UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT SAN ANTONIO FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 26, 2022

Dadrian Taylor

Press Conference

UTSA - 34

UTEP - 31

Q. What were the emotions like today in the comeback, the largest in school history?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: It was a little crazy. I mean, we knew we had it in us. They got off to a pretty hot start. It was kind of hard at times a little bit.

When you got a team like this, everybody is resilient. We just didn't want to let our seniors go out the wrong way.

Q. What are the biggest things you can point to that led to you falling behind?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: Just the juice. We didn't have the juice at first. I felt like they wanted to win more at first, I should say. I feel like we just a team that sometimes we got to wake up. Once we get to going, we get to going. It's hard to stop us.

Q. Was there anything in particular that sparked that?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: I feel like the pick-six was big. Then Tykee's touchdown to tie it up was definitely huge. That was a great play. First play of the drive, it happened like that. Back out there, tied game. Gave us even more energy to go.

Q. What was coach's message at halftime?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: He got on us. He said the last time we had numbers like that was North Texas and we didn't finish that game, so...

He just wanted us really to go finish it the right way for the seniors. We talked about it all year. That start definitely wasn't what we had.

Q. I think the defense had four straight stops to end the game. What did it mean to end the game that way to preserve the win?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: We knew we could do it. It felt good to boost the confidence, boost the morale of the defense.

Like I said, when we're playing good, we feel like we're one of the best defenses in the conference, if not the nation.

Just to see us tighten up there at the end, hold them to stops, it felt pretty good to do that.

Q. What were the emotions of going through Senior Day?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: Yeah, I don't want to say a distraction, but I just felt like seeing the families out there, everybody was a little love emotion, you know what I'm saying? It was a different type of vibe. I could feel it before the game.

I still felt like we were pretty locked in. You know what I'm saying? I didn't really say much. When we got off to the bad start, the leaders stepped up and we had to be more vocal, man. Like they always do, they listen. We just got rolling.

Q. You're going to play North Texas. What is your reaction to facing them again for the championship?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: It's going to be another great one, just like the last one. Hopefully we can do a little better, get off to a better start than this weekend, last time against North Texas.

We live for those kind of games. Just like we were talking about in the middle of this game, these are the games you live for. Last few weeks we've been up a lot. This is a different one. You know what I'm saying? You always got to plan. You get hit in the mouth, and they hit us in the mouth early, we had to adjust and come back.

Great win by the boys. I love this team.

Q. What were some of the things they did offensively that gave you some challenges?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: We knew they were going to run the ball, but I feel like, like I said, the energy they came out with when they were running the ball. You could tell they were overwhelming us with energy. Once we started to pick the energy up, I felt like the playing fields were even, man.

Q. Is your son thinking about going to UTSA?

DADRIAN TAYLOR: What school you want to go to?

DADRIAN'S SON: First grade.

DADRIAN TAYLOR: What college you want to go to? You don't want to go to UTSA?

DADRIAN'S SON: Uh-huh.

Q. (No microphone.)

DADRIAN TAYLOR: It's another huge one, man. We just keep chipping away at the block, man. Each year we just keep picking up an accomplishment. We just want to keep going. We want to be the first to go back to back. Want to be the first to win a bowl game, too.

We've never went undefeated. That would be big, real big.