What Chad Scott Said Following the Loss to No. 25 Memphis

West Virginia University interim head coach Chad Scott gave his assessment of the Mountaineers loss to the 25th-ranked Tigers.

West Virginia University interim head coach Chad Scott / Ben Queen-Imagn Images

The West Virginia Mountaineers (6-7) fell to the No. 25 Memphis Tigers (11-2) in the Frisco Bowl Tuesday night 42-37.

Interim head coach Chad Scott met with the media following the game and gave his initial thoughts of the Mountaineers performance.

Opening Statement

These guys had every reason, every reason from the beginning to quit and fold, and turn it in. And those guys refused to do that. Everything I’ve asked them to do they’ve done. They’ve gone over and beyond. 100-percent on attendance in workouts and practice. The energy and the intensity of practices has been great. The focus has been great. The guys have been locked in the whole time. The first message I told those guys, ’10-percent of things in life that happen you can’t control it, but the most important part is, 90-percent is how you respond.’ And the way these guys responded to the adversity coming into the game was elite. You guys had an opportunity to see it firsthand tonight.

We didn’t start out as fast as we wanted to play, and the guys never wavered. They were resilient and they responded. It didn’t work out for us in the end.  

The thing I love the most, we’ve been talking about it ain’t the play call, it’s the player, and we put our guys in the best position to go win. As a coach, I feel great about making a play call for those guys that were successful for us and worked for us repeatedly. As opposed to just coming up with a call that I felt good about.

I’m super proud of these guys – the way they responded, the way they finished and the way they fought together.

The offense’s slow start

Early on, we wanted to try and establish the run and try to control the clock early on in the game and they muddied up the box a lot. Coming in, we knew they were kind of vulnerable in the backend and so we were probably a little too stubborn trying to run the ball.

I think going into the second quarter, we said, ‘hey, we’re just going to play ball – just going to shoot our shot.’ I told the defensive guys, ‘Hey, we’re going to be aggressive, so hey, trust the call.’ I’ve been telling the guys all week long, ‘keep it easy, so those guys don’t flinch, don’t think just go play ball,” and that’s what I told them today, ‘keep it easy, so those guys go play ball because we’re going to be aggressive. We might go three and out.’ Now, fortunately for us, we were scoring. I think the last six drives we scored on every last one of them. Ran out of time right before halftime – kicked a field goal. Phenomenal job by (senior kicker) Michael Hayes. Up until this last possession here. So, just should have been more aggressive out the gates.