Murfreesboro, TN – After a nail-biting victory over the Golden Eagles, MTSU head coach Derek Mason met with the media to take questions from different outlets.

The overall message from the presser was that he was proud of the team for persevering, but they have several things to clean up before next week against No. 6 Ole Miss. Here’s everything Mason had to say.

Mason’s opening statement

“Tonight was an interesting night, to say the least, but I want to say hats off to TTU and their staff, they played an outstanding ballgame. Football is a game of momentum, and I felt we had it for most of the first half but then Tennessee Tech marched back and took it, and that was okay. I don’t think we panicked, this group was just focused on playing better and I think you saw a lot of growth from new faces. We faced some adversity, but you’ve got to learn how to win in many different ways in college football."

“We got it all between weather delays, playing from in front, playing from behind. I didn’t want to draw it up like that, but this team learned a lot about themselves. Winning takes what winning takes, commitment for four quarters and 60 minutes, we need every bit of those 60 minutes. I have plenty of confidence in this team and I think we can get better but for right now we’ve got to turn the corner and get ready to play Ole Miss.”

Mason on his first win as a Blue Raider

“To be honest with you, this game was special to me. It was nearly 10 years to the day when I had to prepare to play a game at 11:30 PM due to a rain delay, and tonight it was like are the dark clouds coming back? You’ve got to be a realist and ask yourself what kind of thing is this going to be and I’m just a regular guy, I’m human. But then my wife sent me a text and told me ‘This ain’t that, you’ve got a new team, this isn’t 2014 it’s 2024, be confident.’ From then on, I just snapped out of it.”

“This first victory, we’ll all remember it that’s for sure, but what I saw from this team tonight was incredible. They showed resiliency and when you have a new group like this, you can have the best quarterback in the world, but guys have to make plays, and that’s what they did. Be confident and don’t discount what opportunities come to you.”

Mason on the safety by Tennessee Tech in the second half

“To be honest I just thought it was a safety, I didn’t think of it as anything more than two points and that we needed to get a defensive stop. Maybe it was a momentum shifter for them but for us, we’ve got to learn how to flip it over and take momentum, but we didn’t.

“It just seemed that after that moment we stalled and became stagnant. They loaded the box, and we missed some opportunities to get things going, we did get lucky with some penalties that extended drives. That’s not how we want to play football, but I’ll say this, sometimes you don’t get the win you want but rather the one that you need. We needed that, we needed to learn how to win the hard way and it was a hard way to win.”

Mason on the adjustments Tech made to stall the Blue Raider offense

“I thought they started loading the box on us and I talked to Coach Reeder and they made some adjustments. When they’re stacking the box like that, get the ball to the perimeter and when we did that, I think we averaged 10 yards a play on running back screens. We probably could’ve done that all night long because if you want to load the box like that, there’s just not enough guys to take you down.”

“We missed some easy out routes tonight and that’s been uncharacteristic of the guys, we’ve got to just say let’s be better on those plays. We’ve got good enough players that can execute but the reality of it is playing just good enough almost puts us in a position to be beat. You don’t want to do that; we want to be methodical on drives and push the ball downfield which we didn’t do much of tonight, but you’ve got to keep your quarterback up.”

Mason on the final drive

“It’s crazy because Nick [Vattiato] was poised on fourth and five, but on third down he kind of panicked a little bit. Again, you’ve got to trust the process and if you asked Nick, he’d probably tell you that he wanted that third-down back, but he didn’t, he got fourth down and made it work.

“I just think this kid is a special talent, we’ve got to keep him upright but there’s also some other things we can do like spreading it around and getting it to our playmakers. We have too many playmakers to not spread the love and get them the rock.”

Mason on what the team can learn from a close win like on Saturday

“There’s certainly some things we can learn and fix after we take a look at this game, and we’ll address that tomorrow. But you can’t dwell on it, or you’ll find yourself stunting their growth and I’m not going to focus on the negative I’m going to look at it from a positive standpoint of what can we do to fix it.”

Mason on the depth of the RB room

“I look at our running back room and I say wow. This is one of the deepest rooms that I’ve been around some pretty good RB rooms, it’s just deep. I believe that every one of them is capable of doing something special with the ball in their hands and they’ve all gotten better. I just like the room as a whole and think they’ve all improved.”

Mason on heading into next week against Ole Miss

“No stone needs to be left unturned, we need to be better with penalties, and third down conversions and you can run down the list, there’s a lot of improvement that can be made. With that being said, Ole Miss is going to be a hostile environment, and those games are fun to play but you can’t lose your composure, and you have to function at a high level, and not make lots of mistakes.

“We made too many tonight but that’s okay we’ll look at it and it gives us confidence. Regardless of what others say, I’m on the sideline and I saw the look in these player's eyes, and they have confidence in their abilities.”

Mason on capturing his first win and the 300th in Floyd Stadium on the same day

“That’s incredible, I had no idea about that, but it speaks a lot to the people who got to 299, I’m just lucky enough to get 300. I don’t think of it like that, I’m just glad that we got the win, but that number is extremely impressive for this program.”