Mike Clowney Opening Statement: I mean, it's a lot from the standpoint of just being able to go back to Greenwood and coach there again, not necessarily coaching at one of the schools in Greenwood. I tell everybody I had 10 jobs in two places which is at Carson-Newman and with Greenwood School District 50. I coached at both of the high schools down there and then started out at Greenwood High School which is where we'll play the game. They've made some significant improvements over there, and it's a beautiful place. They always do a good job. I've got a lot of friends there, so I'm looking forward to going back there and coaching.
Q1: Who's it more meaningful for, you or the other Clowney's?
They always love it when we come back down that way, and I'm sure they'll be there tailgating and ready to go.
Q2: They are genuinely our top fan on the Facebook page. Nobody comments more and drives more engagement than your mom, and we thank her for that. It's the midway point of the season. You've had your fair share of adversity. You've played a difficult schedule. How do you assess where this program and this team is at the halfway point?
That's what we talked about at the very beginning of the year when we went with Psalms 125 for our theme which was unshakable. We knew that there was potential for things to be good at points in time and things to be rough and hard and difficult at points in time. I think when you go and look at this crowd of kids and the way they've responded, they've really been a Steady Eddy type of group. We've had some things go good for us which are exciting, and we've lost some games that we had opportunities to win. Even outside of that, they continue to come in every day and prepare at the highest level possible and continue to work to make sure that we can get next game to come out in our favor. We just challenge them to continue to do that.
Q3: The games that you've lost this year compared to last year, you've had chances to win them and win them late. Is that just the natural progression from last year to this year, and how do you get over that hump the back half of the season?
I think it has been something natural. I think guys are starting to kind of be a little bit more aware of what we're doing. You see it especially on the defensive side of the ball. Offensively, we're still kind of growing in that area because we did have some change there, so there's been some adjustments that those guys have had to do. Overall, I think the thing that you have to do is show up to work every day and give it your best effort. Then, that change and that growth is going to come. That's where we still kind of talking about that moment to where it really hits and clicks. We're still fighting to get to that point.
Q4: You take on an Erskine team that is looking for its first win. They've gotten Wingate, they've gotten Lenoir-Rhyne, they've gotten Newberry, and they've gotten the leader on this side in Mars Hill. They've struggled to put up points, and they've struggled to move the ball at times this year. How do you keep them from getting going against your team?
I think the thing that we have to do is we have to go and continue to work and to develop from a fundamental standpoint. We still have to minimize mistakes. We're going to make mistakes, but for whatever reason for us right now, we make one and it turns into a big play. So, we've got to make sure we minimize mistakes, and if we do make a mistake, we've got to minimize the gain for the other team off of it. We've got to continue to work to move the football, especially in the ground game, and we've got to continue to perform in the area of tackling execution. So, I think if our guys continue to put forth the things in practice this week as far as growing and developing, we could give ourselves a chance to do what we need to do here Saturday.
Q5: You bring up the ground game. Comparing historical data is difficult for Carson-Newman football because if you look back to when this program was really truly running the split back, it was rare to find a game where the team carried the ball fewer than 50 times in a game. Never has there been a stretch in the modern era of Carson-Newman football where you rushed fewer than 30 times in three straight weeks, and that's happened. Is that a byproduct of the situations of games like playing from behind a little bit, or is this just a natural way to to open up the run by saying we've got to throw it a little bit more? What is your expectation for what running the football looks like, given 30 times is a lot for some teams but historically for Carson-Newman, it's barely scraping the bottom of the barrel?
This is what I told our team at halftime was that we have got to get to the point where we can run the football whenever we want to and however we want to. That's just controlling the football game, and I think all of that stuff is kind of playing a little bit into it. We want be able to put the ball in the air a little bit more, and you've got to not hand it off as much if you're going to put it in the air a little bit more. Then, the other side of that is when you do run it, you've got to have production. You look at where we're at and our first down statistics, and we're not gaining what we really need to gain on first down to kind of be able to keep it on the run or feel comfortable going both ways. We put ourselves in a lot of third and long type situations, where we're chasing yardage as opposed to being able to just kind of ground the ball out. That's one thing we challenged our guys with at halftime on Saturday, and we'll do it at practice again today. It's something that we've got to continue to work and expand on, playing a lot of different faces rolling around up front. At the same time, we've got to move to football.
Q6: Mekhi Brown had a stellar game. He was back-to-back SAC Player of the Week, and that's the first time that's happened in more than 10 years. Jeterryous Jones and Jacorey Long, their development continues to be pretty staggering. Jet did the same dance that Mekhi did with the fumble recovery and pick, but he just had fewer tackles. What do you see from your guy that inserted himself into the starting lineup at safety in the preseason camp and has not relinquished it?
In the first game, we made him a captain. He's one of those guys that when you come in during the spring, you've got a lot of questions on because it's his first year, and he's not really played safety. Can he really do what you need him to do, and he's continued to keep his head down and stay focused. He shows up to work every day, and now he's starting to see that production on the field. Both of those guys sat out last year. We felt like both had potential to be really good players for us, and now they're kind of having that opportunity on the field and doing a great job of taking advantage of the situation.
Q7: Jacorey Long, first career double digit tackle performance, had a strip sack and multiple tackles for loss. You've shuffled things up on the D-line a little bit. What's freeing him up?
Experience, again. He's been in the program, and he kind of knows what to do. Sitting here this time last year and you want to be able to move him around some, but we can't do that because it may confuse him. Now, he knows and understands his defense a little bit better, so we can do a couple other things with him. He's done a great job of continuing to work to grow and develop from a fundamental standpoint. The cool thing about Jacorey is he's one of those guys that really wants to, and he's done a great job of just growing himself.