Chattanooga Football Postgame Quotes
No. 2 James Madison at Chattanooga
Finley Stadium - Chattanooga, Tenn.
Saturday – Sept. 21, 2019

Rusty Wright, Head Coach
On James Madison pulling away in the second half.
"That's what good football teams do. They figure out ways to win. We have to quit shooting ourselves in the foot early. When you play guys like this and Jacksonville State, everything is magnified. Everything. You can't make mistakes because that's what good football teams do, they take the second-half kickoff and drive down and get points. Just get points, that's what they had to do. Defensively, they find a way to stop you. They make a play when they have to make a play. We're not good enough to turn the ball over and have false starts, jump offsides, we can't do that. That falls directly on me. That's a really good football team and one of the best teams we'll play all year."
 
On the overall fight against No. 2 JMU.
"We had plenty of opportunities early to get them out on third down. Give them credit, that's a good football team at every level with good players at every spot. I knew it was going to be tough and I'm not faulting our players at all, they fought their butts off. They fought really hard, that was a physical football game out there today."
 
On the receiver battles outside the numbers.
"We just couldn't get anybody open, we couldn't get off [the line of scrimmage]. They pressed us up, manned us up. You have to fight. Sooner or later it becomes one-on-one and it becomes a fight. You have to win. Your will to win has to be a little stronger than the man across from you. It happens every snap and you have to win somewhere. Right now, when someone is better than us, we can't."
 
On the team moving forward.
"If we'll go fight like they did and play hard, we'll give ourselves some opportunities. It won't be easy. It's a lot like trying to win the first one again. We've played some good football teams, and I'm not taking anything away from anybody, we have some self-induced stuff that's for sure. We have to do a better job as coaches on some of that stuff in some regards, but we've played some good football teams."

Nick Tiano, Sr.-QB
On the tough four-game stretch to open the season.
"You hate 1-3, obviously, with how much we have put into it. This isn't the result we wanted, but it was four really tough games. We showed a lot of good things and fought really hard. All our goals are still in front of us, we can still go win the conference and do all the things we want to do. We just have to use this as fuel, get better and learn from our mistakes."
 
On team's toughness moving forward.
"This team, we have a lot of fight in us. We have a lot of physicality, a lot of toughness, to fight battle back in these games. We've shown flashes of doing great things. It's just getting over that hurdle, and doing it every play for four quarters, and learning how to get a win in a tough game against a good team."

Chris James, Sr.-TE
On what worked during 19-yard TD catch from Tiano.
"We saw stuff on film that would open up the middle of the field, especially out of that certain formation. We took advantage of it. We went through reps all week. Me and Nick [Tiano] stayed after to go through extra reps a few days last week. And as you can tell, it paid off during the game."
 
On the feeling of first career TD reception.
"Just excitement. Scoring a touchdown against the No. 2 team in the country, it was pretty surreal. It just gives me confidence knowing that I can go out and compete against the best teams in the country."