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UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 7, 2019

Dana Dimel

Lubbock, Texas

UTEP - 3, Texas Tech - 38

COACH DANA DIMEL: I thought our play, we did a nice job for the most part, the whole defensive game, I was pleased with what we did. We gave up the one big play on attachment where we just took a bad angle. Overall gave up 160 yards rushing but I thought we defended the rush pretty darned well against a really, really good offensive football team, so that part of it was good.

Offensively, obviously not very good on third downs, 2/15 with our stats there on third downs and ten punts, which is a lot of punts and only 57 football plays.

So we didn't do what our main objective was and that was hold on to the football, run the clock. I feel like we could have had more success offensively. That would have taken a lot of heat off the defense.

We did win the possession time battle but if we would have sustained any type of success, we could have gotten those numbers up to 38, 40, which was the ultimate game plan with what we did.

Effort was tremendous. Guys played extremely hard. First week we played well offensively. This is the second week and didn't play here as well, so execution needs to improve offensively. Clean some things up. Eliminate the negative-yardage plays. Again, clean up penalties with what we did with our penalties, as well.

I'll open it up to questions from there.

Q. What's the feeling going forward at quarterback?
COACH DANA DIMEL: The feeling, it will be evaluated. I won't make any comments on the quarterback spot right now until I can evaluate the film. I think both kids did good things and both kids made mistakes, but I need to look at the film. They are both talented kids and they both need to be utilized in our offensive system.

We'll just go ahead and critique them, but right now no defensive answer on naming any starters right there. Both the kids are deserving of playing and both of them are talented enough to win plenty of football games for us down the stretch.

Q. What was the decision that went into Kai starting the second half?
COACH DANA DIMEL: He's been doing things the way they need to be done. He's been taking care of business, and you know, he's not on the team to sit and watch and we wanted to give him some action and give him some game reps, because we are going to need them one way or the other throughout the season. It wasn't any decision that we bench Brandon and put Kai in. We just want to get Kai some work.

Q. What do you take from this?
COACH DANA DIMEL: I think we're a better football team leaving the field. I was hoping we could get through this game and improve in some segments. I think we improved dramatically defensively, and I think our football team battled. I thought they battled really hard, and so I'm happy with the improvement that we showed on defense, and offensively, we've got to get back on track.

But I think we got through it relatively unscathed with the injuries and just like I said, one of our goals was to win and if we didn't win, leave the field a better football team and I believe we did.

Q. Was it like the Houston Baptist --
COACH DANA DIMEL: Yeah, I thought we handled the tempo really well. We had a good game plan for the high tempo. We stopped the run. They tried to establish the running game. Really didn't have a ton of success with the running game. We gave them some short fields at times which led to some scores from them and of course gave up the big play, but overall, I was pleased with that part of it.

Again, if we have more success -- giving them credit. They played a great defensive football game. If we had more success offensively, it would have been a lot closer football game

Q. Houston Baptist, the defense -- compared to that?
COACH DANA DIMEL: Well, you know, Houston Baptist was for us the first stage of really defending it because you can't see it in practice -- I feel like now we matched the tempo. It was not an issue all night for us and that's really going to be good moving forward.

Q. What is it the offense -- could you put a finger on anything? Was the offensive line kind of overwhelmed? Didn't look like he had any roles to run through.
COACH DANA DIMEL: I don't know. Again, I'm going to have to watch the film and really study what we were doing on our combination blocks. I think it was one error from one play here, one there, just some inconsistency and not starting off, you know, three-and-out kind of broke our momentum a little bit.

The kids got a little bit disrupted and struggled a little bit with their confidence there early and then we started to have a little bit of success offensively but then had some penalties that took some plays back. Just got out of rhythm and never could back into rhythm offensively.

Learn from this. We've got to handle this environment and we're a better offensive football team than what we displayed tonight.

Q. What did you take out of the game?
COACH DANA DIMEL: Same thing I just talked about. You know, I think one of our goals was to try to win this game, but if not, to walk off the field a better football team, and I think this game will help us as we move forward in the season, I really truly do. Because again, this is a high-powered, very high-powered, offense that we faced, some very impressive defensive personnel, Big 12 personnel and a good thing Big 12 football team, an upper-level Big 12 football team. In a lot of ways, we played a good thing football game.

Q. Specifically taking away -- is it more so the experience -- younger guys getting in there?
COACH DANA DIMEL: Yeah, I think some of the new guys, again, some of our younger guys that we have on offense, it was a great experience for them to match up in this kind of environment. I don't feel the crowd noise was an issue for us. I think we handled that part of it, you know, which was new. That wasn't a big issue for us.

It was more like I talked about, the things we can fix. It wasn't -- it's not as dramatic of issues once I looked at everything on the whole. We can get the things we didn't do well fixed pretty quickly.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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