OPENING STATEMENT:

“First of all, Boise State is an outstanding football team. It’s a tremendous environment out there that they’ve created with their program and their fans. You can see why they are ranked as high as they are. I was very impressed with them on film as I went into the game and even more impressed after watching them in person. We just weren’t able to get anything going offensively. We had some penalties, false starts, six of them, four by one guy, so we started in a hole, five times, with 1^st and 15’s on three of our first four drives, so that made it tough. We just didn’t play well enough in order to win. The one guy that I really thought did a good job for us all night long was redshirt freshman Luke Magliozzi, our punter had a really good day overall. I thought RB Kevin Mensah played hard for us throughout the game. Now we get a chance to come back home, continue to get better and with a young team, that’s what we’re looking to do, get better each and every week.”

AAC’S PERFORMANCE OUT-OF-CONFERENCE THIS WEEK:

“As I’ve stated before, I think our conference is a very good conference, capable of beating people. It’s good to see that happened.”

OFFENSIVELY, DESPITE AN 0-2 START, WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN ON FILM THAT ARE POSITIVES?:

“I think David Pindell has done a good job for us. Last week we played a team in Boise State that is really good, can really run and is really aggressive. They did some things against us that didn’t allow us to move the ball, we did some things that hurt ourselves. All we are going to continue to do is utilize the young men in our program, their strengths as we go into each game as we analyze the opponent that week and continue to develop and move our offensive, defensive and special teams’ ahead.”

IMPORTANCE OF THE NORTHEAST FOR RECRUITING:

“Maybe some of the states in this area aren’t afforded the same opportunities in high school as Georgia, Florida, Texas in terms of what they allow their high school football student athletes to do. All the young men I’ve ever been associated with, wherever I’ve been coaching at the collegiate level that we’ve gotten from the northeast have done a really good job. There’s talent there, you just need to find it. There just might not be as much talent. Some of that is due to the population, but also some of the restrictions that are placed on the school’s in the different states that are located in the northeast. Some of your population bases in Pennsylvania, the coal region is just not as good as it used to be, along the industrial areas where you’ve lost some of that. We’re always going to recruit the northeast and work to evaluate the young men to understand their abilities. Hopefully, if we like them and they like us they can end up here.”

CHALLENGE OF YOUNG TEAM SEEING VALUE THROUGH GROWING PAINS IN 1^ST TWO WEEKS:

“The job that we and I have to do most especially as the head coach, not only with the players, but assistants and everyone, we all have to remember we haven’t had a winning season ever since I left here, the first time. All of a sudden, you don’t just flip a switch and turn things around. You look at an NFL standpoint, there’s only seven guys that are on NFL rosters. When I was here, we had something like 23-25 at one time, all guys that I recruited. Of those 7 guys now in the league, we recruited six of them. There’s been only one guy on an active roster right now that’s come from the program since I left that was recruited by someone different. It’s that whole process that I need to make sure the kids understand that we’re getting better each and every day. We need to keep working and I need to keep working. I know in this society, everything is supposed to be measured by wins and losses, but when you’re building a program back up, sometimes the wins will be the last thing to come. If you don’t do the process the right way and teach these kids what it’s all about and the energy you need to expend, how you have to prepare and all those things in order to put yourself in a position to win in a conference that is very difficult, plus our non-conference schedule, that’s the thing. My job is to make sure these kids understand it’s a process that we’re going through and the process means not taking any shortcuts, not doing things the easy way, we need to do it the hard way, we need to earn it, we need to pay the price, do all those things. Kids start to understand that. Yea, we want to win every game, but you can’t just skip steps 1-6 and get to 7 because then it’s never going to sustain what you want to sustain. Especially, with as many young guys that we have, most of them shouldn’t be playing right now, but because of the situation that we’re in, they need to play. That’s the challenge for me is for me to stay patient and for me to make sure that I don’t show the frustration from the standpoint that this is a process and the process is that we need to get better. I’ve been through this many, many times in a lot of programs that I’ve been involved with. This is no different. It’s not what people are used to here, so we need to make sure everyone understands the process.”

ON THE EFFORT THE TEAM HAS PUT IN:

“I see our guys playing hard, it’s not like they’re out there quitting. Are guys making mistakes, are they not doing all their jobs all the time, yes, that’s happening, but that happens with young guys. I caught a couple of the NFL games yesterday, there aren’t a lot of rookies starting in the NFL and these are 1^st round draft choices, some of them are just playing special teams. 70-percent of our scholarship roster are freshmen and sophomores and guys playing for the first time, so there are going to be mistakes. David Pindell has only started 6 games his entire career. Those things, effort and everything, we are getting that from them. What they need to do is master the fundamentals, techniques and understand what they need to do and be consistent with it each and every time on the field. The effort is not the question, we are getting effort. Some of this has to do with the teams we are playing and we aren’t just executing at the level we need to right now.”

MATT SCHONVISKY / SITE CREATOR