HELENA — Ahead of Carroll College’s matchup Saturday afternoon against Frontier Conference rival Rocky Mountain College, MTN Sports' Jonny Walker sat down with Fighting Saints head coach Troy Purcell.
A full transcript from the video interview is available below:
MTN Sports: Going into this game against Rocky, how do you think the team is looking? How do you think the team is feeling, especially mentality wise?
Troy Purcell: The morale has been good and the energy is good. Our leadership, that's another thing that you really get to look at is your senior leadership. And your captains — be able to get this team, get them up, get them rolling. Put a finger in a chest when you need to and, you know, give them a pat on the butt when you need to and with certain guys and, and, getting us playing, at a very high level and, and continue to improve.
MTN Sports: Obviously you didn't have the result you wanted in your last game. Can you help me understand a little bit about what went wrong, but also what you can take away from a performance like that?
Troy Purcell: What went wrong? You know, as we talked about before, last week, turnovers and special teams. You got to make sure you're taking care of those in these early games. And, and we we had some fu-bars on that, but we can take off that, you know, our guys were ... they fought over to the end. They followed it until the whole fourth quarter and never gave up. The result wasn't what we wanted, but I think we got better.
MTN Sports: Hindsight's 20/20. But looking forward now to this game with Rocky, what are kind of the keys to this game for you guys?
Troy Purcell: These early games, you have to expose what you need to work on more. And again, it's turnovers and, you know, special teams. I thought the defense played extremely well. And I think the offense played really well last week. Besides those fu-bars. We cannot kick the ball in the middle of the field as punters. They got a returner that's, really, really special. He's really, really good. We got to corral their quarterback a little bit. He does a great job.
MTN Sports: When you look at this season now — we talked about it coming in. You're going to have a lot of games at home, especially early. Is it easier to have those types of games at home as opposed to on the road?
Troy Purcell: Any time you're playing at home, it's an advantage. Anytime you can sleep in your own bed and have your own familiarity with, you know, the food and the sights and sounds and how your stadium is and the pride you have, in your facilities and the tradition you have here at, Carroll College, Nelson Stadium, Valley Bank field, it's unbelievable.
So, no, definitely. Home field advantage is an advantage.
