First-year Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz is getting set to face a “tremendous challenge” in playing No. 2 Alabama on Saturday, but at his first game week press conference on Tuesday, he was asked for his expectations for the season.

Drinkwitz acknowledged the program’s core values, and importance of representing the university well. He said they’re laying a foundation for a football program where he hopes to be for a long time.

“I saw where the over/under for us is three wins, so we obviously we want to do more than what’s expected and we want to enjoy the journey as we go along,” Drinkwitz said. “As always, our stated goal is to represent the university with class, integrity and academic excellence.”

Drinkwitz pointed to a “1-0” mentality, meaning that the team resets its expectations after each game, and continually looks to improve.

“We’ll let the games take care of themselves,” he said. “We’ve got tremendous challenges ahead of us on that schedule. But right now I’m focused on this challenge on Saturday and where that goes, and whatever happens Saturday is not going to define the season one way or the other, it’s just going to be the starting point of where we have to go. No matter what happens on Saturday, we know that Sunday’s going to be all about improving and getting better.”