UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 09/27/2021

You know a lot of lessons learned from last weekend’s ballgame. For sure, you probably could have scripted me better, to get a win, and how it played itself out. The most positive thing was, which I talked about on the radio show with Teich [Jon Teicher] after the game is that the positive leadership that we showed that locker room at halftime was a huge stride for us. I mentioned before we fell behind in games, past seasons, not as much last year but maybe the two previous seasons before that, you know there really was a different type of attitude in the locker room. This one had more positive leadership, guys very angry, not quiet but angry, but also real positive with each other, encouraging each side of the ball. Each player individually challenged each other but they were in a really positive manner. And so that part of it, I think, was a big step for us. Anytime you can come out and play better in the second half that we did the first half and come from behind your down a big game ‚Äì 13-3 ‚Äìand come back and get a win, that part of it was just tremendous for us. I thought our defense played well the whole game. New Mexico basically creates a lot of issues I said that I feel like they’re as good a coach teams, you’re going to ever face. They’re going to create a lot of issues for you on both sides of the football. On offense, they create some issues and they do some really neat stuff and did some neat stuff on us and had a little bit of success but they had plenty of chances. Our defense came out and forced a turnover and gave the offense really good field position. The offense didn’t do a good job of finishing that drive at all and not getting any points on that kind of field position.

On the biggest play of last week’s win over New Mexico:

You know, the biggest play of the game was, first of all, when you watch Rocky [Long] call the game, he doesn’t look at anything but the front seven. He doesn’t even look at the back end. And so, all he’s worried about is getting pressure on the quarterback and on the run game. And for us to only give up one sack in that game, it’s really a tremendous effort from our offensive line. They did a great job protecting the quarterback all day in the passing game.

On this week’s opponent, Old Dominion:

And now we all know [the New Mexico win is] behind us now. We have a big conference game coming up, our conference opener against [Old Dominion], a team that’s real well coached team and that we’re super familiar with. Their head coach was with us at Kansas State. When we first came back the second time, he was with us on our staff. So obviously, has great familiarity with what we’re doing. Their defense coordinator played for us at Kansas State, and then coaching for us at Kansas State the last time I was there. And then of course, there was Remington Rebstock, who was with us on our staff [at UTEP] when I first got here.

There’s a lot of familiarity. They run a lot of the Kansas State defensive packages that we’ve seen, but they also put some other wrinkles in as well. It’ll be a good test for us. Their record is not indicative of what kind of football team they are. They’re getting better and improving all the time. It’s obviously going to be a really tough test for us to open conference play at home. [ODU] has a quarterback who makes a lot of plays, he’s very athletic and dynamic. They can score some points on you.