Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: North Texas

WEST POINT, N.Y. – Army West Point football head coach Jeff Monken met with members of the local media on Tuesday afternoon for his weekly press conference inside Nowak Auditorium. The Black Knights welcome North Texas to Michie Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 22 at noon.

(Ref.: opening statement)
"Good afternoon. We are glad to be coming off a victory. It has been a couple of weeks since we have been able to do that so it is nice to be able to celebrate a win and go in to the next week with a little bit of confidence after a game like that. I thought our guys played really hard. We had a little let down at the end of the first half in the Lafayette game which I was disappointed with, but really proud of how we played in the second half. We can out with a good intensity and focus. It was a good win and one that we needed.

"Now we move on to North Texas who is doing a nice job after watching them play. They are tied for first in their division in the league. They have played really tough. We have been impressed with their special teams. They have a running back who I think is very dynamic, a freshmen quarterback who doesn't play like a rookie. He plays very confident and really just turns in loose and plays. I really like him, they are happy that they have him on their team. They are also big. We watched them on defense and they have a couple guys that are going to be really difficult to move. They are very athletic and create physical mismatches and problems we are going to have to deal with, but that is not uncommon for us. We are going to practice and hope that we can get ourselves ready.

"We have no idea how they are going to line up on defense. We don't know so that creates some challenges as well. Hopefully we are going to get ourselves healthy. We have a few guys banged up and hopefully between now and Saturday, our trainers will do a good job getting our guys patched back together with bailing wire and duct tape and have them ready for Saturday."

(Ref.: on playing a lot of new players against Lafayette)
"What happens in a game like that is they are on the road, they have a limited number of guys that they bring with them and once the game got going our way, we could put some other guys in the game. We had guys with fresh legs and they were really excited to be in there, some of them getting their very first action of the year. On the other hand they had guys who are still in there from the start of the game who can look up to the scoreboard and realize that it is probably not going to change and go their way and it makes it a little bit tougher for those guys to respond at that time. Lafayette played really hard. They gave great effort and we just had some breaks go our way. They are a well-coached team, Frank Tavani does a tremendous job. He has had a number of successful teams and they know how to win. I know Lafayette has a good program and it was a good win for our guys."

(Ref.: assessing how far the team has come through first six games)
"I think we've gotten better and improved as a team. We're not where I would like us to be as a team yet. I think we really played well in the first three games, but in the fourth game we didn't play very well as a team in every phase of the game. There were things we could have done better.

"I felt like last week against Duke it was the same thing. There were things we did well at times, but we could've played better, and it may have resulted in a more positive outcome for us. But I think we have gotten better.

"I've really been impressed with this team and their ability to continue to focus through everything that we have been through this year, with losing Brandon and the roller coaster year of being 3-0 and falling to 3-2. I think they've handled the wave of emotions that comes with winning and losing and I sense in our team that there's not a satisfaction like they accomplished what they wanted to this year.

"I think they want to have more success and really take the next step as a team. I hope they will continue to have that kind of intensity and focus, and if they do, it will help put us in a good position moving forward."

(Ref.: key improvements for Saturday's game)
"We weren't perfect fundamentally, obviously. We were better, and I think the guys did a good job of remaining focused and playing hard throughout the game. I was really proud of them for that. We've got to do a better job on being more consistent on doing things that haven't show up as much, but will when we start doing them better like returning kickoffs and punts for more yards than we've been getting. We had one kickoff return this past week, and we screwed the blocking all up and had a 30-yard return. We had one return that Malik McGue was able to catch on a punt that he returned 18 yards, and the others we weren't able to field.

"We missed one real opportunity to block a kick on Saturday and had another that we made a great effort. We've got to get those. When we get an opportunity, we've got to block those kicks. Three times this year we've had a chance to do that and, frankly, missed. The one in the Duke game might have been able to change the game. Those little things that maybe don't show up in the stat sheet, but may really help us win games. I'd really like to see us start doing those things better."

(Ref.: on the injury report heading into the week -- Andy Davidson, Darnell Woolfolk, etc.)
"We won't practice him (Andy Davidson) today but I think that he's got a good chance to play this weekend. We'll see how he responds to the treatments. Certainly we don't want to put him into practice until he's healthy and able to protect himself. When you've got an injury, you're kind of nursing that injury whether you're limping on a bad leg, have a broken hand like Edgar Poe, or it's a shoulder injury, whatever it may be, you want to make sure guys are healthy enough that they can go out there, practice hard and protect themselves. So until he's in that position we'll hold him out, but we haven't ruled him out for the game yet.

"Darnell Woolfolk will probably run some today. We're not going to practice him live in full gear today but he'll run around some. I'm sure Bob Daplyn will have him out there doing a bunch of different things like changing direction. We're just trying to evaluate him. Again, I hope we can get him back for the game. Bob hasn't told us we'll have him for sure but we're hopeful."

Army West Point Athletics

Jeff Monken Press Conference Quotes: North Texas

Related News

Players Mentioned

Andy Davidson

Malik McGue

Edgar Poe

Darnell Woolfolk

Related Videos