Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders College Football Pregame Quote, 10/18/2021

[We’re] coming off an open date and we’re looking forward to this week. I think this is the perfect example of understanding the importance of taking care of yourself. If you look at Connecticut, everybody will say they’ve got a bad record. You know they won their first game, Saturday. You look at that and must think, ‚ÄòThat’s a bad team,’ they are not a bad team. They lost by two points to Wyoming, who’s won five games this year, they lost to Vanderbilt by two points at the buzzer, Vanderbilt had a chance to beat South Carolina this weekend, they’ve had a couple other close losses in there. So, this is a team [where] you can’t look at their record and assume anything. We have to prepare ourselves mentally and physically to play a game. Going on the road is hard, it’s tough and we’re going up there. We have to be ready to play. That’s been our focus this past week, the couple days that we practiced. Yesterday at practice and this week in practice will be on us improving and trying to get better. Don’t look at their record and assume anything because it’s deceiving. We’re playing a really good football team.

Improving vs. just winning the game:

I mean, you always try to improve each week. Individually, improve yourself and collectively as a team, we get better. That’s our focus every week, every day ‚Äìto try and do that. This is the most important game and I know its coach talk, clich√© talk, all that stuff. We’ll worry about conference stuff next week. And we have to go up there and find a way to scratch and claw and try to get a win this weekend ‚Äì or Friday night. You can’t look at this team as 1-7and not think they’re very good because this is a good team ‚Äì they’ve got good players and had some bad luck happen to them. Like I said they lost a couple close games, so we[have]got to be ready to play. I don’t doubt our players will, they’ll be ready.

On UConn’s improvements that stood out while scouting:

They’re not giving up a lot of points, they play good defense. They lost a quarterback or they made a quarterback change halfway through. He got hurt at Vanderbilt, I don’t know if he’ll be back or not but the last couple weeks they’ve gone back to him. They’ve been very consistent, they’ve protected the ball. They’re going to be balanced. Watching the game, on TV on Saturday, their tempo is a lot faster than what it looks like on film. You know, so they’re going to get lined up fast. Their offensive line has had their starting left tackle out the last two weeks with some issues, but he’ll be back this week. But their offensive line is big and they’re physical. They have a freshman running back that I think is really good. You know, he’s probably a 200-pounder in that range, right there, that runs with speed and power. They have big receivers that can go up for contested catches. And like I said defensively, they don’t give up a lot of big plays, not giving up a bunch of points. They’re sound in the kicking game. I think, they’ve played some tough teams, they got beat by Pitt early ‚Äì Pitt’s a top-15 team. Fresno State beat them in the first game. This is a good football team. I keep telling our team, I keep telling everybody I see, ‚ÄòDon’t look at their record and assume that this is not a good team.’