Sixth-year East Carolina Head Football Coach Mike Houston addressed members of the media Monday afternoon prior to Saturday’s American Athletic Conference opener versus UTSA at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. The following are selected comments:
Opening statement
“Excited this week to be back at home, hosting UTSA on family weekend and hoping the weather from the tropical storm stays good and west of us, which it looks like it should. It’s always good when we have a great gameday setting and all our Pirate fans back in the stands. Disappointed not to come back with a victory the other night. Great college football game. We had a lot of stuff to deal with in terms of the weather. I’ve had several of those in my career. When it started, we thought we’d be able to get at least the first half in before we had the threat of lightning. Both teams got one series each way. After it started and hitting the reset every 30 minutes, you knew it was going to be awhile.
“The players were very motivated to make sure we got the game in and that was something they made very clear. They wanted to play. They were excited about the game. I thought they had a great preparation going into the weekend. I thought that we came out and played that way to start the game. We probably couldn’t have started it any better, as far as getting a score on our second offensive drive. We were able to get the turnover down there and punch that one in. We got the field goal to take a sizable lead there to start the game. There’s a reason that Liberty has had the success they’ve had the last several years. They came back and were able to punch one in right there before halftime and get a little bit of momentum going into the half. We had our chances in the second half. We had the lead going the fourth. They countered and came back to take the lead again. We were marching right down deep into Liberty territory, getting ready to go back on top. Disappointed that we had the turnover.
“Our guys battled back. We had another opportunity to drive down and get a score, but we couldn’t to do it there. Tough one to lose. I do see some things that we’re getting better at. Obviously, we need to improve on third down from our performance the other night. We did not do a good job defensively, getting off the field, and that was a big factor there in the second half. Some of that goes to their play, especially the quarterback. I thought we had him a couple times on several drives where we’re ending the drive and he’s able to make a play. There’s a lot of stuff we have to work on this week to improve for Saturday but excited about this week’s game and excited about the matchup.”
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