Georgia State head football coach Bill Curry and some of Panther players met with the media to discuss the opening of preseason camp. The Panthers officially report Wednesday and begin practice with an 8:45 a.m. workout Thursday morning.
GSU opens its encore season by hosting Clark Atlanta on Friday, Sept. 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Georgia Dome.
The preseason media day was held at the GSU Practice Complex, where the indoor amenities have been completed, including the team's locker room, equipment room, athletic training room and meeting rooms.
PHOTO ALBUM in the August 3 Atlanta Journal Constitution. Click Here.
STORY in the August 3 Gwinnett Daily Post. Click Here.
Below are comments from Coach Curry.
Georgia State Head Football Coach Bill Curry:
Thank you for being with us today and celebrating with us the next step in this wonderful program that we have worked so long and hard to establish. I could take hours and talk to you about what has happened and who has done it because so many people have contributed for us to be able to come to this moment.
We have changed the profile of our football team from the standpoint of personnel. Two years ago, at this time we had one player, Mark Hogan. We added a class of about 40 people two years ago. A year ago, we brought another class not knowing if the two classes would blend or clash. As last season wore on, we began to show our youth and our inadequacies. We were an inconsistent football team. I was not pleased at all with our performance. A lot of people were. A 6-5 season was perceived as being really what we were striving for. A 2.73 GPA was perceived by many as a good thing, but we haven't scratched the surface. We haven't begun to perform the way we can. We've got much better academic potential than we have demonstrated. We've got much better ability as a football team and staff than we have demonstrated. We have high goals for this year for our personnel in the areas that are most important.
When we say we have priorities of the five F's: Faith, Family, Finishing our Education, Football Team and Fun. We are serious about that. We work every day to keep those priorities in mind. It is nice to be able to say that we've made progress in those areas. It is almost as nice as being able to say we've made progress in the facilities area.
When I first saw this site, my heart sank. Before they began construction, this area was the defining picture of the most urban blight that I have ever seen in my life, and I played in Baltimore for a long time so I know urban blight. I could not have been more shocked as we began to see it develop. Even better was our players response to what they created because without these young men having the faith in our program to come here, this certainly would not have happened. Our players and coaching staff who came here as an act of faith, a wish, a promise, a vision a hope and a dream, I'll be eternally grateful to all of them. To see them walk in the locker room yesterday and hear them yelping, jumping up and down and raving that this is the best locker room they had ever seen. That is such a great thrill to me. For us to have this kind of facility, after we've worked with some difficult circumstances the last two years, is terrific.
Our goals for the upcoming season are simple. We have to become a consistent football team. We can't be up one week and down the next. We can't play fairly well in the Dome and terrible on the road. We can't be a team that just plays hard in the fourth quarter. We have to be able to be a team that plays hard and well in the 4th quarter. We did play hard in every fourth quarter last season, I'll concede that. I want us to be a fourth quarter football team that is dominant when it counts in the fourth quarter, meaning execution as well as guts.
The second stage to our goals is beating opponents that we aren't "supposed" to beat. Our six wins last year came against teams that we probably should have beaten based on numbers and the level of competition. We almost beat some teams we weren't supposed to beat but we didn't finish the job. This season we have to finish the job.
From the football perspective, here is the reality of what wins in football: we have to stop the run better and we have to run the ball better. That is a strategic reality. Naturally we would like to improve in all other areas. We were reasonable in kicking, throwing and catching and reasonable in some defensive areas. We have to get better at running and stopping the run.
Our quarterback situation is one that has attracted a lot of attention for all the wrong reasons. We have had to suspend some players. They aren't bad guys. Frankly I think I didn't do a good enough job of preparing them for what it would be like if we had a winning season. We go into the season with Bo Schlechter as starting quarterback. He came here as a highly-touted high school quarterback. He moved to wide receiver when we have a bunch of injuries at that position. He helped us win some games by making some big catches when he had never even played there. He was also our punter and was among the nation's leaders in net punting. We expect him to pick it up where he left off as a punter and we expect him to pick it up enormously as a quarterback.
Kelton Hill is still operating under the university system and the dean's office. I am not allowed to comment on his case.
With respect to Drew Little, I have said from the very beginning, I appreciate what he did for us last year. He was our leader. He did extremely well under tough circumstances with a brand new team, but that does not exempt him from our rules. I've said from the very beginning that he has the opportunity to reduce his suspension term if he did certain incredibly difficult things. He's done every single one of them up to this moment, but that has to continue.
Right now we go in with Bo being the starter. We are very blessed to have been able to sign Ben McLane who was a state championship AAAAA player. He won the state championship with an amazing offensive performance in the Dome with his Brookwood teammates. He had a great success his senior year and he is also a superb student. Those will be the two quarterbacks going into the first game.
We have some newcomers that we expect to make an impact. We think they will upgrade us athletically. One of them you have already seen in the spring, D'Mario Gunn. He's a good player and we expect a lot of good things from D'Mario Gunn. Qwontez Mallory was one of his teammates at Georgia Military. He is a linebacker and we expect Qwontez to make an immediate impact. We have the young placekicker, Christian Benvenuto, who had a tremendous high school career. He will be trying to replace our third-team All-American Iain Vance, but he will have competition from some talented walk-ons.
It's very important and significant to report a big surprise to me, and that is the fact that we have 10 commitments already. For an FCS program that is unheard of. I give credit for that to coach George Pugh, who is our recruiting coordinator. He started us out recruiting really hard as of Feb. 3, the day after the last signing day. We have done that within the letter and spirit of the rules. We've been in touch, we've been evaluating, and we've been out when we could be. All our coaches did a great job. Now we have to continue to build on this marvelous recruiting class. I also give enormous credit to Josh Moore, our new assistant recruiting coordinator. And to our coaching staff who all got out and beat the bushes.
What you see when you come to Georgia State now with this beautiful facility is a big part of it, and we're so thankful to Cheryl Levick and our administration for making it happen.
We know we have a tremendous job to hang onto these commitments, but we will have the recruiting class this year that I believe will define Georgia State University football, based on the reception that we are getting already.
Compare QB situation this year to last year. Talk about possibility of having to use Ben McClain so quickly and not being able to redshirt him.
A year ago was an embarrassment of riches, to have four potentially polished quarterbacks on the field. One of them would look good one day and one would look better another day. They were all young players. It was thrilling and we were agonizing over how we would decide on a quarterback. Drew was the one who assimilated the offense and that is why he started. He started out with such a bang that pretty much established how it was going to be for the rest of the year. We looked for ways to get the other guys in there and we did.
Then in the offseason, the situation developed that we now have. That's life. Sometimes it happens. You would rather that it didn't but we will manage. We would love to redshirt Ben McClain. If it is the right thing to hold somebody out, then we would like to do that. If we can, we will. If we have to play him, we will prepare him to play.
What is the advantage of going into this season where most of the guys have played together and know each other as opposed to last year when all the players were new?
"It is a tremendous advantage. I have great expectations of a cohesive, well-organized, well-led football team.
What are you looking forward to seeing at practice regarding the running backs?
"I'm going to expect to see amazing effort. I expect to see absolute perfect execution in learning. I'm going to expect the same kind of dynamic running with the football. I'm going to expect absolutely perfect ball security. We've got to improve our turnover margin and we've got to be able to run the ball. In order for all of that to happen we also have to block better.
How important is it to have a veteran offensive line this season? How do you think that will lend to improving the running game?
It not going to be easier because we have a much tougher schedule this year. We will be playing against better front people on the other defenses. But we should be much better. We have a year under our belt. We've worked together. We should have the calls down. We've got a chance to become a really cohesive offensive unit, which, in my opinion, we never did last year. We were sporadic. We had long stretches where we did really well protecting, throwing and catching, but we never became consistent at run and pass. We have to do that.
Were you surprised at how much better passing developed last season than the running game?
Yes, I was surprised. I'm glad we were able to do it because we would have been in trouble if we couldn't throw or catch. Coach (John) Bond did a great job of taking what we had. He took our best assets and used them. While our offensive line was certainly not a great run-blocking line, we gave up very few sacks. One of the reasons for that is Drew got rid of the ball. I think it was a matter of us trying to find a way to win by using the best tools that we had. We would have rather done both passing and running at the same time.
What do you expect to get out of this camp in comparison to last year?
We know exactly what we need to do. We need to be gritty, tough, lean and nasty. We need to be great in the kicking game, great in the turnover margin. We need to be absolutely determined to be a great football team. Great being defined as performing beyond the apparent sum of our parts. When I say a great football team, I'm talking about us being better than it is perceived that we can be. I want our guys to go beyond ourselves and we can do that.
Beyond results, what are some of the things you looking at to see that the team is on the right track?
We had our moments in spring practice where we took steps forward. We added a few things that will make us better on both sides of the ball. We've got a much better handle on what kind of defense we want to be. We should know how to line up. Some people got us on the run last year with tempo. That won't happen this time. We will be ready for that because one of the things we did well in the spring is we practiced at a very high level of tempo. That is something that has been the dominant theme of the really good teams. If you watched the National Championship game for FCS or FBS, what did you see? One play after another. You've got to be able to get lined up and play. You've got to be able to play hard and fast. It is much faster than it has ever been before. I sit there and watch and think 'I would love to play. I wish I could play now just to see if I could measure up.' It is a lot harder to be a football player today than it was just a few years ago. We will practice like that. We did it in the spring and I was pleased with our guys being able to adapt and get in shape.
