UAB Blazers College Football Pregame Quote, 10/11/2021

Obviously a little bit of a different morning for us this week compared to last Monday. You know, I am just really proud of our whole team effort. This morning as we were watching our film that we always watch on Monday morning. Just the sideline, the focus, and the effort. It started in practice on Monday of last week. We talked about that on Monday. How do you handle coming off a loss? And our guys handled it. Every week we play for a championship and we’re going to talk about that here in a minute. It’s another championship week for us. Justthe effort and the practice for the week. As I said the sideline with the focus we had a good crowd there. A lot of good energy and it sure was great to get that first win at home.

Now turn our attention to Southern Miss. It’s one of those games where records are irrelevant. I have total respect for Coach Hall. I’ve known him for a long time. What a great coach he is. He has done a great job at all his different stops. So, we know they’re going to be prepared. We were looking forward to playing them last year at home and that game got cancelled on us. We really have memories from the last time we were there. We’ve got work to do this week to get ready. In all conference games we say it’s 0-0. We know it’s going to be a huge game for them. It’s huge for us. We’ve got to have another great week and get ready for them.

On playing Southern Miss and a rivalry game:

The game a couple years ago was a long time ago, but you know it’s fresh in our mind. I think we talk all the time about being self-motivated andwe’re going to try and be motived the same way every week. Conference games are different so there is a history with Southern Miss and UAB. I think proximity, they’ve got guys from Alabama and we’ve got guys from Mississippi. They are on our side of the conference. It’s the next game so it’s all those factors that go into it for us. It’s the next game, it’s a conference game so that makes it a championship game.

On Hayden Pittman’s 31-game reception streak:

I am proud that he decided to play one more year for us and what a great leader he’s been. We talk a lot about him being a warrior and blocking him. We had two or three clips this morning where he’s given extra effort on some blocks. He had a really big catch down in the end zone that he’s got both hands on the ball. He’s just been a great player for us and I still remember his big touchdown catch he had in Hattiesburg back in 2017. He’s been a great leader for us and of course you have Alex Wright sitting here who had a great game. I’m really proud ofboth of these guys and the whole team.

On defense:

It’s a constant effort. Maybe it’s an eye-opening experience when you play a guy like we did a couple weeks ago it wasn’t lack of effort. I think it was maybe being on the field too long and injuries and then give him (Malik Willis) a lot of credit he was a great player. That probably made us better and I think it really tells the defensive line what they have to do and it’s relentless, stay on your feet, get off blocks. We had really good pursuit, goodcoverage which helped some of those sacks. I’m really proud of our front guys for playing the run first. We stopped the run on first and second down and forced them in some passes. They made some plays on us on third downs and we had some unfortunate penalties.