UAB Takes Down #22 Memphis In Mortensen’s First Game As Blazers’ Coach
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - October 18, 2025
Ryder Burton is not necessarily a veteran quarterback. But the redshirt sophomore, who had four snaps of college football experience before Saturday, made a veteran decision during the 31-24 victory over 22nd ranked Memphis at Protective Stadium.
He listened to wide receiver Iverson Hooks.
“Get the ball to zero, it’s that's simple, right?” Burton said.
It sure seemed that way on a Saturday afternoon when Burton connected with Hooks 11 times for 172 yards with touchdown receptions of 15, 16 and 20 yards. The 20-yard connection, which came with 4:06 left in the game, ultimately provided the winning points.
“I mean, the guy's electric man,” Burton said. “The quickness, the twitchiness. And then also, he wants the ball right. So I’m gonna give it to him.”
Truthfully, though, that was just part, albeit an important part, of what might be the program’s most meaningful win since Bill Clark led his team to a win over 13th ranked BYU in the 2021 Independence Bowl. And there were layers and layers of significance in a week of turmoil after head coach Trent Dilfer was fired and starting quarterback Jalen Kitna was unable to get healthy enough to play. Alex Mortensen took over as the interim head coach while still coordinating the offense. Mix in playing for the Children’s Harbor kids and trying to win back the 94-pound Battle for the Bones trophy and it was a doozy of a week.
Burton, Hooks and a running game that produced 219 yards, including a dynamic 81-yard run by Solomon Beebe, the long scoring run in school history, played a huge role. But, in the end, it was a beleaguered defense that was called upon to preserve the victory. And they did just that. While it was far from a traditional goal line stand, the UAB defense found a way to keep the Tigers from the go-ahead score in the final minute. Sure it helped that Memphis had three penalties in that stretch but the bottom line was they didn’t score.:
“We know we got a good defense,” said safety Pierre Royster, whose fourth quarter interception at the goal line ended an earlier Memphis opportunity. “It's just a lot of different pieces. I think tonight we finally clicked and finally showed the world what we got.”
WHAT IT MEANS: On one hand, it’s just one win. Realistically, though, it’s much more. In some ways, this is the first building block win since beating BYU in the 2021 Independence Bowl.
WHEN THE GAME TURNED: A ton of things happened after Memphis’ Sutton Smith’s 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. So it would be easy to look for turning points. But the way UAB handled that disappointment was the key to everything that happened afterward. UAB kept fighting after that and literally fought to the final play
WHY UAB WON: While far from perfect, the UAB defense made plays when they were needed. And the offense used to running game and the passing game to sync up perfectly. It also didn’t hurt that Iverson Hooks was the best player on the field and Ryder Burton handled his first starting assignment with poise beyond his experience.
WHAT ARE THE KEY STATS: UAB’s running game controlled the game by controlling the clock. UAB ran for 219 yards on 41 carries and played a large role in the Blazers holding the football for 35 minutes and five seconds. The Blazers had one big chunk run – the 81-yard touchdown by Solomon Beebe – and a bunch of runs that allowed them to play keepaway from the Memphis offense. When UAB did pass the ball, Burton was 20-of-27 for 251 yards with three touchdown passes to Iverson Hooks. Burton targeted Hooks 11 times and all 11 were completions. Hooks gained 172 yards with touchdown receptions of 15, 16 and 20 yards. The longest Burton completion was for 31 yards to Hooks.
WHO GETS THE GAME BALLS: There aren’t enough footballs to go around. Burton, Hooks, Beebe, the offensive line, the defensive line, safety Pierre Royster are all in line to get one. But with everything that went on this week it’s probably best to give the ball to Mortensen, who coordinated an offense that gained 470 yards on 68 plays. Go ahead and give one to Steve Russ, whose defense wasn’t always perfect but kept Memphis out of the end zone in the final minutes despite having the ball inside the 1-yard line on two different occasions.
WHAT DID COACH MORTENSEN HAD TO SAY IN HIS POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE:
Opening statement: “I would say one, we talked about early in this week, that this was a tough week. Losing our head coach, someone that we all really loved and respected. And I do wanna say too, he is a very good football coach too. I think that's important to say, Coach Dilfer. But I thought, what we wanted to do is focus the guys in a couple areas. One, can they give great effort? Okay, and that's Monday through Friday and game day. And then two, can they stick together? We wanted to start there. I thought the guys did a great job of that. The third thing was playing for something bigger than themselves. This was a Children's Harbor game, so you're obviously playing for the kid that you connect with. That was pretty awesome to see and was really pleased with our guys' effort all week. Like we said, their unity and I couldn't be prouder of them.”
On the team’s resiliency: “It was tremendous, it was tremendous. We talked about three keys to the game and I kind of already said something. We wanted to play with fanatical effort. Then the second thing was poise. And then the third thing was we talked about staying together, no matter what. The poise thing was really impressive and it was really all week. It was dealing with a head coaching change and it was also dealing with a quarterback situation. Jalen Kitna has played very well this year, let's be very clear about that. I know no player's perfect and no player's without error. And that includes Jalen, but Jalen has done some really special things. He got hurt in our last game. It was questionable as to whether or not we're gonna be able to play him. He was day to day. So the guys handled that one. I would say Ryder handled it incredibly well. Nate Rogers and the rest of the quarterbacks handled it incredibly well. But then also the rest of the guys around them on the team handled it well too. There were a lot of things that could have rattled them and distracted our guys. If anything, solid leadership came together and really sharpened their focus.”
On the opening drive settling Ryder Burton into the game: “I have a lot of confidence in Ryder, but it's still his first time to start. And so I wanted to settle him into the game. The other thing too is like this was a bigger than just that. We've struggled a little bit when we've gotten behind the sticks on early downs. One of our key focuses on offense this week was to try to stay ahead of schedule and let's see if we can make another team beat us first instead of defeating ourselves. And then we'll go from there. Some of it was about Ryder and some was just more global to stay ahead of the sticks. And then the other part, too, is we wanted to see if we could maintain possession of the ball and gain some first downs and control the tempo of the game and keep their offense on the sideline as well. So really, all those things were taken into consideration as to how we opened the game. Our guys handled it well. We challenged our runners to be really good at the point of contact and gain the extra two yards and still maintain possession of the football. By and large, they did. So we were really pleased with how they opened the game.”
On attacking a Memphis team that has success stopping the run: “Well, we really like our backs. We still like our offensive line. And so, yeah, a lot of respect to Memphis. I mean, they've been really good against the run. And their front has been incredibly disruptive. So really, our guys did a good job of covering them up, you know, getting a hat on a hat and then the ball carriers again, like we talked about just gaining the extra two. You know, at the point of contact, we felt like we could treat it that way. We kind of talked about, like, hey, you know, treat it like a boxing match. We're not going to come out and throw haymakers, but we're going to set them up, you know. And so I think the guys bought into that. And I give our staff credit. You know, this is a collective effort. We have really good coaches on the staff that helped put that run plan together. We all kind of collectively put our minds together to do that. So that was a piece of it too. We did feel like we could run it. And if we couldn't, we were ready to adapt. You know, we were ready to adjust to that if we needed to.”
On Ryder Burton’s natural confidence: “Ryder does have a lot of natural confidence. He’s very outgoing. So that really does make you feel better about a guy like that playing in a situation like this. And he has some courage, he has toughness. Then on top of that, he prepares incredibly well, you know, he's really sharp. Him and Jalen really study together a lot. Jalen's been our starter here prior to getting injured. They study together all the way up till game time. It was not only his personality, but also just his work ethic and diligence in studying the plan and studying the opponent that really gave us a lot of confidence with him.”
On spending time with the defensive staff this week: “This didn't happen in a bye week or (after) a Thursday night game, so we didn't want to go make huge adjustments. Coach Russ and his staff did a great job putting the plan together, coaching the guys. And then our big emphasis really was, can we just get everyone to play with an fanatical effort. If we can do that, let's start there and see where that gets us. I think those guys on defense, accepted that challenge. So it was more than just an X (and) O thing or anything like that. But, really a lot of that comes from the players and I think they bought into that idea as well.”
On whether it has sunk in yet: “No and really it's one game. I’ll say this, when I talked to (Trent Dilfer) he said, Hey, look, you guys got a chance to win this game. I believe you can. And he said but even if you don't, either way, just remember it's one game. That's kind of my approach, our approach. And I'm certainly excited and happy about it. But, you know, I think for our team, if you go back over the last two and a half years, sometimes we don't respond to success as well as we could and sometimes we don't respond to failure as well, as we could either. I told them we told them, ‘Hey, celebrate it, enjoy it for 24 hours. It's a big deal. And then let's go refocus.”
On the open week: “I think open weeks, you know, are a great opportunity to get better fundamentally. These are still very young, really young players that can improve fundamentally. But we're also at a point in the season where we're pretty banged up. The other thing that I can say that Coach Dilfer probably couldn't say is that we've lost a lot of guys this year that have been hurt. I think the open week gives us an opportunity also to get some guys healthy. We have some guy that worked their way back this week, but I think the open week gives us an opportunity also to get some guys healthy. The guys that are currently healthy can get some good fundamental work in. I think too, we can kind of step back as a coaching staff and, and again, not overreact to one win and still acknowledge like, hey, we have some things that we really need to improve on. Let's develop a strategy to go improve those things.”
On what it was like on Friday night: “I feel like until about last night, that was the first time I came up for air going back to Sunday. I mean every minute has been pretty slammed. There hasn't been a whole lot of reflection, to be honest with you, until maybe here lately. I try to keep things as status quo as possible. There were head coaching duties to manage, but really some of the advice I got was like, hey, really try to manage the offense the best you can too. As we got closer to the game, we started zeroing in on how we wanted to call the game.”
On the Battle for the Bones trophy: “I did not try to pick up the trophy. I'm told it is very heavy. But no, it was really fun to see the players celebrate. They've put in a lot of hard work. One of the things we talked about a couple of times is like, hey, man, we do have some really good players on the team that haven't played to, you want to use the word potential. Seeing them realize some of that tonight, celebrate and have fun, and finally kind of reep what they sewed to a degree was really cool. Just thrilled that they were able to pull that off.”
On game management: “To a degree, in terms of managing the game, and something we talked about a lot and sought counsel on. I talked to other head coaches, I talked to Coach Dilfer too. He knows our staff. We created a set up where we were able to delegate certain things and then just kind of try to be two places at once via the headset. And again, just a ton of respect to the guys on our staff because they were able to handle a lot of it too. It was, to some degree, tricky, but I think with our organization and John Jones on special teams, Steve Russ and all the guys we had working on it, it really has gone pretty smooth.”
WHERE IS UAB’S NEXT ASSIGNMENT: UAB will enjoy its second bye week before returning to the road to play UConn on Nov. 1.