UAB Blazers College Football Pregame Quote, 10/03/2022

Obviously disappointed in the outcome at Rice. I felt like we had a chance to be able to pull it out in the end and just came up short. Felt like the two turnovers offensively, the one interception in the first half kind of swung some momentum even though we came up with a big stop. The turnover in the second half on the backwards pass obviously gave them the momentum back. We were able to respond and come back and take the lead late and then we had the opportunity to go down there and win the game but came up short and didn’t execute there in the end. Kids played extremely hard. Proud of our team, proud of our coaches, just disappointed that we didn’t come away with the win. We’ve got a long season; we’ve got a lot of football in front of us. I want to move forward to what I feel like, and what this town and this university feels like, is one of the best traditions in college football. It’s our Children’s Harbor game, it’s our homecoming game, it’s a tradition that was started by coach [Bill Clark] and UAB. We’re going on year six. It’s a game where our players wear the jersey of patients from Children’s Harbor. We honor them, we play in the memory of them. It’s a game and it’s a tradition that we take very serious here and that we’re very proud of. It’s what this program is about. It’s about things bigger than this team and this program. It’s something that we’re very excited to play this coming Saturday versus Middle Tennessee.

On moving past the Rice game:

Obviously there was a lot of adversity throughout that game Saturday night, a lot of momentum swings, a lot of emotions going on throughout that game. It was a game that we prepared hard for, that our players and coaches prepared hard for. We played hard. At the end of the day, you’ve just got to be able to move forward. You’ve got to be able to learn from your mistakes. You’ve got to be able to press forward. There’s a lot of football left. We had a team and locker room that was hurt. [We had] a team and locker-room that was very disappointed. We’ve just got to stick together and that’s what this team is doing, we’re sticking together. We know we’re playing for something that’s much bigger than us in this Children’s Harbor game. It’s a game that means a lot to this town, it means a lot to these families, and it means a lot to this football team. That’s what we’re focusing on doing. It’s tough and we’ve got to put it behind us. We’ve got to move forward. We’ve got a really good Middle Tennessee State football team coming in. [It is] a conference game, a home game, a homecoming game, and, most importantly, a Children’s Harbor game.

On what the players take away from the Children’s Harbor game:

This is a game that our players look forward to, that our program looks forward to and that we’re excited about. Our players understand the importance of this game, they take pride and passion in playing for these families and playing for these patients. This is bigger than football. This is real life, and this is something that our players have created bonds with these children, created bonds with these families. It’s ended up turning into a life-long relationship.

On bouncing back from a tough loss:

At the end of the day, when you do stumble and you do fall, you’ve got to regroup and come back stronger. You’ve got to bring a great focus on rewriting from what happened the week before. Creating and fixing, really fixing the mistakes and the situations that maybe we didn’t necessarily handle well. I felt like we let our emotions start to stray away from us in the second half and really got caught up. We’ve got to maintain our focus and we’ve got to work on staying the course and being able to execute the next play. That was a tough one, it was a tough one last year. Every loss is a tough loss here because that’s something we’re not used to doing here at UAB and its something we’re not going to get accustomed to at UAB. The Children’s Harbor game is a personal game for us because we play for something much bigger than us. This team has great leadership. We have a team that’s driven, a team that’s tight, a team that cares about each other, and we realize that we’ve got a lot of football in front of us. Everything is still within our reach, but there has to be a sense of urgency on this football team that’s coming into town.