UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 09/18/2023

It was a really nice setting to get back to Arizona and play. It brought back a lot of memories for me because we actually dressed in the locker room that used to be the home locker room when I was there. So, (there were) a lot of memories coming out of that locker room, and it was a beautiful night in the desert. As I watched the game and I watched our guys play, I felt like our defense really came out early and played extremely well. Our offense had a chance, the 3-1 that we didn’t convert after the turnover early in the ballgame. I feel like if we get that conversion right there, we’re probably going to take advantage, get a chance to go down and score. I think if we strike first, a lot of things would change. The reason I say that is because as I as I watched the game, I thought Arizona had a tremendous team. I thought they had a lot of talent across the board, as we all know. I think they’re very explosive offensively with a lot of different tools and weapons. But they also have a big athletic offensive line across the board. Then defensively, they’ve developed a lot of depth, and after playing against them, their secondary was absolutely outstanding. They had some tall corners that were really, really good for tall corners. They had a lot of length and covered our guys extremely well, and then their safety, number nine, we knew he was really physical going into the game. They’re very talented. As I watched the game, I felt like the game kind of turned on us in a couple of different situations. But all in all, I feel like our guys competed really well against them. I feel like we matched up pretty good against them. We got that drive that we had to settle for the field goal. If we get that in the end zone, it’s 7-7 late in the second quarter. So, pivotal things were not converting the third and short early in the game, not finishing that drive when we got the ball down there with a chance to score and just settling for a field goal and them putting together that long drive late in the second quarter. We always talk about trying to win the last four minutes of the half, and we didn’t do that. Let’s say we just break even. I think we’re in a really good position. Then the next part of the game that was very pivotal is when we came out in the third quarter and offensively had the three and out. Then we got the ball back again, didn’t get much of a drive sustained there and punted the ball again. The first time, Arizona got a field goal and the second time they got a touchdown. We just kept giving them too many chances to get the ball and to defend with all the weapons that they had (is difficult). So, we need to sustain our drives. We talked about it in the radio show after the game. We moved the ball. Then we move it until it got down to critical times, and we didn’t finish the drive with points. That’s where we got to be more efficient in a game like that because for us to expect to hold Arizona under 20 points, that’s not a realistic goal for us to accomplish. So, I thought all in all there were a lot of positives from what I saw. The main thing is how our guys matched up and how our guys competed. I talked about it after the game on the radio broadcast cast about how the Pac-12 official came over in the fourth quarter. He said to me ‚Äòthat your guys are playing so hard, it’s really fun for me to watch a team play this hard’. I’ve been coaching some 30 years. I’ve never had an official take the time out to come over and say that. So again, I like the way our guys battled. I liked a lot of the things. There’s a lot of positives again for us to garner from the game. Obviously, I sit back and go, gosh, a certain thing happens here or there, and we do things better in just certain situations and it’s probably a really well- contested football game. That’s where the regret comes. We didn’t go down there and get a win and take advantage of a situation. We still have a lot of guys that are playing high quality football and had a lot of players play extremely well. We got to get better at the things that we know we need to get better at. We know we need to get better at finishing drives and getting more points on the board.

On the challenging schedule to start the season:

Obviously, we started off the season with three of our first four games being on the road. By no means were any of them going to be easy tests for us. What became of the Jacksonville State trip, playing a team in their first opportunity to play at this level and all the things that were set up for us there. We let that one get away and then our next two road games are against a Big Ten and Pac 12 opponent. So, with that being said, those are not situations where they’re easy to come out and get wins. So, what we have to do is fix the things that needed to get fixed. We’re back at home, and now we’re back for one more non-conference game against a Mountain West opponent now. It’s a difficult test, again. So, our non-conference opponents (included) one Big Ten, another Power five and then a Mountain West team. So, that was not an easy test for us, but (it’s good we’re) back at home now to play against a really good team.

On UNLV:

UNLV’s done some positive things. We know they’re a very athletic, talented team because they compete well in the Mountain West Conference . They have very good schemes that they do on both offense and defense. They’re coached very well, got plenty of talent and got some really good players across the board on both sides of the football. It will be a difficult test for us of course, but I’m looking forward to getting a little continuity with a couple home games in a row. Obviously, they’ve had some success. They’ve got the ability to put points on the board offensively with what they’re doing. Defensively, they’re a difficult preparation just because of the different type of looks that they’ll give you defensively. But more than anything, it’s just their size and athleticism that they have on the defensive side of the football. I think they got two quarterbacks right now that they’re playing. Their starter got hurt last week, and the backup came in and did a really good job. So, they’ve got some depth at quarterback. They’ve got a receiver that caught 12 passes last week and had really good production for them. They’ve got good talent at the receiver positions. They’re deep in the running back (position) for sure. Defensively, they play a lot of guys, so they’re pretty loaded up across the board defensively. They’re playing eight to 10 defensive linemen, and they’ll rotate their secondary guys quite a bit. So, the talent definitely is there for them. They’re a Mountain West team, so they’ll be a big test for that way.

On improving the offense:

(Our offense) isn’t where we want to be, but we’re never going to be like the most prolific scoring offense because we don’t try to be. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to score one more (point) than the other team scores. But we don’t want to be where we are. We don’t want to have the few amount of points that we’ve got after four games because it’s not what we need. If we were scoring enough points, we’d be 4-0. I’m not as much concerned about where we stand nationally with points anymore. We’ve always been, even when we’ve been a really good offense, it’s been about our efficiency. Our efficiency is not good enough right now. So, we just need to continue to work on that and figure out how we can get better and improve on that.