Charlotte 49ers College Football Pregame Quote, 09/28/2021

A huge win for us on Friday night and exciting to be back at home. I know how much it means to our players to have an atmosphere at home where they feel like playing football at Charlotte is big time. And shout out again to our student section who is now receiving some national praise and it’s really cool to think about the environment they create and the atmosphere and how much our guys feed off of that. You know now, [we]have a really difficult test on the road. We did not play very well on the road the first time we went. So how much have we improved? Still a million different things to correct from last Friday. We were fortunate to get the win and I think the question this week is ‘How hungry are we to fix some of some the problems that have shown up over the last four weeks?’ Proud of them with how they’ve responded, like always, you hear me say that every week because that’s honest. They responded during the game, they responded this week and I think the question will be ‘What’s our sense of urgency with finding ways getting this football team better?’ I think everybody in this room and everybody in our program understands the task at hand going to a Big Ten opponent, everything you would think a Big Ten opponent would be –big, fast, physical. [They]have really good weapons. They have a new identity, obviously with a new coach. He’s brought a lot of excitement there. Started off the season really strong with a win over Nebraska and the other two Big Ten games they’ve played have been extremely close, could’ve gone either way. It’s been a team learning how to win, much like ours is. The odds are stacked against us. We’ve been in the underdog position a lot this year and need a great week of preparation to be able to go have success.

On a tough road environment with a young team:

I mean, if anything, I would hope it would be fun for our guys to play in a great road environment. Obviously, with the weather at Georgia State, I’m sure it kept a lot of people away. But this will be a really good environment, an adverse environment, for us to go play in which is good for our football team and the growth of our football team. I’m excited about the challenge. I think the comments that I started with remain the same. It’s about us and how well do we execute, how hard do we play, how well we take care of the ball. And then on the other side, create some turnovers. But it’s exciting to be able to go play at a venue like this against a team that’s as talented as we’re about to go play against. And will be a great test of to see how far our football team has come in two weeks of playing in a road environment.

On preparation coming off playing a Power 5 team:

Yeah, it’s just a totally different challenge. I would hope our team is confident that we can go have success. But, I hope our team is also realistic and cognizant of the fact that we have to have a great week of preparation put into it like we did going into Duke. Two different teams, two different mentalities. And obviously a road game versus a home game. So, hopefully it helps from a confidence perspective, but we are also aware that this is a different type of challenge. We’ve got to do a little bit more than what we’ve done to get a result that we’ve never gotten.