Clark Lea: Vanderbilt was fortunate to come away with 'sloppy' Week 0 win

Vanderbilt didn’t beat Hawaii quite like they did last year, but the Commodores are just happy to be 1-0 after Week 0.

Vandy did control the game throughout, though, and held a three-touchdown lead early in the fourth quarter before a late and furious rally from the Rainbow Warriors gave Clark Lea a more stressful finish than he would have liked. Afterwards, he was glad to come away victorious but saw plenty of flaws in the team’s first outing.

“It was a sloppy game and we were fortunate to come away with a win,” he admitted in the postgame presser, giving props to Hawaii and their head coach for making massive progress since last season.

“The first credit goes to Timmy Chang, who’s done a really nice job advancing that program. Hawaii made it hard on us tonight.”

Lea was especially disappointed in his team losing focus towards the end of the game.

“You know, we can certainly do a lot on our end to clean up our performance,” Lea continued. “If I was disappointed about anything, it was just feeling like our our energy waned through the game, and when we were opening ourselves up for them to take ground, it was, I think, had a lot to do with our performance and the lack of inspiration in that performance that we can correct.”

As you’ve heard a million coaches say before, you’d much rather take your lessons from a win than a loss.

“We’d like to learn from wins. We’re happy to be 1-0,” added Lea.

He also took a moment of his time at the podium shed light on the recent tragedy in Maui, complimenting the Rainbow Warriors on how they represented the state.

“It’s a prideful team that was fighting for the state of Hawaii tonight, and I want to make sure to take time here just to recognize all those that are hurting in Maui and recovering,” said Clark Lea. “And obviously, our hearts remain with them. We compete at night with Hawaii with great respect for the things that they’re going through too.”