SAN MARCOS, Texas – Quotes from Texas State football following the game against HCU at Bobcat Stadium on Sept. 24, 2022.
 
Head Coach Jake Spavital
Opening statement…
"Overall, I'm excited for those guys; man, it was a good win. Chris told me it was the first shutout I think since 2014, 8 years. One of the largest wins here since 2015, but a lot has to do with credit to the defense. Defense played extremely well. I thought the offense came out and played a good first half. You know, that's a scheme that we went up against and we knew it was going to be tough. You know talking through the press conference on Tuesday, we said they were going to be a little all over the place and to be aggressive, blitz and all that stuff. We knew that we can get hit with some plays, but we can have some explosive plays. That's what happened with the offense in the first half, and I thought they played well and played tough. We got out in the second half, and I don't think we played with that edge, we weren't moving a lot of bodies anywhere and trying to save some guys. That's not the expectation we have and it's not okay when you can't move the ball like that. Even though we played a lot of different guys. We didn't play with an edge and the passion like we did offensively in the first half, and I got to fix that. I got to correct that, that's our third quarter stat that we keep talking about in here. We got to improve on that, we do. You know, there's still some guys doing some right things. Collectively, we got to keep it going. You know, defensively they're still a little upset because they could've played a cleaner game in their mind, but overall man I'm happy for them. I'm never going to take winning for granted, and it's hard to do this and we got a lot of ball left to play. We celebrated and sang the fight song, and it was an awesome deal just to see them. I'm happy for them because they get to enjoy Saturday night in San Marcos with friends and family. We will hook it back up again tomorrow. I left them with: we're not even close to playing the best ball yet. We've got to get back to work and improve on a lot of things. We got a tough JMU team that we're playing next week. Sold out crowd, 1:30 eastern kick; just beat App State and came back I guess 29 unanswered points and every single game moving forward is going to be a war. We have to clean it up, we have got to be more consistent and be ready for anything that comes at us. For the most part, I believe we are healthy; I got to look into that. We were pulling a bunch of O-line at certain moments just to kind of rest some other guys and take it off them a little bit. Overall, pleased with these guys, but we still have a long ways to go. We'll get back to work on Sunday. We're going to enjoy tonight, and we'll hook it back up again tomorrow."
 
 
Thoughts on the third quarter this season…
"You know, we've studied it. I thought today they just played way harder than we did. They were loading the box up and they were blitzing guys from all over. I don't know if you guys noticed that, but like it was extremes they were going through. They caught us on some plays, but at the end of the day we got to play harder. They were playing harder than us in the second half, and that is something that I don't stand for and we'll get it fixed. That's tonight, I'm trying everything man; I got them out there to warm up and got them out there to do some things just to see if we can kind of change the vibe and mojo of that third quarter. We'll kind of go from there and keep addressing it because we got to be better, especially when we are in conference play next week."
 
Thoughts on what was working for Texas State in the first half offensively between Layne and the receivers…
"I thought it was a combination of everyone playing hard. They were throwing some exotic looks at us, but we were running by them and making contested plays. They played man the entire game and at that point there is a one-on-one battle across the board, and we were winning. I thought we threw for a lot of yards in the first half because they were playing everybody close to the box to stop the run, and we took advantage of those one-on-one opportunities. That was kind of the whole vibe of going into this game; we didn't know exactly what they were going to do, but we knew they were going to be aggressive. So, I moved in and out of heavy sets, you know some different types of tempos. You know, some of it works and some of it didn't, but at the end of the day we wanted one-on-one battles and Layne's throwing was very, very accurate in that first half."
 
Thoughts on playing the backup quarterbacks late in the game…
"No, it wasn't really out of hand. Like at one point I'm saying at the end, can we sustain a drive and keep the defense off the field? We almost didn't do that. We ended up hitting a freeze call and ended up hitting JB (Javen Banks) for a big play. If we didn't hit that play, then it was probably a pretty poor performance in that second half. I wanted to get both those guys in, that was the whole plan. We wanted to play a lot, but we just never got to that point where we were comfortable enough for let it happen."
 
Thoughts on Gjemar Daniels playing fullback…
"We were just trying to find him a role and we're kind of getting into that. Jackson Lanam was out for this game and we lost James Palmer in a Tuesday practice before Baylor. You know, unfortunate injuries, we just kind of need some depth. All of our tight ends bring a little bit different kind of style of play. Tyler Huff's going to be in there to be the point of attack, but we need some bigger bodies and you can go more offense alignment in the game. We're sitting there with Bill (Gjemar Daniels) and Bill's played in a lot of games. Gjemar's played in a ton of games and we knew he wasn't going to hesitate or anything. He went in there and did a really good job for us. He's fired up. He's now claiming himself as a tight end now. We'll have to discuss that later."
 
Thoughts on the response by the team after not starting the way they wanted in the game…
"Our whole deal, it's about showing up and playing the next play. I thought that was our issue in the second half is that they were letting the previous play in the previous drive, keep seeping into the performance in the next play. Layne threw a pick on the first drive. He underthrew it, and he came back out. We're always about, three seconds of reset. Understand what happened and let's move on and let's fight the next play because football is a very tough game and there's a lot of opportunity. You just got to keep showing up and you can't let the previous snaps affect the current moment. I think that's kind of where we're at. Hey, we're going to have another opportunity. Let's go take advantage of them. That's what we did."
 
 
Jordan Revels
Thoughts on the game overall…
"Anytime you leave the game with zero points on the board, it's always an exciting feeling. That was our goal. We just came in and focused on us. We knew that if we do what we can do to the best of our ability, we knew that was going to be the outcome."
 
Thoughts on the Bell brothers…
"They got crazy motors, they really kind of fit in. They keep people going, and that's really kind of my opinion on what we really needed."
 
Thoughts on starting the game with fellow outside linebacker Ben Bell for the first time this year…
"We knew they were going to pass the ball the whole game, so my intention was to rush the passer and get him as many times as we could."
 
Thoughts on HCU passing the ball a lot…
"We knew it was going to be our time to shine really on the D-line. We knew this is what we do, this is what they brought us here to do. It's really kind of a statement game for us up front. Show us how good we can rush the passer."