Mario Cristobal dismisses any struggle staying focused after first Miami loss

For No. 25 Miami, this week is a bit new. The Hurricanes are coming off their first loss of the season, dropping a road contest at No. 23 Texas A&M 17-9 last weekend. That result was also the first Miami loss of the Mario Cristobal era.

That alone was enough to prompt a question from a reporter this week about the challenge of keeping players focused for this weekend’s return home for a game against MTSU.

For Cristobal, the question didn’t compute.

“I’m not sure how to answer that question,” Cristobal said. “It’s a little bit foreign to me, the concept of doing anything but focusing on getting better. I think any team with good competitive character will do that.”

The Miami head coach has stressed from Day 1 that external results like wins and losses shouldn’t impact preparation one way or another. That’s a typical line from former Nick Saban assistant coaches; Cristobal spent 2013-16 on Saban’s staff at Alabama.

“Losing a game, for myself personally, that’s one of the questions,” Cristobal said. “It doesn’t get any more difficult than that, especially when you play at a place that you coached at. It probably hits a million times harder.

“And that’s OK, as long as you’re using that as continued motivation to get back to the process and get better.”

Mario Cristobal wants guys sticking to process after first Miami loss

While Cristobal was undoubtedly disappointed in the loss on Saturday, he definitely doesn’t want players to allow that to compound.

In fact, even if Miami had topped Texas A&M he’d be preaching the same message.

“You still have to go back,” Cristobal said. “How can we get better? How can we improve? Because that’s the only way, right, to make progress toward your goal. We feel like we have made progress. We feel like we are improving the areas that showed up in a negative way on Saturday. But there’s no flinching. There’s no hesitation as it relates to that. It really is full speed ahead with really nothing on our minds but improving.”

Miami will get the chance to prove it has remained focused during the week when it lines up against MTSU on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET. The game will be broadcast on the ACC Network.

And win, lose or — well, they don’t do draws in college football, but you get the point — Cristobal will expect his team to show up on Monday next week with the exact same mentality.

“We always assure that when you leave a game, whether you win or lose, you still assess, ‘Was it your very best?'” Cristobal said. “And whatever wasn’t, you have to elevate it. Does that make sense? So for us it’s always going to be that.”