BLACKSBURG – Leading up to the second game of the season against Middle Tennessee, Virginia Tech football head coach Justin Fuente met with the media for a press conference. Read what Fuente had to say below.
HEAD COACH JUSTIN FUENTE
Opening Statement:
"I want to thank everybody that came out to support our team. Friday night was just a really special atmosphere. As good and as energetic a place, a sporting event I've ever been in from start to finish. It played a huge role in the game and we certainly appreciate it. Now our challenge is to turn the page and move forward and get ready for Middle Tennessee State. I think about the first game of the year when it's a conference game and somebody you've got regional connections with, basically you've been thinking about the game for six months. Then the game is over and you've got six days to get ready to play the next. That's a huge challenge for us right now. We have four non-conference games in the next five weeks. Just take last week and put it in the bank, put it to the side and go focus on our non-conference schedule.
"You play non-conference games for post-season recognition, and it starts with Middle Tennessee this Saturday. We've got to do a great job as coaches and as staff getting refocused, wiping the slate clean, getting recharged, fill our cups back up emotionally, mentally and physically, so that we can put a great effort out there Saturday. We will be challenged. Coach [Rick] Stockstill has been at MTSU for 16 years. He's done a fantastic job there for some time. They can run. You look at their overall team speed on both sides of the ball. They have always been fast and they can really run. They scored 50 points last week. We have to get our football team ready to go. If we've got serious aspirations about being the type of football team that we've talked about, then we've got to be able to do these types of things. We have to be able to put the previous week behind us and move forward. There's plenty for us to work on in all three phases."
On moving on to the next week following a big win vs. UNC:
"The bottom line is, we have six days, we have to turn around. We have to get ready to go. We are a mature, older football team. I think we are, we claim to be, and we have to do a great job. It starts with the coaches and leads down to the Leadership Council and then throughout the rest of the older players and to the younger ones."
On the special teams play, specifically the punt block & return unit:
"The first punt is the one with Jalen [Stroman] that I still can't figure out how he didn't get it (block it). On film, it looks like it went underneath him. Somebody showed me a picture that looks like it went through his hands. I felt good going into the game about that unit. Quite honestly that unit underperformed last year dramatically. I thought we were going to have a chance to influence the game. One of the next ones was such a weird situation. We had a little problem getting everybody on the field. I can't remember the specifics of it, but they had the ball in plus territory, and it would have been kind of a punt-safe situation, but then there was a big sack and brought them all the way back out of field goal range and into a super long punt scenario and nobody can hear anything. It was just pandemonium. So we went from not putting the punt block unit on, to putting them on, to maybe being field goal block to all of a sudden trying to get our punt block unit out there. We ran them on there late, they didn't really have much of a chance to make an impact. I wish we would have gotten the first one, but the difference between blocking one and not blocking one is sometimes really, really small. It was just good to see us put some pressure on him and having Tayvion [Robinson] back there feeling the ball with some confidence and we'll build on it."
On playing DE Amaré Barno in coverage:
"We were doing a couple of different things with him, some of that requires him to drop, he does have some coverage skills. Some of it is basically spying on the quarterback, some of it is getting out there and playing. He has a versatile skill set and seems to be adapting to the different things that we're asking him to do pretty well."
