UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 10/20/2023

Hats off to New Mexico State to play a good football game. I really like the way our team played in the first half. We only had four offensive possessions in the first half. So, it was a very controlled, slow moving first half of football being played to the style that that we like it to be played. The things that we did well, we had that long touchdown drive with Deion (Hankins) having the big run. I liked that part of it. The thing I look back on (is) when we came up just short on third down. That was (going to be) a huge conversion to me in the game. We had a linebacker run through that slowed Deion down on his run, and he didn’t quite get to the sticks. It left us fourth and short, close to midfield. I’ve thought about that decision over and over again. Really, there was just too much to lose and not enough to gain by going for it, even though I wanted to be aggressive there. The thoughts on that are if you don’t get it, they’ve got the ball at the 50. If you do get it, you still got to get a couple more first downs even to get into field goal range with time getting a little bit narrowed down. To me, it wasn’t worth the risk. We could have been a little bit more aggressive in the first half to try to take the lead. It was really obvious once it happened, the team that got the lead in that game and got more than a one-score lead, it really played into that team’s hand. New Mexico State came out and got a good drive executed to start the second half. They’re going to get that. They do some good things on offense. They got a score there and got the lead on us. It was huge for us to get to come back and get a touchdown to match that or get on the board. When we didn’t, and they got the ball back and put another score on on the scoreboard, it really changed the whole tempo and style of the game. They started playing more of a drop eight type of defense to us. We should have just continued to stay more patient and get us back to within one score, but we didn’t. We went for it on the one fourth down there in the second half and didn’t get it. (That) gave them field position where they got their next score. So, 28-7 was the final, but it was very tightly knit. Every possession was critical in that game. Once they jumped on us with a couple of scores, that really put us with our back against the wall. As I look at the film, we need to be more precise with our execution offensively and get some more points on the board. As I look back defensively, I thought our defense played really, really hard. I didn’t think we tackled as well as we’ve been tackling all season. If there was one thing that we didn’t do well in the game, it was tackle. We didn’t secure the edge of the defense as well as we needed to. No one runs the ball inside on us. They stay there trying to edge us, and they edged us some on our defense and got some good run game going on. It’s really difficult to run the ball inside out on our defense because of our personnel, but they got the ball on the edge with their run game and took advantage of it and got some scores. That’s obviously a big win for them and a tough loss for us. My overall evaluation, a lot of our guys played extremely hard, did a lot of good things. I thought Cade (McConnell) in his second start did some good things. He wasn’t pristine perfect like he was in start number one. I don’t think any of us expected him to be pristine. When you start like Cade did in game one, it puts a lot more pressure on you in game two. There’s a lot of pressure in a rivalry game too. He did some good things. He learned and got better. He doesn’t have a lot of experience and wasn’t getting very many reps in practice until he became the starter. He obviously was the fourth guy getting the reps in practice. He learned, he got better, and he’ll grow from that performance. Hopefully, that will help him in the Sam Houston game. Deion ran really hard and did some really good things. Our offensive line did a lot of good things, played well. For us in that game, the best thing we could have done was just continue to run the ball and run it effectively. We’re not going to win a whole lot of games when we’re throwing the ball 35 times a game. We threw it 32 (times), but we had some sacks, so we attempted 35 passes. That’s not who we need to be right now. For us to win, we have to run the ball well. We tried throwing it 35 times, and it’s not our M.O. for victory right now. Special teams wise. I thought in retrospect that Buzz (Flabiano) kicked the ball well just for the kickoffs. He didn’t get any (field goal) attempts. Josh (Sloan) punted the ball extremely well. So special teams was really kind of uneventful on both sides of the ball in the New Mexico State game. That’s my overall open assessment of the game.

On Sam Houston:

As I talked to some of the other coaches in the league, Sam Houston’s not a team indicative of their record right now. They have a lot of good players. They play fast. They’ve had some really good defensive performances this year. They defended BYU extremely well. They defended Air Force extremely well. They have the personnel to match that. They’ve lost two overtime games. They’re a good football team that’s just trying to find what their M.O. to victory is going to be. They’ve been really close in a lot of their games and played some really good football. Offensively, they have a quarterback that’s a good playmaker. I really like their running back position. They have good running backs that are strong and physical type of runners. They have some receivers that got some good skill and some good ball catching receivers that run good routes. The challenge for us is to try to get ourselves to the opportunity to win two consecutive road games. (It’s) really important for us and a big accomplishment for us to play on the road and get a road victory. This is the first time that I’ve been to Sam Houston to play a game. It’s obviously going to be one of our shorter trips that we will take in this conference. We’ll end up staying in College Station and go over the day of the game. Proximity of where to stay when you’re playing Sam Houston is always tough because you can either stay in the Woodlands or stay in College Station. We chose to stay in College Station and take the trip over from there.

On what to do better offensively:

We obviously need to put more points on the board. That’s the big thing for us. I think that’s the critical thing. The question is how do we do that? For us, I’ve said it, it’s creating more big plays. When we’re at our best, we create more big plays. We did create a big play in the run game (against NM State), and I think we it’s got to be a mixture of both. Where we lacked last week is that we didn’t take our shots early enough in the game, (specifically) in the passing game. That’s what we got to do, take our shots and get some big plays in the passing game. When we fell behind, they knew we had to do that, and they were defending that well. For us to improve offensively, do more like what we did in FIU. Get some of our shots out there early, take advantage of some good shot action to get big plays in the passing game. In the running game, just create a lot better. We’ve been blocking well. Our offensive line still is the strength of our team, the way they prepare and the way they play. We just got to have more longer runs, create longer runs with some of the schemes that we’re doing offensively to help us get more points on the board. Overall, we got to score a lot more points than we have scored to get ourselves where we need to be.