EL PASO, Texas (KFOX 14, CBS4) \u2014 The UTEP Miners returned to the Sun Bowl on Tuesday, kicking off their fall camp under the lights. <\/p>\n
This is now year three under head coach Scotty Walden and year one for the Miners in the Mountain West. <\/p>\n
“Lots of hunger out there tonight and I am proud enough,” Walden said. “Lots to clean up. You always think you have them in shaoe, but you never have them in good enough shape. There were too many drill transitions that I didn’t like, but I love the fire. Overall I thought it was a good day one.” <\/p>\n
Just as in the spring, UTEP is placing a major emphasis on turnovers in fall camp. Last season turnovers on offense cost the Miners week after week. This year the slogan is “the ball is the program.” <\/p>\n
The Miners are now including a new ball possession drill, where two players try to punch out the football from the ball carrier, into their early practice routine. <\/p>\n
Defensively, the focus is on creating more turnovers. Last season UTEP finished last in Conference USA with only four interceptions and fifth with six fumble recoveries. <\/p>\n
“We were a good defense last year, ” Walden said. “What can take us from a good defense to an elite defense is take backs. If you win the turnover margin, you win 77% of the games.” <\/p>\n
UTEP will be right back on the field Wednesday morning for their second practice of fall camp. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KFOX 14, CBS4) \u2014 The UTEP Miners returned to the Sun Bowl on Tuesday, kicking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-398206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}