Scott Sez: Temple week press conference
TAMPA, Fla., (OCT. 19, 2021) – South Florida Bulls head coach Jeff Scott met with the media Tuesday morning ahead of the Bulls Saturday tilt against Temple at Raymond James Stadium. Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. and the game is available on ESPN+
Scott briefly recapped the loss to Tulsa and talked about why that loss hurt more than other losses. He also talked about the confidence he has in his players based on the improvement that he is seeing, but admitted that USF has to find a way to turn that progress into wins. Scott also spoke on the American Athletic Conference expansion reports.
Below is a transcript of the highlights of Jeff Scott's press conference.
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Opening statement…
Well, we came in Sunday and graded the Tulsa tape. It was hard film to watch. But you know, really, when I saw when I turned on the film is excellent from our players. Multiple guys on defense played 94-snaps in that game, which is incredible. And, you know, really felt like our guys laid it on the line playing hard for four quarters.
The disappointing part is at the end of the day, it came down to about seven or eight plays. And really, they were spread out between the offense, defense and special teams each group. Even though they made some plays, each group had a chance really to finish the game at different points and we didn't get done. So the message for our guys, when they came in Monday morning, was we're not going to run from it. We're gonna watch it. We sat there watched every play, whatever, the good, the bad, the things we need to correct, the encouraging things that we can build off of. And then we said we gotta move on. That’s it. We’re not going to talk about it anymore. And we’ve got two games in the next nine days. We got to turn our focus 100 percent to Temple and hopefully use that game Saturday as encouragement for how close we are to breaking through.
You know, they had a really nice win a couple weeks ago, against Memphis, they're number nine in the country in pass defense, they've recruited extremely well, they brought in a good number of transfers on defense, and offense. And as you know, they'll be rested up and ready to go. Our full focus is really being able to turn the page as a team and put everything into this Temple game. Saturday night.
On injuries….
I think we came out pretty healthy. Chris Williams is the one that we're hopeful that he may be able to go with this week. You know, he's been out for a while, and he is practicing now. And he was doing one-on-ones today and doing a pretty good job. It’s probably too early in the week right now, he’ll probably be a game time decision. But I think we were fortunate coming out of that game. Hopefully we don’t have any injuries that should carry over to this week. Brice is coming back. He's getting closer to be unhealthy. He just kind of put himself back in the mix because obviously Jimmy Horne has been getting more opportunities and more reps as we go. And, and Shawn does a good job for us. He’s just kind of working his way back in that mix of those two guys.
On the frustration of close losses…
Yeah, it's tough. It's hard. But at the end of the day, we're coming up short, and we got to find a way to…I got to find a way as a coach to help our guys finish when we get those situations. Yeah, there's no doubt that one [Tulsa] hurt worse than any last year, we could have won one of those games, but we'd have been brought back to square one, we were nowhere close to the foundation that I feel like we have right now. I really feel like when we break through here soon, we're just going to keep getting better and better. Last year, with everything going on. We were just trying to keep the pieces together. So even though a similar result, it was a different feeling, because I really felt like our guys played 98 percent of the game well enough to win. But we still have to give Tulsa credit they capitalized on a few of the costly mistakes we made.
On not have to be asked about the starting QB being progress in itself…
Yeah, there's definitely again, we're in a results oriented business. I'm fully aware of that. I've been around this profession since I was born. And since I was seven years old, I knew the difference between winning and losing. So I fully understand that. But when you're building a program, you also have to, you know, look for progress, and you can't just take a tough loss and just say, well, we're just not getting any better. The reality is we are getting better. We just haven't played well at all for four quarters to get to victory. But yeah, there's definitely some progress out there. I think there's progress with our defense. You know, I really felt like our offense really let our team down in some situations where you know, defensively again, starting off what we struggled in the first half right off the game of defense this year in their first three got free points and then coming out we know we took the ball and opened it up. So, we knew we're giving them the ball in the third quarter and we knew this would be really key to get to stop and the defense goes out and gets a stop. I think we had four drives in a row defensively, starting in the third quarter, with no points. So there's progress there. But you know, still not enough to get over that hump.
On what’s the temperature of the team, are they anxious to take out frustration…
Yeah. It’s till work in progress. Tuesday is still a good day and the number one thing you have to do is you got to show up and you got to take action you got to go to meetings. You gotta go practice. And I think we’ve done a decent job for two days and, it definitely wasn't our best two days, we need to have a better Wednesday and Thursday. But you know the guys are they're trying to push through a lot of things going on right middle of the season. You have guys that haven’t played a whole lot yet and you know so you can deal with that in the middle of the year like this and big encouragement to our guys is hey just keep pushing through and this is not the time to stop or start feeling sorry for yourself or start having mid-season blues. This is the time to continue pushing forward and I believe we will. I’m really pleased with our leadership overall on the team and they're trying and we got to be able to help them as coaches as well.
On how big beating a conference opponent would be for your team’s confidence…
That’s where we are at right now. We were talking about trying to figure out a quarterback, trying to figure out this, now we're literally a point where, you know, we need to win. We need to get over that hump. And I really believe when we do it’s just going to bring more confidence and more energy and be able to push through to lead to more wins the rest of the year. There's no doubt about that there's nothing this team needs more right now than to get a victory. Because we're so close. We really should have gotten done but yeah all right now you kind of, as a coach, you got to have two to lenses that you look through. We kind of talked about that. A microscope and that right now is on having a great day today in preparation and putting ourselves in position to go win this Saturday. And then you've got to back up and use the telescope. And just be able to see, you know, are you making progress within the program. We’ll get there but I believe very firmly that our guys are working hard and making progress.
On clarifying what he meant by the Tulsa loss hurting more than the other losses…
You know, as a coach, when your team is ready, when they're prepared, and when they go out and play well, because they prepared well, and there's truly a foundation to where you are. And this was the first game since I've been here that our guys were prepared, they went out they were hungry, they played well. And like we did a lot of things [to put us] in position to earn a victory. Where I’d say, some of the other games maybe last year, not that we lucked into it, but we just were not even close to where we are this year. The record may be the same, but the team, I'm just telling you from a coach's perspective, and I believe that we're in a different position from a foundation. So, it hurts a little more.
On the consistency he has seen and his confidence that getting one win will turn into a couple…
Only as a coach that you know your team and you know where you are and again offensively defensively special teams we're definitely not perfect we're not where we want to be big picture wise and all that but we have all three groups that made progress. And that's kind of what I saw in that game with the defense playing well and special teams being able to score and have a chance to score another one and you know offense being able to move the ball and do some things. You know, we're just really close where maybe in other situations it's kind of one group plays well how many guys are nowhere to be found. So yeah, there's no doubt I'm confident in the progress we've made. We just gotta find a way to turn those into W's.
On his initial reactions to the addition of six C-USA schools to the AAC…
Yeah, my wife told me something about it before I went to bed. Yes, she mentioned something to me, you know what I said? This is the world we live in. Like every day you wake up to something new. I mean, personally, I embrace it. I'm 40 years old. I'm in college football. Like, I embrace where we are. Let's just think about the last two to three years, like, you got the transfer portal gets created. You got the one time transfer. You got Name Image Likeness, and we haven't even seen that's really gonna look like in the next couple of years.
You got, pretty soon, NCAA restructuring. Probably changing first time in 40 years that's gonna be completely different. Eligibility Center that might be completely going away and not even have an initial eligibility where each school gets to decide who they want to let in on their own. You got conference realignment, right? Who can guess what's gonna happen with that is just kind of moving around you and, and obviously, College Football Playoffs, all these changes.
In the end of the day, the way that I think, it's like, all right, well, that's interesting. But if I just sit here, do this, I'm going to be dizzy looking around. Like, let’s worry inside out. All I know is my job, the reason I'm here and the reason our administration here, all our focus is like, how can we improve this program, right? The potential this problem is a lot bigger than where we are right now. Right. And we have to run our own race program. We’ve had a program for 25 years. And it's been a different race than probably any other program in the country and different things. But at the same time, I'm very confident that we have a bright future. And I'm very confident in the leadership and the opportunity. I feel like there's an alignment, in leadership from the Board all the way down, that probably is as good or better than any time in our program's history.