Player Blog: Chris Presto recaps the trip to Murray State

CARBONDALE, Ill. — Southern Illinois junior linebacker and Florida native Chris Presto offers StrongDawgs readers an inside look at the trip to Murray State from a player’s perspective. Presto had six tackles and a tackle for loss in the 27-7 win last Saturday.

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Chris Presto Blog

Pregame locker room at Murray State

Friday, October 31st

After a great week of practice, including Tuesday and Wednesday in the rain, we have our minds set on getting everything polished and perfected for the game on Saturday. I came to the facility at about noon for meetings that started at 12:45. Coach Mac (McLeran) gave us a preview of his pep talk that will be used tonight after we review our plan for the game. His message for this week was to really be grateful for the opportunity, because there aren’t many more left, and that we should embrace the guys who won’t be in our room next year. Mac’s talks are always the best, he is great at getting us going and inspiring us to play at a high level.

After our meeting, it was time for the walkthrough and kick script. This is when we make sure we’re all on the same page in terms of communication and ask any questions we have about what we’ve seen throughout the week. After practice, we had about an hour before the busses left and headed for the hotel in Paducah. What was thought to be about an hour bus ride turned into an hour and 20 minutes with the traffic crossing the bridge down to one lane.

Once we arrived at the hotel, we went to our rooms and then headed down for team dinner. Coach Hill gave us a talk reminding us that we don’t have many guaranteed days left in the season, but everything we want to do is ahead of us and we control our own destiny. After dinner, we broke up into two rooms for offensive and defensive meetings, where we watched film and went over scenarios that we would see in the game on Saturday, just again making sure everyone is on the same page. These meetings are super important and I try to really just put myself in every scenario I can think of when I see a certain play on film. For example, if there is a bubble screen to the field side, I need to put myself in the headspace of blowing up the guy trying to block me, so that I execute it in the game.

Presto had six tackles and a tackle for loss during the 27-7 win at Murray State

After the meeting, we headed up to our rooms. This is a good time to relax and unwind before playing a high-stress game. I roomed with Andrew Behm and we watched some Halloween movies to get into the holiday spirit, and then caught most of the end of Game 6 of the World Series. After the shocking ending, we turned off the lights and went to sleep.

Saturday November 1st

Waking up on game day is always extremely exciting. The schedule for today was breakfast at 8:30, walk-through at 9:00, and then we had some time to relax and get off our feet. This is some of the best parts of away trips — besides the game of course — it’s that final relax time before going to work.

Around noon, we went downstairs for a team stretch and pregame meal. Team meals with the linebacker room are amazing because we have to make sure everyone gets a seat at the table, even if that means we have to all squeeze in and add three or four extra chairs. I think our bond and brotherhood we have in this room is very important and is what allows us to be successful.

The game was played in a driving rain.

After the meal we got on the bus for the hour drive to Murray, Kentucky for the game. Today is supposed to be a cold and wet day, but those were the conditions we practiced in all week this week, so we are more than prepared. We know this environment won’t be anything crazy and we’ll have to bring our own energy. Once we arrive at the stadium, we’ll do our typical warm-up and handle business.

Postgame

I thought the game went really well. We were ready to get in the locker room and out of the rain! The locker room afterward was a great environment. It is always amazing to get in there and celebrate a good team win. The overall vibes are awesome whenever we win and it makes everything better, even the two-hour bus ride back home to Carbondale. We spent most of the ride home watching Game 7 of the World Series, which wasn’t very eventful until the end.

Being with this group of guys is very special and knowing all the work we put in to be able to celebrate wins is an amazing feeling.