South Alabama Jaguars College Football Pregame Quote, 10/14/2019

On facing Troy on Wednesday:

We’re excited about playing Troy, we’ve had 13 good days of preparation which has been good for us ‚Äî especially at this time of year ‚Äî to give some of our guys with bumps and bruises a chance to get some good rehab in and to study Troy offensively and defensively. They are a very athletic team on both sides of the ball, their quarterback can hurt you with his feet and his arm. It’s a game that we are really looking forward to, it’s for the ‘Belt.’

On what he saw evaluating South Alabama with extra time since the last game:

We saw that on third down we could have helped ourselves. We were a play away from beating Georgia Southern and if we could’ve made a play or two more on third down we could’ve stayed on the field and given our defense a chance to catch their breath.

On playing on Wednesday night:

We’ve approached it like we would a Saturday game, we backed everything up four days and went from there. A week ago we played on a Thursday so we’re familiar with midweek games, it’s not that different for us.

On Troy’s approach with a new coaching staff:

They are throwing the ball around more this year than what they have in the past. Defensively they have a real similar set up to what they’ve used over the last couple of years, but offensively they are spreading the ball out considerably more.

On Troy:

Troy is an outstanding football team. Offensively their quarterback is a guy who can hurt you with his feet and make all the throws, and they have some big, physical wide receivers. Defensively they have good size in the front seven and a lot of speed on the back end in the secondary. They have really good return guys who have had big returns hurt some people on special teams.

On what the team has worked on with extra time to prepare for the game:

Our punting game the last couple of weeks has been really good; we have a freshman punter who last week did an outstanding job of flipping the field for us and pinning the opponent deep. We were 50-50 on kickoffs last week, Diego [Guajardo] ‚Äî who is also a freshman ‚Äî put two out of the back of the end zone; unfortunately the two that we didn’t put out of the end zone we kicked out of bounds, which hurt us with field position. We’ve worked on those during the open date, and also worked on third downs offensively and defensively. In the red zone we need to make sure we score touchdowns whenever we get down there, and if they do get in the red zone we need to try and hold them to field goals. Those were things we were able to concentrate on with the extra time for preparation, which will be the keys to being successful this week.

On having a ranked team in the Sun Belt Conference:

I voted App State really high this week, I had them as a top-20 team; they are a very good football team. We’ve played good football teams all year, I had Memphis rated really high before this past week and Nebraska was a top-25 team when we played them. When you play in this conference you are going to play some of the top teams in the country. App State, to me, is one of the top teams and they’ve proven that, they beat North Carolina which took Clemson to the wire. Georgia State beat Tennessee, Tennessee then turned around and beat Mississippi State. Georgia Southern ‚Äî who we took to double overtime and had multiple opportunities to win the game ‚Äî had Minnesota beat until Minnesota made a play on third-and-29 and then converted a fourth down. When you play in the Sun Belt Conference, week in and week out you’re playing some of the top teams in the nation. Every team in this league has beaten or played well against the top Power 5 teams in the nation, Troy will be no different this week.