Nico Iamaleava, Bru McCoy and Dont’e Thornton talk after Tennessee 69-3 win I Tennessee Football

Brew McCoy niik yamaya and Dante thoron Jr so if you have a question please raise your hand I will call on you we'll start with Austin and then we'll go to Noah Nico just kind of assess you know your first start here at Nan and then uh you know what it was like to connect with Brew in the game yeah it felt great man just going out there competing with my guys um you know we put a lot of work into this uh for this year so you know it felt good to go out there and display what we've been working on now go ahead Dante just obviously coming off that injury was working for you so well there today just how did it feel to to be able to play how much more comfortable do you feel outside I say it felt great really I feel like I needed to have like would have been my first game back I felt like this is the game that I expected to have so it felt very good Bon then Adam from brew and Nico could both of you speak on what you've seen from Dante from last season going to this season and kind of the offseason that the care all had together just um a ton of Relentless hard work you know just grinding working hard every single day you know Finding ways just to improve himself like I mean it's been awesome to see and it's it's driven me and pushed me to be better yeah man you can just see how comfortable uh how much more comfortable Dante got with this offense man you know just his first year going into last year still figuring things out and you know I feel like he was dialed in this whole fall Camp spring camp and yeah man he's been great great work that he's put in and you know he went out there and showed it on the field today Adam and then brand Nico uh your numbers were great obviously can you tell us something that you didn't do really well something do you think you you'd like to have back or want to work on yeah I thought I didn't finish uh the second quarter well um I can finish better with with you know just operating the offense at a high level um and uh really I think that was the main thing for me was not falling asleep during you know while we're up big and uh still going out there and operating the offense at a high level you you just kind of walk through the day what it kind of felt like this morning I know you've been waiting on this some first C first couple of catches I know it was old hat when she got but what did they feel like for you yeah I mean it it was a little bit surreal just Rego through everything and um you know but but I really enjoyed it I I soaked it in and um you know once getting back out on the field and you get you get a good sweat going and you know you feel back at home well carick and Patrick then back to Austin did you know that you set a Tennessee program record for passing yards and a half and if so what was your reaction yeah no I didn't know um couple of my teammates were telling me and then the the little interview I had at the end of the game was was really when I found out and uh yeah man it was cool sural moment I I didn't even know about it but uh felt good to go out there and operate my teammates after you uh it was the big Play Down coming this way on the post that you had to go up a little bit to catch and after you caught it you were pretty demonstrative in your celebration was that a feeling of that moment of that play or was it just sort of a culmination of everything that they been yeah a little bit of that and also um you know since this is my first game since I lost my grandfather and he he was actually I made a very similar catch the last game you got to see me play so that came to mind it it it jazzed me up D coach hle talked about you know how much more comfortable you felt once they moved you back outside last year um what is it about playing out there that makes you more confident as a player I say my whole football career I played an outside receiver so I feel like with me going back there last year I started to easily adjust to the offense and then with me having a full off season I feel like that helped me even more and made me more confident with everything we go David and then Vince then back to B guys this can be for any of y'all but this was a a 38 to nothing game 20 minutes in what can y'all learn from a game like this and did y'all feel stressed at any time or any adverse situations that you had to push through what what do you kind of learn from a game like this all of us oh yeah um shoot to to keep our foot on their throat um when when we go up big I think still coming to the sideline with the same mindset that is 0 um and you know just carrying that out the full game full four quarters like coach hop says ni you guys ran for 300 yards still sson 124 he looks sharp tell tell me about what you saw from him specifically including what you've seen in Camp doing that yeah man it felt great seeing s out there um you know he was limited in Fall camp in spring so um just seeing him out there and you know doing his thing it felt good man um we didn't really get to see too much of it during Camp so yeah man um Sam's always been damp and uh you know you got to see what he does when he gets the ball s all right we'll go Ben W we'll finish up B with this group Dante what was your mindset going into the off season and is there one particular thing that maybe you can point to that that's allowed you to feel more comfortable in this offense in your team I see my mindset going into the offseason was the uh like instead of letting the game like get to me so much just like have fun with it and really like I know that at a young age my reason for playing football was for me have fun so it was for me to have fun so like knowing that now I got the college a lot a lot more aspects into it that can make the game stressful I had to like bring myself back to the old ways I you thinking like at the end of day just football so out there have fun so I say that the main thing I worked on in this offseason was like my mindset and like my mental game was there a point during the kind of the bounce back progress and coming back from everything where you felt like you you were moving like yourself again you were able to kind of make all the cuts and do everything and everything would be good with the leg Yeah Yeah it it probably happened um you know somewhere around April May um but yeah once that happens you just you start feeling more confident and then um you kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel couple more Adam Austin BR um a lot of guys don't come back as strongly as as you have from an injury like this you mentioned your grandfather how would your grandfather have reacted to the way you've come back um man he I can't think anybody that would have been more proud actually when I was flown flown home to see him in the hospital hospital um I took my boot off and took my first steps out of my boot when he got out of his uh hospital bed so that was like a cool moment that we had together but man um you know I give a lot of my uh credit to my success to him because of you know kind of how he instilled a lot of values in in sports and just how to be a man so I I miss him a lot is he is he a strong minded guy yeah he was and he's he's he's a great a he's a Heckman athlete he's a Hall of Famer at his at his college Pepperdine so yeah I try to take after him the best I can bro you made that number switch like your old number um this year since you're coming back is it was it made easy to kind of do kind of kind of a new cleanse to you know kind of restart everything about going back to the old yeah some a little bit of that too and also like anybody that knows me knows I grew up like loving Reggie Bush and five's always been my number um I kind of wanted to let it breathe after hend Mor because the type of player he was and how what everything he accomplished so after a year I was like I want to go out my last year and wear my favorite number thanks guys appreciate we group two here in just a minute