Quotes from Head Coach Jay Mills following CSU's 41-31 season-opening win over North Greenville:

On the team's slow start:
Well, I can quote literature, I guess. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times and somewhere in between. We got off to a slow start, which is not uncommon for a team coming out of the blocks in the first game. They say the biggest improvement happens between the first game and second game, and I'm confident we'll see that. But I felt like we shook off some cobwebs in that first quarter. All three facets of the game got off to a slow start in the first quarter.

On the improvements in the second and third quarter:
During the second and third quarters, we played very good football overall. Late in the game, we faded, but we were playing some new faces, both on offense and defense. We were trying to get them some experience, because we're going to need some of those guys later on down the road. The score was not really indicative to the game overall, I believe. I believe we had a poor first quarter, and the second and third quarters we played some really good football. It's something to build on.

On North Greenville QB Willy Korn:
Well, there's a reason he got a scholarship to Clemson out of high school, and he's perfect for that offense. Again, they were going into their second time playing this year. I think they were able to work out some of the kinks. I have good respect for them. They put up 30 points last week, so we knew that they had good offense coming into this season.

On facing an option offense:
Option football is something that forces you to be very disciplined on defense. For the most part, we were disciplined, but we should have gotten out of drives a couple times, third downs, fourth downs that they were able to convert. I think that comes with experience, and hopefully we grew up this week.

On facing Wofford next week:
One of the things that is exciting is that we play them here at home. This is only the second time in the history of the series. The second thing is that we've never beaten Wofford, so this definitely gives us some incentive. We have tremendous respect for Wofford, for their program, what Coach Ayers has done. They do run a similar offense. They do run a similar defense as what we faced. I think that will help polish us up for what we are going to face. But, we're going to see a team that is at the next level, because this is a team that traditionally is one of the best FCS teams in the country.

Quotes from junior defensive back Chris Kuzdale:

On the team's rebound from a slow start:
Give a lot of respect to North Greenville. They came out really tough. They hit the ground running, came out and came with a simple game plan, and it worked well for them. As far as the defense went, we have a couple of new people out there. We're trying to build a core. This was good for us. There's a lot of film to look at. It's good to see that we were able to fight through some adversity. In the second and third quarters, we came out and started to play some good football. We'll just look at the mistakes we made, learn from them. That was an option team; we play another option team next week. So, we have some good film to look at.

On facing North Greenville's QB Willy Korn:
It was good to see an athletic quarterback like that, because we're going to see that again next week. It's good to see a team that ran the option really well. They're really sound at their game plan. That's going to be a huge step to see an option team like that.

On lessons to be learned:
It'll be good to look at the film. Mostly, we have to think discipline. It'll be good to see where we weren't trusting each other, where we weren't playing our assignments. It's definitely going to help us in the long run.