Monday Press Conference
South Alabama head football coach Joey Jones was joined by Senior defensive lineman Andy Dalgleish and offensive lineman Melvin Meggs for their Monday press conference. Below is some highlights from each participant.
Head coach Joey Jones opening statement on their game against Troy. “Looking back at the game, it was 24-10 at halftime and I told the kids that if we could come out and drive down the field and score that I really felt like we had a chance to win the ballgame. I had a great feeling about it. But needless to say, we didn’t drive down and score in the second half like I wanted us to. It’s two-sided. You’re frustrated because you always want to win, you prepare to win and work your tail off 16 hours a day to get your kids ready to play. But the positive side of it is when you look at how far away we are from being there, and I think we’re close. We’re not at all where we want to be yet, but you’re talking about playing a team that is as good as anybody in the conference. We’re going to get there. Everyone knew it was going to be a tough year playing these teams, but we have to keep positive and keep our kids encouraged in what we’re doing and believing in what we do. There is going to be a good time coming. It’s going to come so we have to keep our eyes set on that.”
Coach Jones then spoke about the offense. “We played well in the first half. We ran the football better, but didn’t play well the second half. We have to find ways to get better. We’re trying to find our identity on offense, and we haven’t really found that. We have to put the running and passing game together and be consistent. Our defense is playing hard. They have things they have to get better at, but they are keeping us in games. We just have to get it going offensively.”
He then spoke about having an off week this weekend. “We need it. Our guys are beat up. We’ve been through four-and-a-half weeks of camp and five weeks of games, you’re talking about nine weeks without a break. It’s coming at a good time.”
Coach Jones then spoke about how they are dealing with three consecutive losses. “I didn’t sleep Saturday night. I’m hard on myself and I expect to win. You hurt for about a day or two, but then you get back to work and realize you have a chance to get better. You can take adversity any way you want, you can pout about it or you can learn from it and get better. If we take the approach of learning from it, then we have a chance to get better. We’re going to keep fighting.”
Jones then spoke about their first five weeks of the season. “We have good competition. This is the highest level of college football, Division I football, and we’re just stepping into it. We’ve learned about how many athletes there are on these teams. They are well-rounded teams. So we have learned that we have to bring a team to the field that doesn’t have any weaknesses, and that’s what we are striving to get. Will that take some time? Probably, but the bottom line is that’s where we want to be. It really makes you put everything on the board and see what we really need to work on.”
Senior defensive lineman Andy Dalgleish spoke about the game against Troy and being off this weekend. “Obviously it was a heart-breaking loss and the start of a new rivalry. (Defensive coordinator) Coach (Bill) Clark told us that anytime you put as much emotion and effort into a game like we did against Troy, it’s going to hurt. What we have to do now during this open week is get a lot of guys healthy again, I know we are hurting on the defensive line, in particular. We also have to get that (loss) out of our mind and really focus on Arkansas State, which is another Sun Belt game. We have to try and put it in the past, it’s going to be tough to do, but put it in the past and try to look to the future. We can’t play that game again so we just focus on the next one.”
Andy then spoke about what they have learned from the game against Troy. “Obviously coming off these past three losses, it’s been tough. Playing against the teams we’ve been playing against – Troy, Mississippi State and N.C. State — we definitely know the level of competition we have ahead of us and know where we should step our level up to in order to compete with these teams. We just have to do a better job of playing more disciplined, fundamentally-sound football. We gave up the ball a lot and gave up too many big plays on defense. We have to be way more disciplined on that. I think we’ll be alright. We just have to put that in the past and focus on these upcoming games.”
Melvin Meggs also spoke about the game against Troy and being off this weekend. “It’s been a rough couple of weeks so far, but we’ve been doing a lot of things well. We just have to go to the film room and make corrections, eliminate the mistakes we’ve been making and keep playing hard.”
Meggs also spoke about what they have learned from their game against Troy and the other previous opponents. “We have to play more disciplined football. It all starts with us. The level of competition we’ve been playing the last couple of weeks compared to the last couple of seasons has increased. So we just have to step up and rise to the occasion.”