UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 08/23/2021

It’s the first press conference of the year. It’s always great camp preparation when you have a game Week 0. That is always something that gets your team on edge. When you are playing your arch rival in your opener, I think that gets you really ready to compete and have a great camp; and also opening up on the road. There are definitely some challenges for us with those three things. We are also playing an opponent who only played two ball games last year, so there’s not as much film to study, but they haven’t had much turnover on their coaching staff, so there are a lot of similarities to when we played them in 2019. We have all that film to study. The thing that is a little bit different for us is their personnel, which has changed quite a bit from when we played them in 2019. They’ve also made some additions to their roster from last spring when they played two games. It has been good for us to do some research and get a good feel for what the new personnel brings to the table.

We have had some real positive additions to our depth chart and virtually every returner coming back from last season, excluding one or two spots. Camp has been very positive for us and we’ve gotten some great work in. We have worked extremely hard and had some long, detailed practices here as of late to make sure we are getting all of the nuances and special situations that might happen in the ball game.

We didn’t do a typical Monday practice today, but we did more of a Thursday practice, which is getting a bunch of our plays, third down calls and everything worked on. We took advantage of getting all of that stuff in today. Tuesday and Wednesday will be really physical days for us. We will have some physical practices and go good against good quite a bit tomorrow.

We have developed a lot more depth in the program and one of the big things about depth in games and practices is that it allows you to go good against good. I think that really helps your football team and helps the quality of your practices, so I have been pleased with that part of it as well. We are trying to get as many guys ready to play in this ball game as we can possibly have.

We are just getting our guys ready to go and we’re excited about our first opportunity of the season.

On preparing for two quarterbacks against NM State:

For us, we are going to prepare for both. We didn’t expect them to name a starting quarterback. I think they still kind of want to keep the competition open and they don’t want us to know who the starter is going to be. Our game plan is going to be very similar for both quarterbacks.

On facing a rival in NM State this week:

There’s excitement in this game. How could you not be excited about this game? Like I’ve said, this is our rivalry game, so there’s great excitement for them. We have a lot of guys on our roster that weren’t here the last time we played New Mexico State. A lot of our top players were younger players at that time, so there’s a good group of guys who have just never lined up on our team with the additional talented offensive and defensive players we’ve brought into our program. They haven’t had a chance to really play against them and this will be their first opportunity to do so, so I think they are excited.

On UTEP’s new defensive scheme:

I am just excited to see us get out there and have a good system that we are running. We will still be multiple and get into various fronts, but we will try to utilize our talent the best we can utilize it and get great pass rush from some of our defensive linemen. We are really excited about our two linebackers and what they bring to the table. I’m excited to see those two guys get out there and play and do some good things for us. I’m excited to see my team get out there and play.

On QB Gavin Hardison’s progression:

The big thing with Gavin is that all we’ve done is show him multiple pressure looks. Throughout camp, he’s seen a lot of pressure and is really understanding how the pressure can create mismatches with the speed that we have at receiver now. He is understanding how to take the matchups and take what they give us and get us into great matchups, which is going to come from being a more experienced quarterback.