Finishing Skills: WCU Made Progress in Wagner's 1st Season
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 8:20 am
With a transition year complete, Western Carolina and second-year coach Dennis Wagner want to speed up the building process.
"We've been together for a year, we've had our first official recruiting class.…" Wagner said. "We really feel like this is a year we need to step forward and make a mark and have people start believing in Western football again."
The first step is building depth and numbers.
"We went through the first spring with 55 players, this spring with 75," Wagner said. "It's still not where we want to be, but we'll have our numbers up a year from now, and we're excited about this season."
The second step is being able to finish off games.
The Catamounts won three games last season, but let three other potential wins slip away. They lost to Liberty by a field goal, to Furman by a touchdown and to Georgia Southern in overtime.
"We've got to find a way to close the door on some of these games," Wagner said. "That's been our emphasis all spring and all summer.
"The expectation can't be to keep it close or make it a good game. We went through that early in our season last year with some bonding with our coaches and players, that it wasn't OK just to be close and come back in the locker room after the game and having parents tell the kids how well they played and being satisfied with losing.
"You can't do that. You have to understand that it's about winning and losing, and you have to play your best every week, and if you lose you usually didn't play your best, that somewhere along the way you made a mistake, and in this conference you make a mistake you pay for it."
Wagner said that the mentality in a program that has had just one winning season in the last seven years must change.
http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009 ... -football/
"We've been together for a year, we've had our first official recruiting class.…" Wagner said. "We really feel like this is a year we need to step forward and make a mark and have people start believing in Western football again."
The first step is building depth and numbers.
"We went through the first spring with 55 players, this spring with 75," Wagner said. "It's still not where we want to be, but we'll have our numbers up a year from now, and we're excited about this season."
The second step is being able to finish off games.
The Catamounts won three games last season, but let three other potential wins slip away. They lost to Liberty by a field goal, to Furman by a touchdown and to Georgia Southern in overtime.
"We've got to find a way to close the door on some of these games," Wagner said. "That's been our emphasis all spring and all summer.
"The expectation can't be to keep it close or make it a good game. We went through that early in our season last year with some bonding with our coaches and players, that it wasn't OK just to be close and come back in the locker room after the game and having parents tell the kids how well they played and being satisfied with losing.
"You can't do that. You have to understand that it's about winning and losing, and you have to play your best every week, and if you lose you usually didn't play your best, that somewhere along the way you made a mistake, and in this conference you make a mistake you pay for it."
Wagner said that the mentality in a program that has had just one winning season in the last seven years must change.
http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009 ... -football/
