UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 10/03/2022

We’ll get started here with normal procedure. Talk about last week’s game and then we’ll roll into this week’s contest.

Obviously, a big road win for us and a game that was very frenetic and lots of things went on throughout the game. I think there’s a lot a lot of good learning from it in the win, which is always good. I think our team has had a lot of good learning experiences this year, which is what you want as you go throughout the schedule.

Going into that game I was very concerned about their offense. I talked in the press conference last week about their quarterback and how good of a player he is. I just really thought their offense was a difficult task for anybody. They had played a difficult schedule. But I knew they had some tremendous weapons in their offense and did some really good things. The quarterback is a hard guy to tackle as you would watch games previously. He is just a hard guy to get ahold of. They’re very good on their opening drives. They’ve been good on their opening drives for a long time, ever since he’s been there. So, when we fell behind seven to nothing, that was no surprise to me.

I like the way we responded offensively. They ate up more clock than what they traditionally do. That was a little bit surprising on that first drive. I think we got the ball back just a little bit over nine minutes left in the quarter, so they ate up almost six minutes of the first quarter with the drive. But I liked the way we responded offensively. We put together a good drive of our own and ate up a lot of clock there, had some good conversions in that drive, We took some chances in that drive just because I knew the nature of the game was going to be one that we were going to have to score some points to win the game. So, I liked the way we performed from that point on, both offensively and defensively throughout the first half.

It was a very close-fought game after our first touchdown drive and we were able to get another field goal, which we just need to continue to improve on because a 14-7 lead would have been a lot better than a 10-7 lead at that point. But we took the next opportunity that we had and went down and scored a touchdown, ran the ball a lot.

When we’ve been going to our play-action passing game it’s been really good. We went to the play-action pass there in the red zone and hit it to Trent (Thompson) for a touchdown and got the 17-7 lead there. They got the ball back with a little bit of time and because we got the ball to start the second half, I felt like it stimulated them to try to take chances there. I think if they would have got the ball to start the second half, they probably wouldn’t even have been that aggressive. But in that time and junction in the game, you should be aggressive, and they were.

We were able to make a play and get the turnover and score there. So, it gave us a really good closure, which is always so important on how you finish the half. We finished the half with two scores there very quickly and got us into the locker room with a good lead and feeling comfortable.

We came out in the third quarter and it just shows you how fast in college football things can turn on (you). We go four-and-out on the first drive and punt the ball to them. They put together a good drive. Again, not anything unexpected. After five minutes in the third quarter, they got 14 points. I mean, they’re going to score, they’re going to get their points, they’re going to do their thing. The next drive. we start off with a big run with Ronnie (Awatt) and he gets hit really hard. It was a really good tackle by them, a real physical tackle, and we didn’t hold on to the ball and they get the ball back and go down and score and here you go. We got ourselves a football game before you know what’s going on.

A lot of teams would have folded their tent right there, and we didn’t. We stayed within ourselves. So, we made one of the biggest plays of the game when Gavin (Hardison) stepped up in the pocket under duress and made a great throw to Tyrin (Smith) and Tyrin made a great catch. We got a big scoring play right there to get the lead back to where we wanted to have it, more than a one-score lead. But again, they got opportunities.

Probably the biggest play in the game was when they were inside the red zone and Jadrian (Taylor) got the fumble recovery and took it back all the way and got us a 20-point lead that we needed to get secured there at that time of the game. But again, tribute to Charlotte, they did a nice job of coming back and executing their offense and creating some plays.

We had the unfortunate penalty on the stop when the game should have been over there at the end of the game and got it extended. They end up scoring and making it even more exciting. It led down to IJ (Ilijah Johnson) making that big play at the end of the game, a really gutsy play.

A lot of good stuff went on in all three segments of the football game. I think our special teams is continuing to improve. We made a lot of plays on special teams in the 19 snaps that we had of special teams play. A lot of guys played tremendous on both sides of the football and in the special teams. So, I’m really happy with the way we played, and we knew it was going to be a difficult game. Everybody expected it to be a hard fought, close game and it sure was and it was an exciting win for our program.

On playing at LA Tech on Saturday:

So, moving on to this week, another challenge lies ahead for us, another road game, back-to-back road games outside the state of Texas. So again, it’ll be against a team that has a good passing attack, runs the ball well, really talented receivers, big, tall quarterback with a very strong arm. The running backs got good shiftiness and speed to them. Defensively, they’re very athletic on defense and have a lot of returners from last year’s defense, a very experienced defense with some new faces in there. But the new faces are athletic. They have a lot of depth on their defensive football team. It’s a big challenge for us going into another road conference game here as we go into this week.

On the team running the ball more after being pass heavy to start the season:

Your team takes a different identity every year. In the second half of last year, we were really throwing the ball well and doing that well. I think now the identity of this year’s team has taken a little bit different of a turn. What we’re doing now really fits our personality better. And obviously it’s helping us to have some success. If you guys look at the Boise stats right now, I think they’re the number six or number five team defensively in the country. So, if you can run the ball like we did against them, against a team of that caliber that’s especially that good on defense. They were really, really strong on defense. It just shows you that that’s probably something we should be doing more of. Then it’s really allowing Gavin to be real precise and his game is really picked up because he can start attacking people with his arm talent and he’s just running our offense to a high, high level. So, I think he’s feeling really comfortable with what we’re doing, too. So, it’s just morphed us into the type of offense that we need to be in the game. We held the ball for 40 minutes against Boise and 33 plus last week, and so that always is a real positive for you. Knock on wood, we’ve been minimizing our turnovers because of it too. So, it’s been a real positive turn for us and it’s going to be important in these games down the stretch here for sure.

On the secret to his team handling adversity:

I think that the quality of character and the experience of our guys on our team. I gave our guys a lot of credit as to the quality of character and how they’ve matured as a football team. It’s a good sign because most teams that you would be around would have really panicked in that situation. Instead of us panicking, we step up and make that huge play on third down with Tyrin and Gavin, and that kind of jumpstarted things again. The defense was playing with a lot of passion too. Just so much character gained from that, but I think it’s a lot to our leadership and our experience on our football team.

On the team bouncing back from the loss at New Mexico to win back-to-back games:

I just think again us trying to find our identity on what best fits our football team. We go back and look, and the New Mexico loss was just a tough weekend for us. We had a bad, bad weekend and we had to get it fixed. We tried to really look at things and say, hey, how can you get these things fixed? We made some good adjustments to do the things that our team does the best and those guys rallied. As I said before, we got a lot of good football players that are proving that they can play well and now they’re starting to play better. But now the challenge just lies ahead. Here comes another week and we got an even tougher challenge than we had last week. That’s just kind of how the conference is going to be. We got to have a great week and great preparation going into this ballgame.

On the impact of winning consecutive contests:

I think we’re gaining confidence from it, and if we were going to stumble from prosperity, we were sure set up for it after the Boise win. I feel like our guys handled it really well because I felt like we probably played one of our very best games of the year. Boise was our best, but I think Charlotte was real close because again, Charlotte’s offense can be really explosive. They have played a lot of good teams. I felt like we went out and handled that long trip. It was a long trip. It was a difficult schedule getting up early and we handled all that well. So, I was pleased with that part of it. Now our guys, more than anything, need to continue to realize that the work’s going to be better this week and that’s how we handle it. Our work is going to be better this week than what it was last week and the week before. We got to really raise our game up for this game.

On Deion Hankins’s impact in the win at Charlotte:

Deion was a force on Saturday the way he ran. The play I didn’t even mention was our conversion there in the second quarter, what was that 30 yards, I don’t even know. He converted on a zone play. The (offensive) line got him 15 and then he got whatever the rest of that run was on his own and moving the whole pile. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a running back move a pile like that in a game where he actually took him from about seven yards short of a first down to two or three yards past the first down stick. That was just Deion in the middle of a bunch of people moving forward. It was really impressive to see his strength show itself like that. It probably hasn’t been talked about as much as it should have, how really impressive that run was. But it was more than once. If we get him started, he’s really doing some stuff better than he ever has done. So, it’s really nice to see him operating at that high of a level and getting his strength back.