BLACKSBURG – Leading up to Virginia Tech football's game against Richmond at home, head coach Justin Fuente met with the media for a press conference on Monday. Read what he had to say below.
HEAD COACH JUSTIN FUENTE
Opening Statement:
"The guys were in yesterday, had a really good workout. Turn the page and move forward to be challenged with Richmond this week. Looking at the film, really proud of the competitiveness and the fight that our team showed. It was evident from the first snap that our guys were in it to find some way to try and win the ballgame. We came up a little bit short. I do feel like we got kind of rocked there a little bit at first. There was a sense of everybody out there trying to make a play instead of trusting our training and focusing on execution. There were a whole bunch of guys out there that were really trying to find a way to make the impact to turn the tide, which led to us not executing as well as we've grown accustomed to or how we wanted to. In turn, it made the situation a little bit worse. Eventually settled down a little bit and obviously came close to pulling off a pretty big comeback. Tremendous challenge this week to come back home to play a team that was really close to being undefeated coming into this game. They were like two minutes away in the Villanova game away from being undefeated. A veteran football team coming into our place that's very well-coached on both sides of the ball and special teams. They have four or five defensive linemen that would play for us. They have skill players, scheme. We're going to have to have a heck of a week of practice. We'll get some guys healthy to be back to full strength there because we're going to need that this week."
On the red zone offense at West Virginia:
"We stunk. We jumped offsides on the three-yard line. There was two times there's a little bit of time factored in there but it's poor. That's poor for everybody. You don't get down there three times, come away with nothing and not reevaluate, talk about and look at all aspects."
On OL Silas Dzansi's status and how OL Brock Hoffman did replacing him at right tackle:
"It was very difficult, it was a tough situation for Brock to be in. We didn't have Parker Clements on the trip either, he got hurt in practice last week. So, that contributed to the issues. I don't know who's going to play right tackle, that's my answer to that. Both those guys, Parker and Silas, were out there yesterday. I hope that they continue to get healthy. We have a staff meeting tonight where I'll get an update on their status and try to develop a plan."
On the second half defensive adjustments at West Virginia:
"We settled down and played much better assignment football in the second half. I did feel like they tried to take the air out of the ball in the second half. Maybe Coach [Neal] Brown would disagree with me, I don't know, it's just how I felt watching the game that they were trying to take the air out of it the second half. Much better execution created turnovers and momentum plays."
