FIU Panthers College Football Pregame Quote, 10/04/2022

On bouncing back from Western Kentucky. getting the win against New Mexico State. and his analysis of UConn:

Our kids went to New Mexico State, played extremely hard and was really proud of our coaches and our players. How they bounced back from the week before, and kept getting better. So that was exciting to see. As we head into University of Connecticut, Jim Mora I know well, we both have the same agent. We’ve coached against each other two times and also both our dads are coaches we’re kind of coaches brats, I guess you’d say and that’s good seeing him, he’s got a football team that is improving and had a big, big win against Fresno. He’s an excellent program last week. He’s played an extremely tough schedule. And they’re a big powerful football team. They’re probably the biggest team, they’re the biggest team we’ve played all year. They’re physical, they’re powerful, they’re long, and they pound the rock.

Their starting quarterback is Zion Turner, who played at St. Thomas Aquinas, he’s a heck of a football player. He won a ton. I don’t think he ever lost the football game and St. Thomas when he was quarterback. He’s doing a great job with him as a freshman. They got a powerful line and a lot of two tight end type offense and try to knock us off the ball. Defensively, they played really sound. They’ve got a big defensive line. Their linebackers are aggressive and extremely impressed with them. They played excellent defense at times. And last week, they played really really well. And in their kicking game, their kicker has extremely strong play, been impressed with what they’ve done in those areas. So it’s going to be a tough contest. Fortunately, Homecoming and our kids are excited about playing and I know UCONN will be excited about playing also.

On what impressed him the most about the defense against New Mexico State after giving up 73 points to WKU:

Coach Dewitt and our defensive staff did a great job working with young men, but also our young men are really, really young. And they’re kind of growing up. And so, we’ve made some plays and we gave up a couple early in the Texas State game and then we kind of started playing better. And then Western Kentucky. They’re excellent. They’ve been one of the best offenses in the country. As you saw their quarterback from last year is playing for the Patriots and the quarterback they have now is excellent. Their speed, their size, they kind of consumed us a little bit and we just kind of miss a tackle here, be off here, quarterback was accurate could have run a little bit wrong literally go outside of a guy when you should go inside of a guy makes all the difference in the world.

They worked at it, they saw it, our kids kind of got used to the speed of the game. And we kept practicing them next week and the New Mexico State tried to do some of the same things to us and we fit them up right ran to it better understood it better. So I think the process of them growing up helped a lot that we’re gonna have to do the same thing again this week. But I thought that the kids really, really responded well, to us coaching them and didn’t think about the past learn from the past and don’t let it affect themselves Saturday and I thought it was impressive to give up 73 points and then they give up seven and zero in the second half was really impressed by that and those group of guys.

On what he thinks about the DB Demetrius Hill’s play on defense:

He’s one that’s just kind of gets keeps developing for us. In the spring he would, he’d have a bad scrimmage and he’d have a good scrimmage and you can ask him like he was like Jekyll and Hyde. He was just learning and he is very smart, very physical and good size good athlete. He’s a really good player. He really asked a lot of intelligent questions. He’s understanding what the offense is trying to do to him now and he’s able to correct himself during the game which really helps us and he’s playing really really well and I look forward to watching him play a lot more football.

On the importance of gaining momentum after a big win:

We definitely want to string a couple together. But what I keep talking about is you go back to ground one again on Monday, you learn from mistakes because other teams are going to copy what you did. They did other things they did good against you. Especially with their offense, we cleaned up the bits and pieces that other teams have done good against us. So we need to be able to keep multiplying, improving, improving, improving. The good thing about it is as you play, a team comes out and tries to do something, all the kids go oh, they’re trying to do what they did to us we know how beat this now or we know how to block this. Coach Yoast is going to call this play now because we know how to beat this coverage or whatever. So that familiarity with everything starts making you calm down in a game. You hear a lot of times athletes kind of they kind of slow down and they can kind of see it better. And now it’s going to slow down a little bit and they’ll be able to make more plays. So hopefully we’ll be able to do that. You know UCONN is going to come in and just try to pound us and those shot deep shots off on us on defense and then offensively, they’re going to try to corral us and keep us in there and use their big D line and try to progress against our offensive line. So it’s going to be a battle of the wills on the lines in this game.