What Chattanooga coach Rusty Wright said after 69-3 loss at No. 15 Tennessee
What Chattanooga head coach Rusty Wright said after his team’s 69-3 loss to No. 15 Tennessee Saturday afternoon at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville:
Opening Statement
“Y’all just watched it. Props to Josh (Heupel) and them. They got a good football team. They do things like they’re supposed to. Play well on both sides of the ball. Play a high tempo, high rate and do a good job executing. They’re going to give themselves an opportunity to have a good football team this year. We did way too many things early that you can’t do against a good football team, much less a team like that. But hopefully we’ll learn from it, get better from it and figure it out. So that’s it.
On Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava
“He’s the real deal. I think the more football that young man plays … I think he fits really well in the scheme of what they want to do. I think he was what they’d been looking for at that spot. Got all the tools, ball comes out of his hand good. I just think the more football he plays, the better he will be. And of course he will because he’s, what, started two games I think now. I think middle of the year, he’ll be rolling pretty good.”
If he could say the same about this Chattanooga team
“Look here, I think I still have an opportunity to have a good football team. I really do. I love the way we work. I love the way these kids were in that locker room after we got done right now. I still think I can have a good football team and there’s no question about that. I think we will have a good football team. We just have to do a lot of little things better. It doesn’t matter if we’re playing Tennessee or the Citadel. We have to. We can’t do the things we did today and go win against them, against anybody. And that’s the disappointing thing about that for me, because we talked about it and we harped on it. We made a point of it and it was all the way around. It was offense, defense specialist and we can’t do those things.”
The mood of the team after a game like that
“Well it doesn’t change anything. Everything we do is still right out there in front of us. No different if we don’t win this game, it still doesn’t matter. Our goal is to go win the Southern Conference, go play in the FCS playoffs. And that’s what we do it for. So I don’t think there’s any doubt that group is hurt because it’s a prideful bunch. It’s a bunch that works hard and they understand that football is important. And I 100 percent believe in my heart they’ll come back and fight back and fight their tails off.”
How difficult it is to watch film from that kind of game and try to find positives
“Yeah, well I mean that’s the thing. There’s going to be some positives out of it just because when you’re on the headphones and you’re hearing he ran down the middle, you’re hearing those guys on defense saying he’s got to go spill that, he ran down the middle of the pulle. Those are things that they can physically see, that they’ve got to go do correctly for us to be any good. And now some of it we just couldn’t move them or some of it we just couldn’t get around them, you know? And that’s what it is. I knew that coming into it. But there will be some things. And it’s just like every Saturday, we’ll take 20, 25 plays, pull from it, go and move on. Because it doesn’t matter. Got to learn from it somehow some way and then move on.”
