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BOSTON COLLEGE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 14, 2016

Steve Addazio

Boston, Massachusetts

COACH ADDAZIO: Played a good team in a tough venue. We didn't play well. That's my responsibility.

Right now we are really focused and getting ready to play UCONN. All UCONN right now. They've made some changes on offense. Kind of switched their philosophy a little bit midstream here before the bye week. Become more of a quarterback-directed run team. Trying to be more of a spread team. Have some talented guys obviously. The new quarterback, Donovan Williams, is a 6'4", 250-pound kid. Pretty athletic looking.

Runningback, Arkeel Newsome from Connecticut. We know him very well. Good, talented player.

Noel Thomas, receiver; having a really good year on offense as a receiver.

On defense, they're strong. They've got some really talented guys, some NFL-caliber players, starting with Melifonwu, their safety, and several guys inside. I just think they're very, very big, thick, strong, and powerful inside.

They are 32nd in the country against the run. Very tough to run against them. They are 76th in total defense. I think they've got some good strong, stout players.

Obviously this is a regional game. There are a lot of crossovers stories in there. Quite sure that UCONN, after having a bye week, an extra week to prepare, will be quite fired up to come up here and play us.

We've got to have a great week this week as we prepare for them.

Any questions?

Q. Do you and your staff still believe Pat Towles gives you the best chance to win games going forward?
COACH ADDAZIO: We do, but every week we evaluate it. Obviously Pat and Darius will split reps like they do most weeks. But Pat was 3-11 in the game. He had two missed opportunities. Other than that, it takes a whole offense, receivers with routes, offensive line with protection. There is a lot more that goes into it. It's a unit operation.

Wasn't too many opportunities in that game. We ran 53 plays I think it was with penalties; maybe 50 without penalties. We were somewhere between 65 and 75 plays. We were down somewhere between 15 and 25 snaps.

Average starting field position in that game was the 23-yard line. I think our best shot was 27-yard line. When you're three and out like we are, it's hard to get anything going. With that field position, hard to get anything going.

So we've got do better than that. We've got a lot of work ahead of us as we get ready for UCONN.

Q. On that theme, would you entertain that thought, I mean, if Darius really showed you something great in practice this week or...
COACH ADDAZIO: Of course. You always entertain those thoughts. You want to play the guys that are playing the best. Whoever we put on that field is because in our opinion, they give us the best chance to win. We're not trying to go out there and not win.

That's what we do. That's what we'll continue to do. Doesn't matter what position we're talking about, to be honest with you, you know, so...

Q. Point of emphasis after the game was kind of up front. You kept saying, We got to do better up front. Is that something you working on this week?
COACH ADDAZIO: Well, we had been getting better up front. I thought we started the game -- you know, first couple drives we brought the ball over to 50; next drive we got it down to the 35-yard line.

What happens sometimes with us and we were playing pretty fast. I actually like the way we were playing at that point in time.

But then we got hit on that third and one in the backfield, and from that point forward we just didn't handle the adversity. We went into the next series of a penalty, a sack, a penalty, a delay. At that point, I just felt like we have a tendency right now to lose our confidence, and we've got to learn how to handle that.

We're speaking up front, so got to learn how to handle those things up front. When you're playing against a good opponent on the road like that, you've got to weather that better. That's part of development. That is something that obviously we have a lot of attention to and we're really working hard at right now.

But there was good improvement on the line and we opened up that game with good improvement on the line. But then we hit adversity and fell apart up front and lost our confidence and didn't play at the same level as that game continued on.

Q. Real quick, two wins make you bowl eligible. You're aware of that and the players are aware of that and it's important.
COACH ADDAZIO: Yep.

Q. I'm just curious, how much of that is a marker for progress, especially in a league where the powers are up here and there is still a lot of catching up to do?
COACH ADDAZIO: Yeah, I mean, obviously start out the year and one of your goals is to be bowl eligible. That's still right in front of us. It all matters about UCONN. We have to win on Saturday for anything to even be a conversation.

Our focus is on the playing the best game that we can on sat and winning that football game. That's our complete focus and that's why I said we're on UCONN right now. That's what's in front of us and most important for all the reasons that you talked about.

So it has our complete attention, as every week does, but we got to be able to get going. Get some momentum back going again. We're a team that we played NC State and we had some -- we were able to play well on defense early. We were able to then create some momentum and everything started feeding off each other. That's what momentum does.

We have not learned how the to handle sometimes being down and coming back. We did that a couple years ago when we were down 16 I think it was to USC, but we had a more experienced veteran front.

Have to learn how to handle adversity. Okay? We've already tasted when we're in the middle of it against a pretty good football team. Success bred success and we were able to stimulate offense.

We have to realize is we almost have to be in the situation that it's always 0-0 and you got to learn how to overcome those adversity. That is the growing and maturity process that we have to get done.

We have to come out strong, quickly, against UCONN, and help to create positive momentum.

Anything else? All right, guys, great.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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