Georgia State Head Coach Trent Miles Quotes:
“I don't need to look at the stats. I saw it on the field. They were the much better football team today. They dominated from the very beginning. Our young men did not compete very well. It started today when we didn't have our players show up on time. We had two players not show up on time for our special teams meeting that are kickers so we had to use our punter as our kicker. Our kids had a good week of practice, but obviously somehow it didn't translate. And to be quite honest with you, you saw where we are talent-wise today. That to me was the biggest thing. We didn't compete. It was really embarrassing to be quite honest with you. Our young men didn't line up in the correct spots, and at a lot of times didn't do what they were asked to do on our defensive side. And we got exposed. And I thought when you saw us move the ball and score touchdowns it was against their twos and threes. So we performed very well against their twos, but other than that their ones were much better today than our ones. That's right where we are and where we're at as a program.”
On quarterback competition and team's talent level:
“It's always open, but Ronnie got beat up. I mean I've got to look at the film, but I don't think he threw any interceptions or anything. I don't remember any extremely poor passes. You know he was running for his life. They manhandled us up front. They got pressure on our quarterback. They hit him. They knocked our guys back in the running game. We weren't able to run the football. It wasn't a schematic problem one bit. You know we had the numbers in certain situations, but we got knocked around. And that's just where we're at. It's a hard dose of reality, but that's where we're at. And that's not a Sun Belt team we played today so get ready. We're going to be tough in practice, but you know I'll tell you right now the number one thing we're going to do other than work on all the details and coach our guys as hard as we can every day , we're going to recruit.”
"That, to me, was inexcusable. That's by my standards unacceptable. I'll say it again and I'm never going to throw my kids under the bus. I just can't do that. I'm not that type of person. Put the loss on me. Ok put it on me. I've said this before. We move the ball against their twos with our ones. I think that's enough said.”
On team's reaction to this week's loss compared to week one:
“No I didn't feel that way one bit. Last week after the game, no I think it was very positive for a loss. I mean obviously if you're a competitor, and you lose a game, you're obviously disappointed that you lost. But I didn't see them put their head down because of the way they lost. We should have our heads down the way we lost today. That was to me inexcusable. That's by my standards unacceptable. I'll say it again and I'm never going to throw my kids under the bus. I just can't do that. I'm not that type of person. Put the loss on me. Ok put it on me. I've said this before. We move the ball against their twos with our ones. I think that's enough said.”
No. 16 Ben McLane
On the team's overall performance:
“UT-Chattanooga played well. We are better than what we showed, and we know that. What you're going to see in practice is what you'll see in games. We just have to go out there this week and have a great week of practice and then start having it show up in the game.”
“It's one of those things where you can't pinpoint one exact problem, but we need to focus better. We need to keep our energy level up. We were flat at times today. It's no one person's fault because it's the entire team's fault. None of our problems are just one guy it's affecting the whole team, and as a team we need to change it.”
On UT-Chattanooga's performance:
“There's nothing that we didn't expect them to do. They came out with the exact defense we thought they would come out with. We just didn't play to our ability. Coach Miles always says it has nothing to do with the other team. Jerseys change, but its about us.”
His own self-reflection:
“It's hard to swallow and hard to find the positive to take away, but we can and we will. Obviously you have to learn from the negative, and as a player you have to look yourself in the mirror whether you played or not. And ask what could I have done better as well as what could I have done to help someone.”
No. 18 Ronnie Bell
“We just felt like we could have come out with more intensity than we had last week against Samford. Last week it was just a couple of mistakes, but this week it was all based on our effort. I felt like we didn't get the correct effort in the first half.
“I thought their defense was pretty good. They played smart football. We knew what they were going to do. They ran the exact defense that we thought they were going to play. Chattanooga is a better football team than last week's.”
On moving forward to next week:
“When everybody does what they know they can do is when we will become the better team. I think guys try too hard to make a play and overthink. I believe that if we go out there and have fun and play mistake free, we would not be in the situation we are in now.”
Seriousness and determination of the team:
“Everybody is serious, but the little things matter the most. Things such as bringing your notebook, going to class, it's all the little things that prepare you for Saturday. When you don't prepare for those things, that's when you make mistakes during the game and eventually cost you the game.”
Mental Process of the team
“I try to stress to the team to not have the same mentality as last year. When we go down let's keep our heads up. It's exactly what the coaches stresses to us, but we still have those habits. When it's time you sometimes go back to your old habits, and sometimes people hang their heads instead of going out and playing with their best ability.”
No. 92 Theo Agnew
“I think we had a few problems. I think one issue is our preparation. Not that they threw something at us that we didn't recognize, but it was just a few variation of things that we didn't practice that way. It really caused our team to be exposed during the game.”
Chattanooga's running game:
“It's a different running game than we are used to. A lot of teams resort to running up the middle, but this team was a lot of things involving the edge which is different. We tried to make adjustments, but they had an alternative way of running the plays. All we should have had to do was execute what we know we can do. Players fell short and we fell short as a team. When you encounter something that's difficult, it's all about making it a game of adjustments. Just because it wasn't the way we practiced doesn't mean we shouldn't know how to attack it. We should have adjusted better, but we didn't. We have to get back to the drawing board, and figure these things out. I am confident that my team will not let this happen again. We have some big opponents coming up and we can not afford to have this happen in the future.”
On Chatttanooga's fourth down TD conversion:
“I felt like they were pulling out all of the stops. They chose to throw some tricks at us. Like I said before we are used to teams running straight up the middle. We should have know better because we are really good with those sort of things. It happens. It's a fake. You don't expect a fake because thats what it's designed for.”
On the team defending UTC's tight ends:
“We knew that they were going to try to get the ball to their tight end. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. It's honestly the little things. It wasn't as if we weren't ready for a tight end type of game or we weren't ready for the quarterback to tight end interaction. It was more of our small things becoming big things when they executed and we didn't. It's not something new and crazy that they are doing.”
Chattanooga Head Coach Russ Huesman
“Offensively we ran the ball really well, and that's huge. Defensively, other than towards the end, our defense played really well. We won in special teams today. I don't think there's any question about that”.
One of the best games your offensive-line had since you have been here?
“Yeah, there was a lot of running room. Give those running backs credit; they ran hard, baby. Keon (Williams) delivered some shots out there, he is a load to tackle and I am proud of him. I think our offensive line did a great job too.”
What changed from last week to this week?
“Well obviously when you have D.J. King it makes a big difference defensively; not only how he plays, but his leadership. He knows where to go and he has unbelievable instincts. He is just a great football player and to have him back was huge. Today for the most part we showed that we could play some good defense”.
Did you guys need this dominant performance?
“I think so. Yeah, I think if we come in here and squeak one out, or something doesn't happen that's positive, it's probably a little bit on the psyche. But we were methodical on offense. That's methodical, in a complimentary way”.
Your defensive backs must have played well because your line was able to get in there?
“Our front guys did a pretty decent job. We pressured a few times early and hit the wrong guy and then finally we started hitting the right guy. We got the sack, I think we had it covered up pretty good,”
The fake field goal?
“I was doing it. I didn't care if we were playing Alabama or whoever. The first time we were on the 30-yard line that was being called. We had it ready all last week; we had it ready every time this week. It worked out pretty good, I liked it.
