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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 7, 2018

Willie Taggart

Greensboro, North Carolina

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Florida State head coach Willie Taggart.

Coach, please give us an opening statement and then we'll take questions.

WILLIE TAGGART: Well, we're very excited about the opportunity for our football team going to Notre Dame, playing a top four football team in their stadium, hostile environment. We understand that, but we also appreciate the opportunity to be able to go up there and play, knowing we have to play our A game in order to beat these guys. Working really hard to be able to play our A game and also be clean in the way we play.

Q. What is going to go into your decision about how you're going to handle the quarterback situation on Saturday?
WILLIE TAGGART: Just like any other time: the guy that practices well and does well, going to give us the best chance to win a ballgame. I feel good about both of our quarterbacks. I don't know why it's a big issue with our quarterback situation right now. They both can win for us. They're going to need help from their teammates in order for that to happen. We feel really good about our situation that we're in with our quarterbacks.

Q. Talk about this weekend, it's going to be very chilly and cold, below 40 degrees. Florida State does not play in 40 degree weather. How do you prepare your players to not get stuck with that element out there in South Bend?
WILLIE TAGGART: You just go play. We're going to prepare like we do any other week. We're going to practice, make sure we understand our opponent, but more importantly understand what we're doing, then go play football.

We all understand it's going to be cold. We can't change that. It's going to be cold. We got to go play. We don't play in that every day. I don't think they play it in every day either. But they play in it a lot more than we do.

Our guys played in some cold weather last bowl game, so it's not like they haven't played in it. It's going to be cold for both teams. We get that. We got to go play. We can't make that an issue for us. We can't make that an excuse.

Q. What is it like going to play in South Bend against Notre Dame?
WILLIE TAGGART: It's going to be great. I think any time you go to Notre Dame and play, it's a great opportunity. I think growing up as a kid, I was a big-time college athlete. I think a lot of guys would love to play in that stadium. It's such an historic program, rich tradition. Had an opportunity to coach in there when I was out at Stanford. I understand what it's going to be like. A great opportunity.

Kind of what all these young people grew up wanting to do, is play in big-time games like this in special places. This is what we grew up to do. Got to make sure they prepare so they can go out and play their best.

Q. Obviously you took over a team that won only seven games last year, three conference games. Sitting here 4-5, 2-5, did you privately go into the year looking at your team thinking this could be another rough year, you had your doubts about how quick a turnaround this is going to be?
WILLIE TAGGART: Not necessarily had my doubts. I felt confident in our football team going into the season, what we can be able to accomplish throughout the season. I know each spot, they all had their challenges, knowing they're all different, all of them usually get it going at different times. You just never know.

The one thing I was always concerned about with our team was just how we dealt with adversity. I took over, I felt that was an issue with our program, we didn't deal with adversity well. You don't really know that till you get into the season, go through some things together. You learn a lot more about your team, coaches and everyone as you go through that.

You keep working, you stay the course, stay true to the plan, trust the process, but make sure you're holding guys accountable to get to where we're trying to go.

Q. How do you feel you've been handling adversity this year as a team?
WILLIE TAGGART: I think we've been up and down. We haven't handled it like I would have liked for us to. I knew it was going to be an issue. The key was how we fight back from it. I knew early in the year we bounced back when we had a bad game. Here lately, we've had back-to-back losses. That's the first time this year. Usually we bounce back.

We've been up and down. We haven't handled it the way I wanted to. But I didn't expect for us to handle it perfectly. I thought we'd handle it a lot better than what we have. That's part of being a coach and working towards getting there.

THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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