UTEP Weekly Football Press Conference Transcript: Sept. 25

9/25/2023 4:31:00 PM

AUDIO: https://tinyurl.com/bde648s3 | YOUTUBE: https://tinyurl.com/ye22hvya

EL PASO, Texas – UTEP head coach Dana Dimel had his Monday press conference in advance of the Miners' home CUSA game against LA Tech on Friday night and recapping UTEP's 45-28 loss versus UNLV.

Opening statement by head coach Dana Dimel
"As we go through our first kind of critique, the nutshell of the first five games for us, it's a fine line right now of wins and losses for us in some of these games. It's our mistake because we're not making the plays that define the fine lines. What I mean by that is that we have some opportunities to win games, but we're not making the plays that turn a game. Our opponents are making the plays, or we're making the mistakes that turn a game that are fine line mistakes. Obviously, the start of our game last week in the blocked punt is something that was a big turning point in the game. (It) starts the team off on the road, where we've been a really good home team, and gives them a chance to gain some momentum and to take a lead. So, throughout the game that early touchdown that they had just kind of kept showing itself. There at the end of the half where we weren't good in the last four minutes, and that's one of our goals, they went down and put a good drive together and scored to take a seven-point lead. So, normally if we get the ball to start the second half and if we're tied (late in the first half), I'm going to play conservatively and pretty close to the vest. But because we were down seven, we got a little bit aggressive on that 3-14, and it led to a big mistake by us. So, the two big mistakes in that half that kind of made a huge effect on the ballgame were the blocked punt and the turnover at the end of the half. So, one thing kind of leads to another. Then in the third quarter, we came out and put together a really good drive and then got the game to within a touchdown. Then they put together a really long drive, and we stayed really tough and strong on that long drive and got the turnover. Praise (Amaewhule) gets that pick and there's one guy left to make the play. Tyrice (Knight) turns around to block the quarterback, and he just didn't get his eyes around enough. If he gets that block, there's no one left, and Praise is going 80 yards down the field. How much does that change the game? A lot. So, there's the fine line right there. But we still have momentum, and we get a chance to convert on third down and don't convert. (We) make an unforced error on third down there and don't convert. Then we get a big third-down stop and then we get the personal foul at the end of the third down. When I when I watched that play, it wasn't one of those plays that everybody's got to be more disciplined on where two guys are pushing and shoving each other and then one guy shoves back. That's what I thought might have happened when we got the penalty, but what happened is Amier (Body-Matthews) and the guy that was blocking him were just physically playing the play. But Amier was undisciplined enough to let his hand get up into the helmet of the defender, and then the guy's helmet came off in his hand. So, it's a penalty that should be called, but it was just aggressive play that led to the penalty and not being disciplined enough to keep his hand down on the facemask. But that's a huge play in the game because it keeps the drive alive, and they go and score and flip the momentum back on us. But again offensively, we responded and got the game back to seven points again. Then they put together another drive. As we watched the game, we gave up a lot more rushing yards than we had to anybody for a long time. They did a lot of good things. They had a lot of really good schemes offensively, and we gave up chunk plays. Big plays. But all in all, we had 27 plays that were on our defensive highlight reel for when we stuffed them. So, what we had to do better defensively is not give up the big chunk plays in the run game and be better on third down. Then offensively we can't have turnovers. We moved the ball well. We had some big plays. Our passing game looked really, really dynamic at times. Gavin (Hardison) threw some really good throws, and receivers made some good catches. But we can't have the unforced errors, the turnovers and the dropped passes. Those are the things that we got to clean up. What's really very, very interesting about this season is we're not a month from our first game yet. It's still not a month since that first game, and we've played five games. So, because of that, that should help us to improve at a high rate. Now what's been the effect of those five games is that it's been a grueling schedule for us. I think we all can sit here and say that we've played five pretty good football teams, right? I mean, Northwestern beats Minnesota last week so Northwestern is not the same team that they've been. Jax State is really good. We know Jax State just shut out Eastern Michigan at home, and Eastern Michigan is a good group of five football team. So, I go on and on of the teams that we've played, and the records of the teams that we've played to this point. It's been five weeks of really tough football for us. UNLV has beaten an SEC team. So, there's the fine line for us. It's just let's get those things fixed because I still believe in so many ways we have a good football team, and there's much ahead of us. Each and every game that we play is going to get us back on the track we need to be out. So, we got to learn from our mistakes, get better from our mistakes, improve on the things we need to improve on and continue to get better. That's our goal for where we are right now, and it takes toughness because we haven't started off the season the way we wanted to start it off. That's very obvious. But we've been in situations like this before. We've been in some adverse situations, and we brought this program from an adverse situation when we took it over. Our guys are equipped to handle it. We're all equipped to handle it. Now it's time to start getting W's on the board."

On LA Tech
"Smoke Harris is back right now, and I think it's his 14th season, if I'm not mistaken on where he is. He caught 10 passes last week, and he's a really dynamic player after the catch. He gets open and make some good yards after the catch. He's a good returner for them, one of their key players on offense. They have some other receivers that are very good. They've got most of their offensive line coming back from last year. They're actually playing two quarterbacks. (Jack) Turner started last week, but (Hank) Bachmeier had started before last game. So, they have two quarterbacks that have played for them. Defensively, they have a lot of returning starters from last year's defense. They've got good size and athleticism to their defensive football team, and obviously are going to be a big test for us coming in this weekend."

On improving the defense
"It's staying a little bit more in our gaps. We had some players jump out of their gaps at times, and when they did, they found those open seams. I thought the running backs for UNLV did a good job of finding those open seams. It was the first game we didn't tackle well either. We've got to position our bodies on tackling. That's the key to tackling, getting your body in position and being in good position on defense. Leveraging plays better on defense, that's how we fix that part of it. We can't let people run the ball on us like that. You're never going to have a good day defensively when someone rushes for that many yards. So, we've got to have better gap integrity to what we're doing, and we've got to tackle better."

On improving the offense
"(Our offense) isn't where we want to be, but we're never going to be like the most prolific scoring offense because we don't try to be. That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to score one more (point) than the other team scores. But we don't want to be where we are. We don't want to have the few amount of points that we've got after four games because it's not what we need. If we were scoring enough points, we'd be 4-0. I'm not as much concerned about where we stand nationally with points anymore. We've always been, even when we've been a really good offense, it's been about our efficiency. Our efficiency is not good enough right now. So, we just need to continue to work on that and figure out how we can get better and improve on that."

On being back in Conference USA play
"We're excited to be back into conference play because it gives us a new start. Like I said to the team, which I thought was a big message, when we had Wendell, our PA announcer, give the chapel to our team. He gave a wonderful message about looking at things through the windshield and not through the rearview mirror, and that's where we are right now. All of a sudden, we get some wins to start the conference season off and we're back to square one with where we want to be. So, we can endure these six games in a little over a month by getting a win and getting back to even in conference. I am really excited about the new (look) to the conference. I have a lot of pride in Conference USA because I was coaching in it in 2000 in my first year there (at Houston). I have a lot of history with the conference, and I have a lot of pride with the conference because we have a lot of good football teams. I'm really looking forward to getting ourselves back into conference play."

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