charlie," Will Hall said. "We're certainly thinking about his family and praying for his family, and we love them and love all those guys."

Tulane hosts UTSA at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, at Yulman Stadium. The game airs on ESPNU and on Tulane Radio, 106.7 The Ticket.

Kim M. Braud is the Founder & Editor of Evans Cutchmore Press, an independent newsroom covering Louisiana and the Gulf South, and the author of Financial Power for Life™, a financial literacy framework that helps people earn, protect, grow, leverage, and transfer wealth. Her reporting focuses on government, infrastructure, business, culture, and the public policies that shape communities, with a commitment to highlighting progress and the people doing meaningful work in a news landscape often dominated by conflict and crisis.

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