Monday Morning with FAU Head Football Coach Charlie Partridge

Nov. 23, 2015

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Quick Recap
I thought the assistant coaches put together a great game plan and they gave us a chance to win. Players prepared the right way which again they have shown (all season) and are up here (Tom Oxley Center) this morning. So they prepared the way you would hope they would prepare. Defense faced mid-field, as a starting point, five times and only allowed Florida to score one of those times, after they returned the turnover down inside the 10 yard line. Great job for our defense stepping up at that point. Offense moved the chains and had more first downs than Florida did which was one of our goals, so we accomplished that one. We were not surprised that the game was a four-quarter battle. We expected it to be. Now our challenge is to move on and prepare for Old Dominion the right way and all indicators this morning are that we are doing that.

Old Dominion
They have already said it right after their game that this is their "Super Bowl". They have five wins. They need six to be bowl eligible. Coach (Bobby) Wilder is extremely aggressive. He has kicked a ton of on-side kicks this year. You see some double passes and things like that so he is an aggressive guy and has done a nice job there. There is a ton of energy and you can feel it through his players. Big up front on both sides. Really big on offense. They have a guy that is listed at 390 at guard (Tyler Burns). He is big. They have a quality running back in Jeremy Cox. I know their quarterback got hurt early in the game (last week), but the guy who is coming in has a ton of experience and has had some starting experience as well.

Health Status
Henry Bussey is questionable - sternum bruise
Jaquez Johnson - we are going to take a normal look at his ankles
Nate Ozdemir - is questionable going through concussion protocol, but was symptom free yesterday. Trey Rodriguez - is still questionable with the shoulder. We will keep evaluating that but he is ahead of schedule compared to a week ago.
Jake Stoshak - hamstring questionable
Kalib Woods - is going through concussion protocol.

How encouraging was last week's game and on the road.
It is really encouraging and you have to really be proud of the ability of players and coaches to block everything out and focus one week at a time. With that we have been so close, so many times and that is hard. It is hard when you are that close and you can feel it happening. You can taste it and smell it. Like you said, we are a few yards away from beating a top-10 team in the country, where there is play-off implications. But, really it is a snap shot of what we can become, where we are headed and with all the youth that is on the field. That was with three untimely turnovers and we were still in position to move forward and potentially win that game. That was the cool thing. You come in and you watch the film and there are so many plays that we could have done things better than we did. They weren't intimidated by the environment. They went in there expecting to fight for a win and we did. Didn't get it done and came up short but I'm excited about where I think we can go.

You have had close losses but was this one a different conversation to have with the guys because it was a national conversation because of how well you played?
It really isn't because it puts that much more emphasis on when you prepare the right way and we are continuing to get better through the entire year. A lot of people talk about the biggest jump in improvement from week one and week two. There are things that we didn't complete through the course of the year but at the same time you are seeing our kids get better every single week. That is the thing to point to as we continue to prepare the right way and we continue to build the roster. These wins are going to come.

Have you been in a situation before when you are not in contention but you are trying to spoil a team's bid for a bowl? What is that like? Is that more motivation?
It is. One of their players, I saw the video but didn't check the jersey number, immediately right after the game was interviewed and he talked about how this was their "Super Bowl". It just draws attention to our players that you need to understand what we are going into at Old Dominion. They get close to capacity crowds, most of their games and it was a tough loss for us when we played Old Dominion and that field goal bounced in to end the season. Our kids will come in and be motivated. Our younger players are continuing to be coachable. There are examples, again throughout the game, where a young player makes a mistake, he gets coached on it and fixes it within the game. But, yeah that spoiler possibility comes into play also. At the end of the day, it is about us getting better and trying to focus on us. When I was at Pitt and I referred to it even last week. We were going in to play the No. 2 team in the country. If they beat us, they are in the national title game in Morgantown. So, yeah I have been a part of that on a pretty big scale.

Is that a big sell that we would ruin somebody's hope for bowl games?
It is really more of an awareness of how hard they are going to play and how hard they are going to game plan. They are going to do everything they can to create things during the game, within their scheme. It is really a motivation to prepare and the motivation to play hard and do those things really stems from our weekly improvement. We need to be better this week as a whole.

How beneficial has it been for Jason Driskel to get reps this year?
Huge. I don't think that there is any doubt that the experience for him is going to mean a lot from a confidence standpoint and having faced those nerves and having worked through those nerves and being truly engaged in the game plan. All those things that tie into being a quarterback and by responding to adversity. He has been through a lot of that now and I think that that is really going to help him as we go into the quarterback competition in the off season. It will be fun to watch.

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