Coach Montgomery’s Weekly Press Conference Quotes

GREENVILLE, N.C. – Third-year ECU Head Football Coach Scottie Montgomery addressed members of the media on Monday prior to this weekend's non-conference home game against Old Dominion. The following are selected comments:

Opening Statement:
"It's good to be back in Greenville. We got back Sunday around 4 a.m., after a tough fought loss against a USF team that was really talented. I thought the difference in the game was two plays on offense and two plays on defense. The two plays on offense, we threw one out of bounds and we didn't catch the ball down the right-hand side. It's going to be one of those games now, that we didn't catch those guys in talent level, we caught them in how hard we're playing.

"Defensively, I thought it was easy to see that we had a bust on the run and a bust on the screen and go. I thought that was the difference in the football game. Special teams wise, I thought we played well except for punting. There's a lot of things in there we have to clean up and we need to get on that as soon as possible, which is tomorrow morning. We'll get that fixed, get that cleaned up. But it's going to be those type of games. We're really, really excited about how well our defense played. Our defense played really well outside of those couple of plays that I talked about.

"Offensively, the game plan was to maintain possession of the football as long as we could. We had 38 minutes of total time of possession to their 19 minutes or so. We wanted to dominate the run game, we wanted to rush it more effectively than they did. We were able to do that. We also wanted to take care of the football, but we were not able to do that. It looks like we have one turnover on paper with an interception, but we had two turnovers on downs as well where we should have been able to extend drives. We wanted to keep them off the field, have more plays than they did. Unfortunately, we did all those things, but we did not win the football game. We're in a position now where we're a much better football team, there's no question about it. Our playmakers have to make plays in some of those critical situations, so we can change the outcome of such a tight ball game on the road."

"We are very thankful to all the people that supported us in the last 13 or 14 days. It's been a long couple of weeks. Our guys went down and prepared well and did what they were supposed to do. We just wanted to come back victorious and we were unable to do that."

On Old Dominion:
Moving forward, Old Dominion has a great football team. They've played in some tight games all throughout the year, all the way into the third and fourth quarter. Against Liberty, if you watched that game, they played really, really well. This past week, it all came together for them. On offense, what they are is big. Not just in their offensive front, they're big at receiver. No. 7 (Travis Fulgham) and No. 9 (Johnathan Duhart) are both 6-foot-3 guys. Then in the backfield, they've got a 235-pound back with great feet. All those things together and you look at what they've done on the defensive side of the ball, they've got three out of the four guys on their defensive front are seniors. They have a big group. Both defensive ends are 6-4 to 6-6 and 250 pounds. They do a good job and they played much harder than Virginia Tech this past game. That's why they were victorious. At the end of the day, you can tell that was a team that prepared like it was their Super Bowl and that's the type of win that can give guys momentum. We have to be ready for what they're going to bring into Dowdy-Ficklen. We're glad we're playing at home and want our fans to come out and support us and Paint it Gold this weekend. Looking forward to the challenge of Old Dominion and getting back to winning ways here at home."

On Differences Between This Year And Last Year:
"Bottom line wins and losses. I'd feel a lot better right now if we had won the football game and the direction the team is going in. We've been moving in the right direction for a while, we just have to make sure at the end of the game, especially when we play tough opponents on the road. We played an undefeated team on the road and had multiple chances to win the game. When you have those, you want the leadership on the team, the playmakers on the team, to take over. Which it did on the defensive side of the ball, definitely during that game, and at times on the offensive side of the ball. I thought Trevon Brown made some unbelievable plays, some that you saw and some that you didn't see. We didn't quite find him a couple of times. We've just got to be able to close those games out. We've tightened up what we do in our run game on the offensive side of the ball and we've tightened up a lot of things we do on defense. The biggest thing we've added to our defense is that we've added speed at the defensive end position. We've recruited some guys that are in their second year, the "Tank" Robinson's of the world, we've brought in Nate Harvey, and now looking at Alex Turner as an older player. All those guys that came in the first or second year, we're seeing play a lot of good football. That's what supposed to happen at this point in time. Offensively, we need to grow some of those guys. Tahj Deans has to continue to grow. Our running backs are playing at a much higher level than they have in the past. Looking at Darius Pinnix, Anthony Scott and Hussein Howe. We've just been able to grow some positions. The offensive line's gotten better. D'Ante Smith, Cortez Herrin and John Spellacy, these are guys that are in their second and third years of playing for us. So, it's time for us to see some results. We're seeing them, but we need to see them in road games where we prepared really hard with a great game plan. We just didn't get it done. It doesn't feel very good at all."

On The Quarterback Situation:
"Right now, the conversation was had about Kinsgley Ifedi. We'd really like to get him some reps somewhere in there. At the beginning of the second half, I was very close to putting him in because I thought that Reid (Herring) wouldn't be able to be mobile. Reid talked us out of it, saying he would be able to be mobile and would be able to play throughout the game, so we wanted to go back with Reid. There is a definite want to get Kinsgley Ifedi in. As far as Holton (Ahlers) getting typecast, we're bringing him along in the offense. In some situations, I feel very confident in Holton having the ball in his hands. If we get typecast as far as that's concerned, it's not something I'm worried about. I know that if he has the ball in fourth-and-one, third-and-one, third-and-two, some of those situations, he's the best option we have."

On Feeling During USF's Big Plays:
"Really, really tough. Those are plays that we were prepared for and we worked on. We had a great idea that they would hit it and try, especially early in the game. We knew if we got it early and stopped it early, we wouldn't have to worry about it in the third and fourth quarter. But they made their money off the trick play and it was really tough because we had a simple blown assignment by the safeties not pushing over and rocking down and taking two and three vertical and that's what hit us. It's something we have to live with and something we had to get corrected at halftime, so we didn't have to worry about seeing it again. You want to stop those because if you can stop a trick play, it kills the rest of their trick plays. On the other side of it, when we came with our trick play or our double move, they stopped them. Or we didn't effectively execute having guys wide open. It's a little gut wrenching, but the way our defense played, only giving up 295 yards or so of offense if you take those two plays away, it's the best performance our defense has had here in a long time. We played extremely well. I didn't think we played well between the 20's (yard lines), which is something we've usually done well. We always need to get better in the red zone. But we've always played well between the 20's. I looked at the stat sheet, looking where all the yardage came from, with over 400 yards of offense. But once you get away from it and look at some of the things we did, we can't have penalties and we can't have mental errors on offense. We got behind the chains way too many times and put too much stress on the protection. Not the protection itself, but what the quarterback had to do with the protection. which rattled him a few times."

On Reid Herring's Status:
"We're going to find out, but I think he's going to be fine. I do think we're talented enough at quarterback whether it's Kingsley or Holton moving forward. Every week that Holton can practice, he gets a little bit better. The hard part for quarterbacks, especially young quarterbacks, is managing game situations. Like right there at the end of the second quarter. Holton was in a situation where we wanted to take the flat or throw it out of bounds. Just everything that goes on in the game made him go back to wanting to scramble. Right there, it's not the time to scramble. We could have possibly got another play in, but I burned the timeout and we got a field goal. Those are the things that concern you, when you wrap all of those things into the big part of it. We do think Kingsley is a little bit further along in the total part of handling all of the quarterbacking. We will find out exactly where Reid is. We think he will be fine, but we will find out a little bit more as the week goes on."

On Playing Old Dominion After A Big Win:
"We're hungry, we're not in a position right now to look at names on shirts and all of that. We're trying to get better every day. Our show team has been challenged and that challenge came from me. I thought there was a couple of plays in practice where we could have gone a little bit harder on our show team and we did not. We got it corrected so this will be a fierce week of work. Old Dominion is a great football team and they're going to come in and play just as hard as they did last week. This is another big opponent for them and another chance for them to get a victory. They're coming on the road and it makes it special to get a big victory on the road. We know that challenge is ahead of us. We're really, really excited about this game. But it's about us right now. We've got to go practice hard, which we've always done. We've got to play better. We've also got to understand that when we play against the top teams in our conference, it's going to come down to one or two plays and we have to make them, and we have to execute them."

On Adding A 12th Game To The Schedule:
"We're in communication with Virginia Tech and communication in general about what we're going to do. To get to that 12th game or not get to that 12th game. So that's something we're in communication with right now."

On Effect Of Scouting Virginia Tech Before Playing Old Dominion:
"Anytime you're prepared for a team you have a little bit of an advantage over not knowing anything. We did prepare hard for Virginia Tech all the way through Wednesday. The one thing that Old Dominion threw at Virginia Tech that was a curveball and helped us, is that they were two totally different teams, with No. 5 (Steven Williams, Jr.) and the backup quarterback (Blake LaRussa) that came in. He really spread the ball around all over the field. That's one of those situations that they didn't expect him to do, to come in and throw the ball around and downfield the way that they did. Their quarterback has generally shown the ability to run-action pass, a lot of quarterback runs, and the defense was built to stop that. We're thankful that we got to see Old Dominion, that we got to see the next quarterback come in and throw it effectively down the field and add in different elements to the passing game that quite frankly, we hadn't seen before last week. So, that's the one advantage that we'll take from the Virginia Tech-Old Dominion game."

On ECU's Balance In The Passing Game:
"Intermediate throws, and if you go back and watch what he's (Herring) done to this point, we need more intermediate throws. They were forcing us at times to get the ball on the outside, on the perimeter. They were playing a lot of one robber or one rat, which is where one safety is down and trying to take away all the interior breaking routes. They played outside leverage on the perimeter, which I thought was really effective against us. Where we need to grow with Reid in the passing game, we need to be a much better perimeter team. We need to get our backs in the passing game. I've thought we've missed our backs way too many times underneath, checking the ball down. No quarterback likes to be known as "Charlie Checkdown", but what we need to do is get our better players the ball in space. I think some of our most effective players with the ball in space are Hussein Howe and Anthony Scott. We haven't done it and we need to get better at it."

On The Team's Confidence:
"We're high on confidence. It was tough because our team was so confident in our offense because they knew the game plan – get the game to the second half. We're going to make a play. It was such a huge lift for our offense, that we didn't get over the hump there. That our defense was all there. Then when the defense was on the field, our offense in turn knew they were going to get a stop. I didn't really have to think about punting it away there at the end with the two timeouts I had because I had the utmost confidence in our defense and in our offense to go out there and get it done. Our offense didn't get it done, but there is a lot of confidence right now. They also know we've talked about growing in our conference. It's very clear to see that we've grown in our conference. From the recruiting standpoint, I think we've done a good job of catching the talent level. Last year you'd hear me talk about the speed we need to increase. I think we've done it on our defensive front, at defensive end, at safety, we've done it at our skill positions on offense. The last part we need to catch people in and it'll give us a little bit of confidence, we need to get better in our short area quickness. We're getting balls in space that we should be scoring and are scoring at other places. We've got to score there. But we're playing with a lot more confidence. We're practicing with a lot more confidence. We're preparing with a lot more confidence. The coaches have a lot more confidence in the players and the players have a lot more confidence in the coaches, because they've seen the level of growth we've had here."

On The Team's Mentality After Getting Home To Greenville:
"We were still a little bit hurt. It was still one of those situations where we came off a tough loss and that was what was most important. Really the only thing that was different about down there (Orlando) was that we slept in different beds. They were happy to be back, there's no doubt about that, I'm probably the happiest to be back to see my family and my kids. I've got to shout out to Cassius, I'm not going to see him much today, on his birthday. Happy birthday man. But I'm as happy to be home as anyone else. But there was still the emotion of the game yesterday that was on them. We got back late so we didn't have a lot of time to enjoy it. We got back at 4 a.m., and they were back over here for treatment early in the morning. The happiness of being back home, they're probably experiencing that today. Yesterday was more about getting back on the horse and moving directly into Old Dominion."

On Team's Injury Status:
"We've got a few dings, we've got a few soft tissue injuries. I don't think there is going to be anything that majorly affects us moving forward. But we're in much better shape than we were in after game four or five last year. The depth is helping us during the game. We're playing a lot of people, whether it be in our defensive front, in our secondary, at the receiver position, in the back position. We're playing a lot more people than we have played. A lot more people are getting opportunities because we have a lot more depth. So, it's helping us, we're in a little better shape than we were last year. But it's week to week. I've seen some teams that were looking great a few weeks ago, then I turn the TV on and they're missing three or four guys on one side of the ball, if not both. So, we just have to continue getting our treatment, continue to feed them and work them out. I think our physical conditioning, we're in a little better shape than we have been in the past."

On Colby Gore's Status:
"For Colby, he'll go through his last set of testing today. That should make him available for us this week. I would say he is probable at this time."

Players Mentioned

Trevon Brown

Tahj Deans

Colby Gore

Nate Harvey

Cortez Herrin

Reid Herring

Hussein Howe

Darius Pinnix, Jr.

Anthony Scott

D'Ante Smith

John Spellacy

Alex Turner

Footer