Jax State Gamecocks College Football Pregame Quote, 12/03/2024

We’re certainly excited to be hosting the Conference USA Championship Game. Particularly, we’re new to this FBS thing. And, you know, really proud of our players and our staff and our program to be able to get to this point.

We know it’s a huge game. We‚Äôre really excited for the University, really excited for our players, excited to have a great opponent with what we just saw a few days ago, and it’s a little shorter week, so we have got a lot of work to do. But I’m proud we’re here. It should be a great game, and hopefully we’ll get a great crowd.

Update on Tyler Huff’s injury:

Yeah, he tweaked his ankle there in the third quarter. He’s going to be limited all week. It’s probably going to be up to a gametime thing and if we feel he can be effective. Certainly, running the ball is a big part of his game and a big part of our offense. We don’t want to put him out there when he can’t be himself, so we’ll see how the treatment goes over the next couple of days, and then probably wait until game time on Friday.

On seamless transition to FBS:

Really, thanks for asking the question, because there is a lot to that. You‚Äôve seen with most schools that transition, it’s hard. It’s hard to win period, right? But it’s really hard when you’re moving up from FCS to FBS, and it seems like it‚Äôs getting even harder if you’re looking at some other schools that are going through that transition.

We had a great benefit that there was a pretty good culture when we got here and some good players. We tried to establish that we’re going to get our culture right the very first spring and, no matter what happens during the season, we’re going to make sure we maintain the type of culture we think we have to have to win and then recruit some good players and go from there. I think that’s what we’ve been able to do, even when we struggled at the beginning of this year. Our culture was still good. The way we were working was still good and nobody panicked.

I think that’s been a key to our success. If you get really good players, coach them up as well as you can, have the right environment for them, then you‚Äôve got a chance to have success.

On what he learned from Saturday’s game against WKU:

Yeah, they played really well. And our guys played hard, but we didn’t execute at all. We had some uncharacteristic things on both sides that didn’t allow us to win the game or to finish the game off the way we wanted to. They put some new stuff out there, but our guys have seen everything all year. We‚Äôve got to be able to adjust to it. Now, they could come out with a completely different game plan Friday night against us, so we have to be prepared for that, too. More than anything, I told our guys we‚Äôve just got to play a cleaner game when you’re going to play a championship game. You’re going to play a good team, and we‚Äôve just got to play a cleaner game. We‚Äôve got to eliminate some of the key mistakes that we had during that game, and then see what happens.

On the breakout of running back Tre Stewart:

We kind of thought we had something there, because you could see his skill set, but you don’t ever know. He wasn’t here until the summer, and so he had to be a quick learner. He was a very quick learner and got better as the season went along. He’s one of those guys that kind of makes you tackle him. We‚Äôre really proud. He probably learned it as quick as any running back that we’ve had in this system, which is a big credit to him. Then Coach McDowell, the running back coach, did a great job with him. He’s had a tremendous year, and I hope he’s opened some eyes. I think hopefully some folks at the next level will see what he can do and give him an opportunity.

On playing WKU again just six days after first matchup:

I think this is unique, but it’s the same for both teams. It’s a shorter week, but it’s a shorter week for both teams. We‚Äôve had two weeks of preparation for this and they’ve had two weeks of preparation for us now. Hopefully, it’ll be a clean game. I think it’ll be a very exciting game. We want to have a home field advantage, so I hope all of our fans that are listening or reading, or what have you will show up and give us a home field advantage.