[Tavares] Kendrick has to take care of his academics and, hopefully, he'll be back in August. |
Ben West did a tremendous job running the football -- hanging onto the football under those conditions. |
Both played well in [Saturday's] scrimmage, and we wanted to move them up to the first team this morning to see how they reacted. |
He's done a tremendous job in the time he has been up there and there's some talent on that team. In a couple of years they will be a force to reckon with. |
I really thought they were going to call it off, to tell you the truth. |
I'm very happy with the quality of this recruiting class. We have to replace 25 seniors from last year's team so it will be important to fill gaps. We signed quality players at every position. We didn't just have to settle for what was available. |
If they couldn't play for those programs, they wanted to play against them. |
Last time we turned the ball over eight times we had the same outcome. Whether you lose by one point, three points or 30 points, you can't do that. |
Other than that, defensively, we did a tremendous job, got a bunch of sacks and kept pressuring the quarterback. They couldn't throw the ball downfield and we stopped their running game. Overall the defense really stepped up to the table. |
The schedule has a lot to do with it and the opportunity to play against elite programs. [It] helped us with a lot of these recruits because if they couldn't play for those programs, they wanted to play against them. |
The system is good and he [Hodges] played well, no question. |
There are always two or three plays that change a game. Overall, we had opportunities to score and didn't take advantage. They took advantage every drive. |
There were areas we had to address as a coaching staff and we did. It is quite obvious that the talent level that has signed to play for the FIU football program has certainly taken a step forward. |
There's some interest in some of the guys. |
They wanted someone who had played in the playoffs, which I had. And they wanted someone who could win for them, which I did. |