VIDEO: Ashley Ingram Press Conference 

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. - No. 17/17 Carson-Newman can clinch a share of the Mountain Division title with a win Saturday against Emory & Henry. The contest at Fred Selfe Stadium has a 1 p.m. kickoff Saturday.  Below are Ashley Ingram's pregame remarks to the media about the Emory & Henry Wasps.  

OPENING STATEMENT:   

INGRAM: We are super excited to go up and play Emory & Henry Saturday. I think we're expecting a great atmosphere, really. It's going to be for first place in the Mountain Division. They've got a great football team. They're playing well. They've had a big win over LR. We will have our work cut out for us, but we're excited for the opportunity.

Q1:  You win and you can do no worse than a share of the title. You would have tiebreaker over the teams that can catch you. How nice is it to be playing such a consequential football game here toward the end of the regular season?

INGRAM:  It's great. We told you guys, every time you win just means the next game gets that much more important. So to be playing in mid to late October and it being of this kind of magnitude is obviously very exciting. It's a credit to our coaches, it's a credit to our players. We're excited for the opportunity.

Q2:  They cause as much havoc defensively as anybody in the country. 21 turnovers forced leads the nation. 16 of those have been interceptions. What do they do so well defensively to force those miscues?

INGRAM: They're well coached and they're athletic. They've got great cornerbacks. They've got really good athletic defensive line. They're really good at linebacker. So across the board they're athletic, they're experienced and they're well coached. So that's a really good defensive unit.

Q3:  What can you say about what they do offensively? Feels like they are as talented skill position wise as anybody in the league. Between the Cams at receiver - Abshire and Peoples, and then the running back Jackson, second in the league in rushing.

INGRAM:  They're good up front so they can run the football. They've got an experienced quarterback who's a good football player, and then they've got good skill around it. They're just well coached and as you said, you know, they're kind of running America's offense now. Everyone's running some version of RPO and they just do it very well.

Q4:  You look at your own team and while Emory & Henry has forced oodles of turnovers, you've gotten the three outs. You've gotten teams off the field, good defensive third down conversion rate. Defensively, not a lot of chaos has happened. Haven't had a turnover forced in a month. I presume you'll accept that for not allowing a ton of points, but it would be nice to have one to set up the offense with some shorter fields, I'm sure.

INGRAM:  No doubt.  We need to do a better job. We need to be more disruptive. We need to play harder. We need to chase the ball. Gang tackling is typically what leads to a lot of turnovers. So we got to do a better job there and then on offense, we've got to continue to take care of the ball. We've done a good job. We had a kind of a kind of a foolish fumble our first play last week. We've got to eliminate those type plays. We've got to take care of it. 

Q5: How do you continue Jayden Sullins' development after he sextupled his rushing output over the last month?

INGRAM:  To me, if you're going to have a really good football team, football starts from inside out. So it starts from your interior o line, your interior d line. If we can run the fullback inside, and then things will happen for us on the perimeter. So we're going to do whatever people will give us. If they give us the fullback, we'll run to fullback. If they let our quarterback run, we're going to run the quarterback. If they're too aggressive on the back end, we're going to throw play action, pass. If they take the fullback, the quarterback, we're going to get it to the a back. And we really don't care. We're not looking for style points. Last I checked, you got to cross the goal line to get points. So we have no agenda except to win football games.

Q6:  Crossing the goal line, probably an emphasis point after last week with those two second half drives that stalled out inside the five. What's it take there down on the goal line to punch it in. What's the separator?

INGRAM: A couple things is as a runner, you've got to get in end zone. And we had an opportunity on one of the runs last week maybe to get an end zone. The fourth down play that we were stopped on, give them credit, really poor execution. And some of it was scheme wise, we had to correct something that we were doing up front that just didn't make a lot of sense now that I look at it - and I'm heavily involved in that, so I'm not pointing a finger. Then we had to make a play and we had some guys wide open and we just got to get the ball to them.

Q7:  Four weeks left in the regular season. What can you say about the maturity of this group and its development as this year has gone along?

INGRAM:  The one game or one game at a time mentality has been great. Really, the focus is one day at a time. We've got to go out and we got to have a good practice. Today. We are still developing. We are not the football team we want to be. We're not the football team we're going to be. We have to continue to play hard. We have to continue to practice hard. We need to be better fundamentally. We need to play with greater effort. So we're still a work in progress.

Q8: Anything else? 

INGRAM:   We're excited for an opportunity. We have a huge challenge in front of us, but we're just excited to be able to play football that matters this time of year.

Kickoff between the Eagles and Wasps is set for 1 p.m. Coverage on the Eagle Sports Network begins at noon with the AEC Tailgate Show on Joy 620 (WRJZ-AM, Knoxville), MIX 105.5 (WSEV-FM, Sevierville) and online at cneagles.com/live.