.png&width=32&height=32&type=webp)
The University of Mississippi Athletics
MEET THE PRESS: Matt Mott Monday Press Conference
9/22/2014 | Soccer
Ole Miss head coach Matthew Mott met with members of the media on Monday to talk about his team's performance in week five that included a shutout victory over Mississippi State and a non-conference loss at UCF. He also discussed this week's home contests starting with Arkansas on Thursday night and Texas A&M on Sunday.
Opening Statement
"First, I want to say congratulations to Coach (Steve) McRoberts on his 14-0 start. That's awesome, and we're certainly very proud of him.
We had mixed kind of a split weekend. We started the weekend down in Starkville. It was our first conference away game. We started the conference season. We beat Mississippi State 1-0 on a goal from Addie Forbus, who is from Amory, so that's pretty special for her and our team. It was the first time we've won down there since I've been the coach here. That was great for us to get that monkey off our back.
We scored in the first minute of the game and created a good number of chances. We just couldn't find the second goal. We kept them scoreless with a clean sheet. I was really happy with our performance. Our goalkeeping was good; our back line was very solid. Those guys do a good job for us. I was really happy all the way through. We really created some good chances through Bethany Bunker. Then we got on a plane and flew down to Orlando for our last nonconference match against the University of Central Florida. They are a top-20 program. They got on us early. We ended up losing 4-0 down there. We just couldn't get anything going for us. UCF was just the better team on the day.
We jump back into conference for the rest of the season. We have our second home conference this Thursday night back on the (SEC) Network against Arkansas. Arkansas is a very good team. They won their first game against Kentucky. They will come in and will be a very good test for us. They are scoring a bunch of goals. They're very dangerous on set pieces. They're a very good team. We have to be ready for them on Thursday.
Sunday we play Texas A&M at home, another team that's in the top 10 in the country. They're always very, very good. Just a tough team. We're excited about both matches. The team's in good spirits. They're excited to be back home for a weekend. Football's at home so it's a great atmosphere around campus. We'll hopefully have a great atmosphere for both of our games, Thursday night and Sunday at 1 p.m."
On what the team learned from the loss at Central Florida…
"We came out a little flat. We played with a lot of emotion Friday night in the State game. We just came out a little flat. They kind of jumped on us early. We just couldn't really recover. We talked to our team a lot about finishing a weekend and coming out prepared. Part of that is my fault, scheduling a tough team like that after State was probably a mistake. We'll grow from it and learn from it. We had a good nonconference. We went 5-2-1 in nonconference, which set us up pretty well RPI wise. If we do well in our conference, we can look at the NCAA Tournament."
On recruiting…
"We start in our state first. We identify who the best players in the state are , first, and if they're at the level that can help us. We have four on our team right now, Addie Forbus, who is obviously a starter for us; Georgia Russell, who plays a ton for us; Kenzie Dickerson, who is also with us and does a really good job. Those guys are very prideful. They're the starting point for us. We build from there. We want to identify who the best players are. They have to be the best players, and they also have to be good enough to compete in the SEC. Of the four that we have, they can all do that. It's not a situation where we recruit players just because they're from Mississippi. We want to start there first and then grow from there. We do a good job of identifying who the best players are. If they're good enough, we certainly go in full steam away."
