UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 09/26/2022

Obviously, I was happy with the way our guys played last weekend. I thought we played physical football and did a lot of positive things in all three segments. That’s what was really encouraging is how well we played. It all started with the defense and the defense held them.

We started off the game not very good. To start off the game three-and-out and then a punt that got shanked to the right and defense gets to start. I think they started on our side of the field, especially on our side of the field to start the game 45 or somewhere close to that. And the defense does a really good job of holding them to a field goal right there. So that was a big tempo setter right there in itself, and obviously allowed us to stay patient and do what we wanted to do on offense. And from that point on, we pretty much did what we needed to do.

We controlled the clock, ran the ball through the ball. Gavin was ten of 11, threw the ball well and did some good things throughout that first half to get that lead. The score there towards the end to get us up 10-3 was really big for us. Went into the half 10-3 and playing really good football and then they came out and put together a really good drive in the third quarter, mixed in some tempo to what they were doing and put together a nice drive and converted on that big third down during that drive, it was a third and a third, an extra-long, and converted it and then finished their drive. But then we responded really well from that point on.

Again, offensively, defensively, as far as reestablishing the offense and getting to put in some good drives together and then obviously pinning them down there and getting the punt return for a touchdown was really good execution. That was led by good offensive possession and good defensive possession. Pinning them down there and then having good defensive possession and then getting a good punt return. So, the special teams played a big part in that touchdown as well as both sides of the ball. And that last drive where we took the ball for nine minutes plus and ran the ball, we were in two tight ends every play on that formation, that whole drive, whether it was when there was one back two tights and the offensive line just did a great job and so did Trent Thompson and Zach Fryar, they did a really good job.

But throughout the whole day, the running backs ran really, really hard and it was really a nice compliment. Getting Ray Flores back in the backfield a little bit because of some of our other receivers are stepping up, it takes a little bit of pressure off Ray and we can use him as a running back because he’s just as good a running back as he is a receiver and he really showed that in the game.

Deion Hankins and Ronald Awatt ran really hard and they create a lot of yards after contact, a bunch of yards after contact and allowed us to put together drive.

We’ve had a lot of drives like that before where I’ve been, but I don’t know if we’ve ever had anything as impressive as a nine-minute drive when the game’s on the line, and then to piggyback it again with one to close out the game and get first downs when we need to close out the game again, it was really good football for our offensive unit.

Gavin Hardison played really well, managed the offense extremely well and was pleased with the outcome.

So, it was a good win for us and got us back to 2-2 in our non-conference slate, which with the type of games that we had you put together four non-conference games and none of them were fun events for us, right? I mean, a rivalry and two perennial powerhouse teams and then another Mountain West opponent. So, it wasn’t like we had any gift games this year in our non-conference by any means. So, to get us back to 2-2 there and now get us back to a conference road game, leading into the conference road game, which is really a big game for us.

Obviously, we have the long travel that leads to the games in our conference when we play teams on the East Coast. I think Charlotte’s a great setting. I love that stadium; I love the set up they got there. So, it’s a good place to play against, just have to manage the trip and manage the time difference. The game’s obviously starting later where it’s 4:00 our time, but 7:00 Eastern Time out there. It’ll get us to have to acclimate to that by getting up a little bit earlier than what we’re used to as we go through the week and go through the games Friday, Saturday schedule.

Charlotte, like always, is a really athletic team got a lot of team speed on both sides of the football. They have a new defensive coordinator this year and he’s establishing his system there and they’re getting better all the time within the system and how they’re playing. They’ve had a tough schedule. Their record is probably not anywhere indicative of the type of team that they are because they’ve had again, they haven’t had any 1-AA opponents or anything. Well, they did have one, a good one, William & Mary, who’s a good football team.

Charlotte’s starting quarterback was out for that game. But the rest of their slate’s been a pretty difficult slate with some tough team, and they had a big win over Georgia State in one of their games. So, again, it’ll be trying to handle Reynolds, their quarterback’s always a handful. He’s very athletic and very much of a really good creator.

The receivers have got really good speed at their receiver position. So that definitely will be a challenge. One of their games this year against Georgia State, they passed for 401 yards in that game. So, they definitely can throw the ball and move the ball on and have a really good offense.

And as I said defensively, they got tons of team speed and lots of athleticism on the defense and so that’ll be a challenge for us as well.

And like I said, a road conference game, as we go through this whole schedule, every game is going to be, the rest of the way, every game is going to be a battle.

I mean, that’s just what they are. And so, we’re looking forward to going to Charlotte and our big quest is to go down there and play really good, fundamentally sound football and do what we do best and execute our schemes and play good in all three segments again.

On defensive identity development:

I think when we were sitting here a week ago, we said, ‚Äòhey, let’s get back and do what we did’ and so what we did this week in the Boise St. game was really what we had done a lot last year, we just tried to control the clock and then take the things that were there for us. We ran the ball probably better in this game against Boise St. than we did any time last year. But we do want to run the football and so when we can, we will and so that’s Gavin really start getting to be able to pick people apart and we were able to pick and choose our shots and obviously we hit the shots that we needed to hit and that converted some really good third downs as well. And so that part of it was good identity for us. So, we’d love to do what we did all year. I mean, that’s obviously when you have a big win like this, you’d like to emulate that as much as you can. And I think more like anything as a team morphs through a year, you kind of figure out what’s their identity, what’s what do we do best? And like we’ve talked about before our practice is so expansive that we can do whatever fits our personnel. And so, if we have personnel that throws the ball well; last year, second half the year, we threw the ball well and threw the ball more than we ran it because that fit the personality of that team. And this year this might be the best thing for us to do this year is just run the ball more and control the clock more and do the things that we did Friday. So, obviously it was successful forthem and we’ll see how it goes for the rest of the year.

On defense identity:

If we would have protected them a little bit more, their stats would probably be even better, you know, which we’ve traditionally done and so I think the more we can do that, the more it gives them the opportunity. But the thing that we have to do is what we did, score points too because when you score points, it puts pressure on the defenses, it puts pressure on the offenses to try to do more aggressive things against our defense and that allows our defense to have the opportunity to get more big plays and more disruptive play. So definitely want to continue to try to do that as we go through the conference play right now to establish that kind of identity. But any time you have 40 minutes plus of time of possession, it’s hard for an offense to be in any kind of rhythm, you know? I mean, you just can’t, you can’t get much rhythm when you only have the ball 19 minutes plus, it’s just very difficult. But that’s a two-way thing, sometimes a three-way thing. This time of possession is not just offense is defense offense. You know, working together.

On hometown kid Ray Flores, leadership:

It’s a super good story. You know, it really is. It’s a really good story about Ray and I do think about how cool it is for El Paso to have a guy that came and walked on to a program and then earned his way up and has proven himself into being not just a good player, but really is one of the premier stars of our program. Probably one of the most valuable players in our whole program. I’m not ever going to say somebody is the most valuable, but he’s one of the most valuable players and his leadership is just I mean, if everybody in the city could see the way that kid leads this team and how he makes sure if someone might have the right intentions of leading, as an example, this week, one of our players had the right intentions of leading, but he didn’t know exactly how to do it. Ray kind of steered him in the right direction on how to lead. And so, his leadership skills are just outstanding as well.