CHARLESTON, S.C. - Head Coach Jay Mills and freshman quarterback Malcom Dixon visited with the media after Charleston Southern's 49-21 loss on the road at Kentucky.

Head Coach Jay Mills
On playing hard despite the tough season
"We came into this season believing that we could be a top 20 FCS team. You go back to our second game, against Wofford, we led with nine and a half minutes to go, and didn't make plays. They're a top-10-ranked team. Liberty, I think they're top 10 or top 12. We go into that game, and we lost our starting quarterback, who is a tremendous player, and we're a very much quarterback-driven offense. We lose him, and we're still only down two points. We fumbled on the one yard line going into the fourth quarter of that game, and after that, it's just been one of those years. We've had a lot of injuries, a lot of adversity, and so this team very easily could have folded up the tents, and they didn't do so. So, I'm very proud of them. Tangibly, they played hard. Intangibly, they played with a lot of heart."

On the Kentucky Wildcats
We played a team that, first of all, we have tremendous respect for. I watched them on film, and I'll tell you what, they are very good on offense, defense and special teams, I know it's been disappointing from their standpoint, with their record, but they're a very good football team, just a few plays away from being an upper-echelon team. I've been very impressed with the way that they've been coached and the discipline, and how tough and physical they play."

On bringing in freshman Malcom Dixon
"Well, it's interesting, because we were going to redshirt him, then we had an injury early in camp, so we moved him to wide receiver. Then he got hurt and missed about half of the year. After he got hurt, then we lost our quarterback and moved him back to quarterback. We needed about two weeks to kind of get him honed up a bit, and all of the sudden we lost another wide receiver, so he went back to wide receiver. Then, he went back to quarterback again the last couple weeks, so he's practiced the last three weeks at quarterback although he played one game at wide receiver in the past couple weeks. Finally, this was the week that he was prepared, and we needed to be able to use his legs in the scheme that we saw."

On Dixon's ability to run
"We needed, based on the scheme, to be able to get an extra guy. The way you get an extra guy is you add legs, and add the quarterback into the potential read of the offense. And so, that's what we had worked on this week. Our coaching staff did an outstanding job in preparation as well, in all three phases and put our guys in the position. We had given up a lot of yards last week in rushing, and so I can't say enough about how blessed I am from a coaching staff standpoint as well."

On playing a freshman quarterback in an SEC stadium
"I tell you what, sometimes freshmen don't realize the pressure. Sometimes the older they get, the more they realize it. He was looking forward to it; you could see it in his eye all week. And we took a little heat off of him on certain things, and made some calls from the sideline rather than audibles on the field that normally he might do, but he's a competitive person. He's a high-character individual. I was confident; I didn't want him to get the first couple of plays at the line of scrimmage, but after the first couple plays, I felt that we could kind of get him into a flow of things. I was concerned about the first play. If we had put him out for the first play, I felt that that may have been too much, but if he got in rhythm, and he had to think about when he's on the field, off the field, he was a little bit too busy thinking about those things, than to think about 60,000+ people."

On the differences in his two quarterbacks
Well, Malcom is a quarterback, we recruited him as a quarterback, and so all the things that we did offensively are things that we have had in this year and really are some things that we did a more with our former quarterback. Whereas the quarterback, Andrew Trudnowski, who has played the last few weeks, and done a good job for us, he's more of a classic, drop-back style quarterback. So, we've just been able to feature some of the things that we haven't been able to do for a few weeks because of the injury to A.J. Toscano."

On player development
Andrew Trudnowski, our starter and in his senior year, only has a couple games left, didn't bat an eye when we took his redshirt off to play, didn't bat an eye when we said, "Hey, you're going to be sharing the quarterback duties this week." He's about the team, and that's a selfless attitude and characteristic that we try to emphasize. I might say, too, we're about whole-person development at Charleston Southern University. Those two are indicative to what the team's about, what the university's about. Our goal in playing these games is multi-purpose, but, first and foremost, we want to represent, as a Christian school, a faith-based institution, we represent our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the vision of the university is to integrate faith in learning, leading and serving, and to be nationally recognized for doing this. So, we're very thankful, very blessed that the University of Kentucky gave us this opportunity to promote our university's agenda, to promote what we believe. We're about our mission and our ministry. That game is a football game, but it's a life lesson and it's an opportunity for our young men. At the end you saw we distributed tracts to the opposing team. We were able to gather together in prayer with the young men from the University of Kentucky. I just think that's a blessing as well. So, we're very thankful to be able to represent a university that represents the values that we have, which are faith, family, academics, and so on."

On the play of safety Chris Kuzdale
"Well, Chris had been hurt and banged up as well, so it was good to have him come back. You know, he's such a competitive person, and it wasn't until Wednesday in practice that we were able to take the red jersey off of him. In fact, we took the red jersey off because he was hitting people in the red jersey, and he's not supposed to do that. So we said, "I think he's healthy enough to let him go," and it was good to have him back. He's been a leader; of course he was a first-team all-conference player a year ago, and had some struggles earlier in the year, but he's processed through those. It was definitely a sense of security having Chris back."

Freshman Quarterback Malcom Dixon
On the game plan to split time at quarterback
"It was something that the coaches came up with that we thought would be helpful and help the team. We've been going through it all week and I am just glad that God gave me the opportunity to get in there. I want to praise the offensive line, they gave me a chance to help my team out."

On playing in an SEC stadium
"Cach has been talking about it all week and trying to prepare us. Growing up on SEC soil it is something that a lot of us dream about. It was a great experience for us. At first I thought I was going to be nervous, but I was able to just get out there and performed how I knew I could."

On if he's trying to be like Randall Cobb (who can also run, pass and catch)
"No, I'm not trying to do that, I'm just trying to play our game. I'm just here for the team and will do whatever they need me to do. "

Game Story