OPENING STATEMENT:

“We came up a little bit short against East Carolina yesterday. It came down to the very end, but we did some things to ourselves that put us against the wall. We did find a way to get back and at least get an opportunity to try to get the game into overtime, but came up a bit short. We now have a short week, head to SMU to play a very good football team, so we have plenty of work ahead of us to get better.”

AFTER LOOKING AT FILM, WHAT ARE THE MATCH-UPS AND CHALLENGES THAT YOU FACE AGAINST SMU?:

“They’re a good football team, they are well coached. There’s problems with each team that you play each week, there will be challenges that you have. The thing you need to do is look at your personnel and work to put your guys in the best possible position to be successful.”

ANY SPECIFIC CHALLENGES WITH SMU?:

“I wouldn’t say on the phone if there were, but they are a really good football team. We are going to have our work cut out for us.”

THE WAY GAME ENDED YESTERDAY, HOW DO YOU RALLY THE KIDS FOR NEXT WEEK?:

“I think it’s pretty easy. If you’re a competitor, you only have twelve games to play. Right now, we only have nine guaranteed games left. If you really are a competitor and you want to win, that game is over with, it’s done, we can’t get it back. What we need to do is learn from it and move forward. If you want to accomplish goals that you have set for your team, to me, it’s very easy to get up for this game and it’s very easy to get up for every game on your schedule. That’s what I told our guys after the game yesterday. We didn’t do enough in the game to win and the object is to win in the games that you play. Fortunately, we are going to have that opportunity again this week against a very fine football team. We are going to have to play very, very well, better than we played last week. We want to continue to get better and keep working to play at the level to do the things we need to do to go out on the field to win. It’s very, very simple. That’s where leadership needs to step up and make sure as we go through the week that we practice the right way. If we don’t do that, all your going to do is be disappointed on Saturday. There’s going to be some Saturday’s where you give everything that you have and sometimes it doesn’t work out your way, but as long as you leave no regrets on the field, you come off and look yourself in the eye and say you did everything that you could to help your team win, that’s all you can do and that’s all I expect our guys to do. I think it’s very, very simple, if you’re a competitor, you’re going to go out and prepare for next week.”

WHAT DID YOU NOTICE FROM THE FILM THAT YOU DIDN’T SEE DURING LIVE GAME ACTION?:

“We do some things really, really well and we have some breakdowns that cause us not to be as effective as we should be. That’s the thing that we need to continue to work on and get better at. To eliminate that inconsistency will let us be a more consistent football team for sixty minutes.”

LOOKING AT FINAL MINUTE, DROVE DOWN THE FIELD EFFECTIVELY, IF YOU HAD MORE TIME DO YOU FEEL CONFIDENT THAT YOU WOULD HAVE WON?:

“I don’t know because it didn’t happen that way. That’s hard to say. What we did is try to take advantage of the opportunity that was presented to us and we came up a little short.”

MATT SCHONVISKY / SITE CREATOR