Below is the transcript for the Bobby Wilder press conference.
Hey everybody good afternoon to all of our 12th Monarchs out there in Monarch Nation happy Labor Day to all. First of I’d like to compliment Liberty on their performance especially not only what they did on the field but off the field. I mean the outstanding atmosphere, environment the crowd was electric, they were into it that is one of the best if not the best student sections I have ever seen in 30 years of coaching. They were loud they were large they were right behind our bench they were impactful. So compliments to them on their performance.
From our team standpoint this was a 14-10 game with 20 minutes to go in the football game and similar to throughout the game we had a couple key situations that we didn’t execute, coaches and players. We had a drive down the field at that point with five minutes to go in the third down, score 14-10, we started at our own nine took the ball all the way down the field, we run a double move with Duhart at receiver he’s wide open and we just miss, just barely miss the completion for a touchdown at that point that would have put us up 17-14. Liberty comes back hits a big play has a first and goal on our four yard line, our defense stops them forces a field goal. So I’m still feeling really good at that point at 17-10 concerned because we didn’t execute, score a touchdown or make field goals, but felt like we were still at a good place and at that point it just came a part for our football team. We didn’t get a stop on defense, we went three and out or turned the ball over on offense.
Saturday night when you look at our kicking situation, Nick Rice his first field goal his 48 yarder that would’ve been good from 60, a really good kick and then we have back to back kicks at the end of the first half where we missed a 40 yarder and a 38 yarder, both of them had the distance and the legs but he missed it by a foot to the right, something easily correctable with his plant foot approach but critical situations where we need the points. We did not punt particularly well, we had seven punts for 33.6-yard average we did have three that we pinned them inside the 20 we need to do a better job there. We had a couple really good returns, Darrell Brown had a 15-yard punt return, Isaiah Harper hit a couple that almost got out but we need to be a bit more consistent with special teams.
Defensively same thing, inconsistent start of the game, we allow a long drive for a touchdown after we don’t execute the fake punt they score again and from that point 14-0, we go 30 minutes through the first quarter all the way to five minutes left in the 3rd quarter, we don’t allow a point. I felt like we were dominant in that stretch of two quarters getting ourselves off the field and we just did not finish the game the right way a real bright spot for us. Lawrence Garner making his first start at middle linebacker was a bright spot. He had 11 tackles in the game with some very explosive plays in this game something we’re really excited about. We’re hopeful this week defensively we’ll get two of our starters back, hopeful Marvin Brach who missed this game, he had 96 tackles for us last year hopefully he’ll be back and then also Justice Davila, who is nursing a hamstring. This is a guy who missed all of last season but is still in the top 10 all time in the history of our program in tackles. So we’re hopeful to have those two guys back with us this week.
Offensively, incredibly frustrating game, we had the ball eight times in this game on Liberty’s 44 yard line or closer to their end zone and only score 10 points. 300-yards of offense that clearly could have been more if we were connecting especially in the pass game. We missed two touchdown passes to Duhart, one that was reversed by video and right before the half we missed our freshman tight end Keion White down the middle. Those balls Steven just overthrew them, you know a couple of them to Duhart, a matter of a couple inches. The one to Keion White was a little too deep. In this game it felt like he was anxious a number of times he certainly wasn’t nervous he was just anxious, he was just excited to play.