WKU Hilltoppers College Football Pregame Quote, 10/14/2019

Looking forward to homecoming this week, ought to be a great atmosphere. Guys are excited, another great conference opponent coming in with Charlotte. They’re averaging 33 points per game, so it will be a great challenge for our defense again. Just looking for another great atmosphere and hopefully get another conference win.

On the challenge of defending Benny LeMay:

Last year, talking with Coach White, he felt like they got the best of us defensively, so our guys will have a great challenge again this year. He’s a big back, he’s a strong runner, he doesn’t get tackled on first contact. So we have to be able to wrap up, get guys to the ball, it’s going to take multiple tacklers to get him down. It will be a new challenge for our defense, it’s an offense that’s multiple, they have a really good runner, but the quarterback does a great job with the play action and RPO’s. Like I said, they’re averaging 33 per game, so we have to be able to contain them defensively and then our offense has got to be able to try to go out there and score 30-plus points and go win the game.

On the level of play by quarterback Ty Storey:

I thought this game was his best game and I really felt like he was comfortable. From the get-go I always thought he was comfortable, he just has a good look in his eye, but I felt like he understood what we were trying to get done. I thought the errors he had in the previous two games didn’t show up, I thought he ran the offense extremely well and took care of the football. I thought he made the plays he needed to make. You know, the first series we had where we missed the shot to Jahcour Pearson and then he had the dropped pass right after that; those were really the only two plays that stuck out in my mind as our players could have made a play there. The guys are behind him, you can really feel that he’s gelling very well with them. I’m excited about where we’re headed, I’m still waiting for us to go explode and go make it happen. I really feel like we have the ability to do that offensively. Ty has gained my trust to do some things, I think in the first two games I might have been a little more apprehensive just to make sure he was comfortable and those kind of things. In this game, I gave him the ability to do some other things, make some checks at the line of scrimmage; run and pass. We’ll just keep building off of that… It’s his third game, he’s getting comfortable and we need to continue to build off that and hopefully we can this week.

On the team being ‚Äòfavored’ this week vs. Charlotte:

We’re going to continue to embrace the underdog role. We’re going to continue to feel like we have something to prove, have a chip on our shoulder. I actually liked the fact that we were underdogs last week, I told our guys you should never be an underdog in your own house and they really embraced that. So, it will be a new challenge for us. I talked to them yesterday about how we’ve played half a season, but this is where good teams start to separate themselves from the pack. You can’t get caught up with people patting you on the back and telling you this is a good team and those kinds of things. You have to keep the edge that you had through the first six games, and I think they will. They understand the blueprint we’ve put into place and the process we go through throughout the week to get them ready and I think they’ve responded well. But our M.O., our mentality is to always have the underdog mentality and the chip on your shoulder, show up to the park mad like I always say, all those things.

On the motivation of last season’s loss to Charlotte:

I haven’t talked to them about that at all; every year’s a different year, every game’s a different game. I think it’s something you don’t really have to say; they know. It’s something that’s important to them and the pride factor is there, so I won’t address that with them. I mean, Charlotte’s a new staff and it’s a new football team and they’re doing a great job. Really if we do what we’re supposed to do and we control what we can control, we should be fine. But we’re going to have to play really good football, we cannot just show up and expect things to happen, we have to go out there and make it happen.