UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 10/11/2021

Start off visiting about last week’s ballgame. I thought both teams scored early in the game you know we scored on our opening drive which was really good for us to do. I thought we were good on third-down conversions. On that first drive we threw the ball really well. Finish with a good running play. And then, you know, I was impressed by what [Southern Miss] did. They put together a good drive early in the game and tied it up 7-7. So now we’re back tied up and then it started to become a type of game I figured it was going be the whole way, ball-control type of game and obviously had a lot of respect for their defense. I was pleased with the way we ran the ball in the first half. I thought we ran it extremely well and thought Deion [Hankins] and Ronnie [Awatt] ran the ball hard and did some nice things for us.

Our defense responded with a tremendous goal-line stand. Blake Thompson is the guy who stops every goal-line stand. With the ones we’ve had this year, Blake Thompson is the first one at point of attack on those. We talked a little bit after the game, the depth of our defensive line right now and all 12 of those guys ‚Äìwe’re rotating 12 defensive linemen in a game. We don’t take a drop off. All of them get into the game and they all play with fire and intensity. We’re a really good third and fourth quarter defensive football team because we’re fresh.

On LA Tech:

Talking about our upcoming opponent. [LA Tech] is a favorite coming into our stadium, and they’re favored right now. It’s a big challenge for us as we get ready for them. They’re obviously very talented and their quarterback is extremely talented. He’s played at two different Big 12 schools, and has a good resume. They have a running back from App State that’s really talented ‚Äìa nice addition for them. They have some good receivers coming back from last year who are really talented players. Defensively, they have a bunch of six-year players on their defense. A bunch of guys who are super seniors. They’re talented, and we know that. [Skip Holtz] has taken his team to multiple bowl games in a row and won most of them. Skip does a good job there and has a really good program. It’ll be a big test for us.

On playing on the fact that UTEP is one win from bowl eligibility, and in first place:

I don’t talk about that right now. There’s so much motivation for us with this ball game right now. So many big things can be accomplished from a win. Right now, the bowl part of it is not really [on our mind] ‚Äìit’s on everybody’s goal chart, and this win will get us to that number.

On Reynaldo Flores being more involved at Southern Miss:

I can’t say enough about Rey. I really complimented him when we talked to the team after practice. After practice we talk on Mondays about the game and who gets decals for special plays. I couldn’t talk enough about Rey for just that. He’s a 4.0 engineering student, he studies his playbook and a fierce competitor. Fundamentally he’s great and getting really close to being really good at the receiver position. He’s got the same type of game like JG [Justin Garrett], because JG is one of our top, most valuable players. But he’s making a pretty good push to become that type of guy that just does everything exactly the way it’s supposed to be done. He plays with physicality and strength.