On the loss to Old Dominion …
“I wanted to applaud the effort of our team. We gave really good effort last week. I think that’s pretty obvious, offense, defense. Didn’t play well enough to win, obviously not. Two things that really stand out — one’s explosives, we gave up too many big plays on defense. Offensively, we had our opportunities to get the ball in the end zone and the chance to win the game. Our guys did a good job, our defense came in and stopped them, make them punt, got great field position. We moved the ball down, but didn’t make the plays to win the football game. As far as our guys, Jason Neill and Marcus Davenport played awfully well. Duke Wheeler had 13 tackles. That’s a good story right there. A walk-on kid earned a scholarship and now he’s got 13 tackles. Michael Egwuagu played well. Trevor Baker did an awfully good job and so did Drew Douglas. On offense, of course Dalton [Sturm] played extremely well. The last play was disappointing. [ODU] disguised their coverage, they dropped the D-end, had the three on two. Going to the other side, we had an easy touchdown with Kerry [Thomas Jr.] on the post corner. Then we had the screen pass that was a great call, executed well, and we didn’t get it blocked. It was a walk-in. A game like that, that’s the thing that you have to give yourself a chance to win. I’m sure If we had done that one, they would look back at some of the things that they did throughout the course of the game too, but all in all, our kids played hard and I can’t fault the effort.”
On the play calling at the end of the fourth quarter …
“We had a couple of runs, but overall they did a nice job stopping the run. They made us throw the football. They thought the things, with a young quarterback and those types of things, that it was better off to make us throw, an advantage to them. I think we felt that we had to pass the ball. (I was) happy with [the play calling]. I think the plays were fine. Again, the execution, we've got to do some things. What we have, we have the plays, ‘it’s good here, if it’s fine, we’ll take it. If it’s not, we’ll take it here.’ It’s either-or. Not many plays anymore are like, ‘we got to go here, they got 15 guys lined up, we’re going to go there anyway.’ There are not many plays like that. There are not many plays like that at all anymore. It’s kind of an either-or type of situation.”
On the coverage during Old Dominion’s final touchdown …
“I don’t think we were doing something different to give them space. It’s just a matter of covering the field, the execution of the defense. I think we may have made a mistake there from the standpoint of we didn’t balance the field. I don’t think there was anything drastically different that we didn’t do. Obviously, [the defender] was out of position or they wouldn’t have had that much green grass, but our numbers were fine, we've just got to play the defense and execute. Then you've got to tackle well, and I think there were times when we didn’t tackle well on Saturday.”
On ODU running back Ray Lawry …
“He was a really good running back and we’re going to see one this week too. He was a really good running back. He was impressive. They did a good job with him. They kind of rode their best horse to town, I guess you can say. They did a nice job with him.”
On ODU quarterback David Washington’s pocket presence …
“We really haven’t seen that from him to be quite honest. He was very accurate. We haven’t seen that accuracy from him. Marcus Davenport and Jason Neill put good pressure, but he stepped up nice and was cool in the pocket and made plays. He made, I talk about the ‘explosives’, the long runs or passes; he made two of those long runs himself coming with scrambles out of the backfield.“
On the message to the team …
“My message was that I really have a lot of respect for them. I like our team. I don’t like our record, obviously. I told them ‘hey, we got good football players, we got outstanding men' because they’ve been very accountable guys. When we first started this off, guys would miss practice or guys would be late and you would have to do all of this kind of crazy stuff to make sure ‘hey, you’re on time, you got to do this, you got to do that,’ but our guys have been very accountable. I told them this, I said, ‘I’m very proud of the way you’re handling yourself, we got to make sure and be a class act because it’s a tough time. Also, you have to stay off the social media stuff because we’re probably getting butchered.’ I don’t read it, but I’m sure we are. ‘The thing we've got to do is somehow regroup, press on. It’s been 24 hours, put it behind you and let’s move on.’ ”
On social media’s implications in college football…
“‘Well, there’s not a lot of secrets. Things are out there. I think everybody’s got their buddies that they’re texting, Facebook, all of those types of things that you have now and there’s not a lot of secrets. It’s a lot different now. Everybody’s kind of got a voice. Before, the voice came from you [the media]. We address it in preseason meetings and say ‘guys, this is what you have.’ I don’t tell them to stay off of it, but I said, ‘just realize what you say is there forever, it just doesn’t go away.’ I don’t think, to me, you got to stay out of the 21st Century. I don’t think that’s good. Some people do that I’m sure, ‘hey, don’t get involved,’ but I don’t do that. It’s hard to do for older people, let alone for young kids to do that. I think that’s the thing that’s really stressed and we try to do, is stay on an even keel, because our guys have had a pretty good attitude from the standpoint of the senior guys. We talked to the seniors yesterday about how they want to leave a legacy for the younger guys to be proud of. We’re in position if we can kind of win this thing out. First of all, we have to win on Saturday, but again, that’s a pretty mature attitude from these older guys. Obviously, they’re not going to a bowl game which was my dream for them, my goal for them, to go to a bowl game, win the conference championship. That’s not going to happen, obviously, but I think the attitudes been well, ‘hey, let’s leave something good for these younger guys.’ If they do that, that’ll be at least something good out of this season.”
On the team’s positive attitude …
“The attitude is good. I’m not, maybe a little surprised, but maybe I shouldn’t be. We have some great kids. The attitude is still what you want it to be. We’ll see. We’ll practice on Tuesday. We’ll see what that’s like and I think it’ll be good. We expect it to be good. We expect to travel and play well on Saturday. I think they want to do that. Again, we have so many young guys and Charlotte’s a lot like us, young guys versus young guys. We’ve got a lot of young guys and they’re just kind of playing. They like playing, having fun.“
“I wanted to applaud the effort of our team. We gave really good effort last week. I think that’s pretty obvious, offense, defense. Didn’t play well enough to win, obviously not. Two things that really stand out — one’s explosives, we gave up too many big plays on defense. Offensively, we had our opportunities to get the ball in the end zone and the chance to win the game. Our guys did a good job, our defense came in and stopped them, make them punt, got great field position. We moved the ball down, but didn’t make the plays to win the football game. As far as our guys, Jason Neill and Marcus Davenport played awfully well. Duke Wheeler had 13 tackles. That’s a good story right there. A walk-on kid earned a scholarship and now he’s got 13 tackles. Michael Egwuagu played well. Trevor Baker did an awfully good job and so did Drew Douglas. On offense, of course Dalton [Sturm] played extremely well. The last play was disappointing. [ODU] disguised their coverage, they dropped the D-end, had the three on two. Going to the other side, we had an easy touchdown with Kerry [Thomas Jr.] on the post corner. Then we had the screen pass that was a great call, executed well, and we didn’t get it blocked. It was a walk-in. A game like that, that’s the thing that you have to give yourself a chance to win. I’m sure If we had done that one, they would look back at some of the things that they did throughout the course of the game too, but all in all, our kids played hard and I can’t fault the effort.”
On the play calling at the end of the fourth quarter …
“We had a couple of runs, but overall they did a nice job stopping the run. They made us throw the football. They thought the things, with a young quarterback and those types of things, that it was better off to make us throw, an advantage to them. I think we felt that we had to pass the ball. (I was) happy with [the play calling]. I think the plays were fine. Again, the execution, we've got to do some things. What we have, we have the plays, ‘it’s good here, if it’s fine, we’ll take it. If it’s not, we’ll take it here.’ It’s either-or. Not many plays anymore are like, ‘we got to go here, they got 15 guys lined up, we’re going to go there anyway.’ There are not many plays like that. There are not many plays like that at all anymore. It’s kind of an either-or type of situation.”
On the coverage during Old Dominion’s final touchdown …
“I don’t think we were doing something different to give them space. It’s just a matter of covering the field, the execution of the defense. I think we may have made a mistake there from the standpoint of we didn’t balance the field. I don’t think there was anything drastically different that we didn’t do. Obviously, [the defender] was out of position or they wouldn’t have had that much green grass, but our numbers were fine, we've just got to play the defense and execute. Then you've got to tackle well, and I think there were times when we didn’t tackle well on Saturday.”
On ODU running back Ray Lawry …
“He was a really good running back and we’re going to see one this week too. He was a really good running back. He was impressive. They did a good job with him. They kind of rode their best horse to town, I guess you can say. They did a nice job with him.”
On ODU quarterback David Washington’s pocket presence …
“We really haven’t seen that from him to be quite honest. He was very accurate. We haven’t seen that accuracy from him. Marcus Davenport and Jason Neill put good pressure, but he stepped up nice and was cool in the pocket and made plays. He made, I talk about the ‘explosives’, the long runs or passes; he made two of those long runs himself coming with scrambles out of the backfield.“
On the message to the team …
“My message was that I really have a lot of respect for them. I like our team. I don’t like our record, obviously. I told them ‘hey, we got good football players, we got outstanding men' because they’ve been very accountable guys. When we first started this off, guys would miss practice or guys would be late and you would have to do all of this kind of crazy stuff to make sure ‘hey, you’re on time, you got to do this, you got to do that,’ but our guys have been very accountable. I told them this, I said, ‘I’m very proud of the way you’re handling yourself, we got to make sure and be a class act because it’s a tough time. Also, you have to stay off the social media stuff because we’re probably getting butchered.’ I don’t read it, but I’m sure we are. ‘The thing we've got to do is somehow regroup, press on. It’s been 24 hours, put it behind you and let’s move on.’ ”
On social media’s implications in college football…
“‘Well, there’s not a lot of secrets. Things are out there. I think everybody’s got their buddies that they’re texting, Facebook, all of those types of things that you have now and there’s not a lot of secrets. It’s a lot different now. Everybody’s kind of got a voice. Before, the voice came from you [the media]. We address it in preseason meetings and say ‘guys, this is what you have.’ I don’t tell them to stay off of it, but I said, ‘just realize what you say is there forever, it just doesn’t go away.’ I don’t think, to me, you got to stay out of the 21st Century. I don’t think that’s good. Some people do that I’m sure, ‘hey, don’t get involved,’ but I don’t do that. It’s hard to do for older people, let alone for young kids to do that. I think that’s the thing that’s really stressed and we try to do, is stay on an even keel, because our guys have had a pretty good attitude from the standpoint of the senior guys. We talked to the seniors yesterday about how they want to leave a legacy for the younger guys to be proud of. We’re in position if we can kind of win this thing out. First of all, we have to win on Saturday, but again, that’s a pretty mature attitude from these older guys. Obviously, they’re not going to a bowl game which was my dream for them, my goal for them, to go to a bowl game, win the conference championship. That’s not going to happen, obviously, but I think the attitudes been well, ‘hey, let’s leave something good for these younger guys.’ If they do that, that’ll be at least something good out of this season.”
On the team’s positive attitude …
“The attitude is good. I’m not, maybe a little surprised, but maybe I shouldn’t be. We have some great kids. The attitude is still what you want it to be. We’ll see. We’ll practice on Tuesday. We’ll see what that’s like and I think it’ll be good. We expect it to be good. We expect to travel and play well on Saturday. I think they want to do that. Again, we have so many young guys and Charlotte’s a lot like us, young guys versus young guys. We’ve got a lot of young guys and they’re just kind of playing. They like playing, having fun.“
