West Virginia interim head coach was quick to take the blame on Tuesday night following West Virginia's 42-37 loss to No. 25 Memphis in the Scoter's Coffee Frisco Bowl.
Scott and the Mountaineers trailed 17-0 early in the second quarter and trailed 35-17 early in the third quarter. Still, they fought back and had the ball with a chance to win, but an interception in the closing seconds of the game had the Mountaineers fall just short.
"I'll say this first of all, like [Garrett Greene] said, he had a chance to win the game. He didn't lose that game for us. I wish if I could go back, I would've been more aggressive at the beginning of the game. I thought I was too conservative calling the football game, just trying to figure them out and whatnot," Scott said.
The Mountaineers finished with 534 total yards of offense after compiling only 49 yards of offense on their first four drives combined.
Scott and the Mountaineers went punt, punt, turnover on downs, fumble on their first four drives, drawing them into the 17-0 hole. Then, they started to open things up, stretching Memphis in the secondary, and it worked for the remainder of the game.
"I'll take accountability for that because we had the opportunity early on when the defense got a couple stops to shoot our shot, and I was too conservative early on. So that's not on [Greene] at all," Scott said.
Scott said early on, they wanted to establish the run, but they somewhat abandoned that in the second half. Greene scored on a 56-yard rush in the first half, but outside of that, the Mountaineers struggled to move the ball on the ground, especially in the first quarter when they averaged 2.2 yards per carry.
"Early on, we wanted to try to establish the run and control the clock early on in the game, and it muddied up the box a lot. Coming in, we knew they were kind of vulnerable on the back end. So, we were probably a little too stubborn trying to run the ball, honestly. I think going into the second quarter, I said, we're just going to play ball, we're just going to shoot our shot," Scott said.
Overall though, Scott was proud of how this team fought and battled adversity, despite the outcome.
"We didn't start out as fast as we wanted to play and the guys never wavered. They were resilient and responded, it didn't work out for us in the end," Scott said.
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