Image courtesy of Big South Sports
Well, that didn’t last long.
Bryant began life in the Big South at this time a year ago and in about four months or so, they’ll be leaving the conference and heading “home” to the CAA. Before that, head coach Chris Merritt and the Bulldogs are hoping to bounce-back from a rough year in 2022. Here’s what Merritt had to say during the first bit of Big South game week availability.
ON THE STATE OF THE TEAM
“I think team wise, we’ve had a solid camp. Knock on wood, we’ve been pretty injury free throughout the camp. Returning 10 out of 11 starters on offense has enabled us to do some things with the top part of our depth chart. Everybody else under them are pretty young. We’ve kind of had to temper our installs and try not to get one group too far ahead of the other. Defensively, we have a ton of new personnel this year, which is, one of the benefits I guess that you can do nowadays in college football. We went out and really loaded up the back half of our secondary in order to sure up our pass defense there. So, it’s been a solid camp. Iron sharpened iron going back and forth at each other. I wish I could tell you how good we’re going to be, but we’re going to find out in the next 11 Saturdays coming up. I’ve been happy with the work and the effort that we’ve had these last four weeks.”
ON 1ST OPPONENT UNLV
“Second year in a row we’ve opened up against an FBS opponent with a brand new coaching staff who’s replenished their roster through the portal. We really don’t have much of an idea of what we’re going to see or who we’re going to see. We have previous coaching staff X’s and O’s and we’ll do the best we can to figure it out. We know we’ll have to make in-game adjustments, but we have our hands full. Coach Odom’s a good coach. We’re going to have to go in there and be on point on both sides of the football in order to have the opportunity to compete with those guys.”
ON THE LONG ROAD TRIP AND HOW IT AFFECTS PREPARATION
“Well, first of all, how would you like to supervise 70 20-year olds in Las Vegas on a Friday night? That’s going to be different. First time I’ve been to Las Vegas personally, but we’re there such a short amount of time, the kick off time and everything won’t be too crazy. If anything, we’ll get a little extra rest before the game. We might lose a little bit coming back, but school hasn’t started here for us yet, so we’ll be fine. I think our bodies will stay on East Coast time, we’ll play a 4 PM kick off, be done by 7:30 and be back pretty early in the morning here, two or three o’clock. They’ve got time.”
ON THE STAGE THAT UNLV PROVIDES AS AN OPPONENT FOR BRYANT
“This is our third consecutive year we’ve scheduled an FBS opponent. I think this is probably hands down the best of the three we’ve seen so far when it comes to their personnel, probably a little bit higher level. I don’t necessarily know the calls or the reason for the turnaround over there, I just know Coach Odom’s in a really good spot there at UNLV. I know it’s a program where they want to be significant in Las Vegas of college football. I think they’ve got the right guy leading the program there, given his body of work when he was at Arkansas. For us, this is something…our alumni are excited about it. These guys probably never would have thought 10-12 years ago that when you’re in Providence, RI you’d be playing this schedule. We are. We’ve been fortunate the first two games that we’ve yet to be behind going into the fourth quarter against an FBS opponent, which tells me our guys are competing, But, we have our hands full this Saturday, for sure.”
ON LESSONS LEARNED FROM FIU GAME LAST SEASON
“It’s actually been the last two years. We have a large number of kids (with experience). We competed against Akron, walked into the fourth quarter tied in that ballgame before things got out of hand. But, last year was a big step for us and I think our guys have confidence. They don’t get caught so much at the level (of competition), at the end of the day it comes down to execution. That’s what we’ve harped on, it’s what we’ve preached about. It doesn’t matter who we play. We execute what we do and the rest of it will take care of itself.”
ON PLAYING IN AN NFL STADIUM
“The first 30 minutes for all of us is going to be kind of exciting. We’re going to get in there, walk around, see the place. We’re a little concerned…this is two years in a row we’ve opened up in a pretty warm environment with Miami and Las Vegas. In both cases, we were fortunate I think that we haven’t had the typical weather, just because it was a night game last year and this year it’s in an air conditioned, climate-controlled stadium. We’re going to absorb it all in, but I think once the game starts and once the ball is snapped, you really don’t notice other things other than what your assignment is, but we’re excited for the opportunity. I’m excited to coach there.”
ON WHERE HE THINKS THE TEAM HAS MADE THE MOST PROGRESS FROM THE START OF CAMP
“I think they’ve…because of the amount of guys we have returning, I think they’ve been able to become a closer team. The culture’s right for the younger guys. Even though we’ve got 40 new faces on this ball club since last year, I think the core of our culture is back and I think those guys growing together and really our defense is much better than it was last year and that’s had to raise the level of our offense. Our hope is that the iron has sharpened the iron in camp, but, like I said, we’ll find out the next 11 Saturdays if we’re able to get that done.”