UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 08/22/2022

Our team is focused in on getting ready for game one here, one of twelve. We’re looking forward to the first ‚Äò915 game’ of the year. Our team can’t wait to get out there. As we learned today, there’s still a lot more work to get done. That’s the big thing as a coach that we’re looking at and need to get accomplished over these next few days. You’re actually stealing a day in preparation because it’s a Monday, and we got a lot of work done already on our first opponent.

Today was a hybrid of what would be considered a Tuesday practice, but just a little bit shorter than a normal Tuesday practice. We went full (pads) good on good and got plenty of work that way. Tomorrow will be the same style of practice for us. It will be exactly identical to what we did today. Wednesday’s practice will be a little bit more of a hybrid of a Tuesday/Wednesday practice, and then we’ll go back and do our normal Thursday practice.

The guys geared in today. They’d had a break with Sunday as their off day. We did some things well today but obviously we have a lot to work on here as we finish up the week. That’s going to be big for us.

I’ve been really pleased with the preparation that we’ve had throughout camp. It’s been a good, hard camp for us. I’ve been pleased with the progress of how our younger guys are developing. That’s a big thing as a coach, how are we developing our young guys.

As we start to set our two-deep, there’s still some competition going on right now at certain spots, and there’s guy’s battling today. There’s guys that switched spots today at certain position groups as they went through the battle. It’s still ever-changing. That’s how far away we are as a football team from kickoff.

I would say one guy lost his spot today to another guy as far as guys that would see the field for us. We’ll probably play three to four running backs in the game, five to six different receivers in the ball game and so on and so forth. It’s just a continuous battle going on.

Switching to Saturday, we’re obviously looking to have a great turnout and are looking to get our students there. We’ve got a good function going on tonight to encourage more students to come to the game. We’re getting our team out to participate in that this evening, but our guys got to stay locked into the focus of preparing for the game.

My message to our fans is that they’ve got to be a big part of the game. They’ve got to make a difference in this game. So, when North Texas has the football, we’ve got to be loud, to make noise and to cause havoc for them and use all the fans being here to our advantage. We’ve got to feed off of their intensity and excitement as a football team. That’s my urging to everyone who comes to the game, really get into the game, and help your Miners have the homefield advantage in this ball game.

North Texas is to me, and this isn’t coach-speak, this is me being candid, they’re one of the toughest teams we’re going to play all year in the conference. They’ve been to I think to six consecutive bowl games since Seth (Littrell) has been there and are always the team to beat in the league. I think they have a really good football team and are experienced as we are.

As you look at experience coming back, they have just as much experience coming back as we do. They have a lot of good players. They have a quarterback who is 29 years old, so there’s good experience right there in itself. He’s a big, athletic player. They’ve very deep at running back, they’re very deep at receiver.

All of their starters are coming back from their secondary. Both of their starting linebackers are coming back. Four of their five offensive linemen are coming back. They’ve got a very, very talented receiver who got hurt last year who will be back for the game.

Like I said, it will be one of our toughest tests all year. As a coach, that’s coming right out of the gate for your opening game, so we’ve got to be ready to play really good football from snap one. That’s the challenge that we have for our football team right now, and that’s why our preparation has been locked in and focused on with what we’re dealing with.

Again, we know North Texas is going to be a huge test for us. It will be a good indicator of where our football team is going into week one. As you set the stage for our season, we have some tough tests right out of the get go. That’s good and that’s fine, it will get us ready for the rest of the conference and the rest of the nonconference slate as we move forward.

On learning from the match-up against UTSA when playing in front of a larger crowd at home:

I don’t think we played well in that game for any means. Again, it was the first time we had played in that type of situation. I think we’ve got to make sure we stay really focused on our preparation, but we’ve got to go out and play aggressively. That’s going to be a big part of what we need to do. They need to play aggressively, play with confidence and attack in any situation they can attack in and not feel like because of the big crowd we have to be tentative.

On the two-deep not being set yet:

There’s plusses and minuses to both sides. You’d like to have it set, but again I like that the competition is there. A lot of times your team is in a spot where you don’t have the competition because you don’t have the depth. It’s a matter with us of iron sharpening iron. It’s not that someone isn’t doing it, so we have to find someone else to do it. It’s that we have guys who have prepared really hard and are ready to play so now those guys are trying to outcompete their competitors for the position. It’s more been driven from the depth we have on our football team, so it’s a positive for us this year.

On facing a tough opponent in the first game:

I don’t mind having a tough game week one. I think there’s a lot that goes into it. I think it’s made us make the most of three-and-a-half weeks of our preparation that we’ve had leading up to this ball game. We’ve got the team knowing we can’t come out and just cruise into our first game and just build as the season moves along. It helped our intensity throughout game. As it always goes, the game gets here quicker than anybody expects it to. It’s gone fast for us. The summer went quick, and the fall camp definitely went fast for us.

On the increased expectations on the team heading into the season:

I think the biggest thing is being 1-0. That’s the part we’ve tried to get into our guys from the moment that they got here and started working. You’ve got to be 1-0. You’ve got to prepare for today and not look outside at the big picture because it will overwhelm you at times. That’s always been a big thing for us, to be 1-0 in everything we do, so the team has to take that stance as well too.