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SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 12, 2019

Rocky Long

San Diego, California

Wyoming - 22, SDSU - 26

COACH ROCKY LONG: I didn't script it like that and didn't know how it was going to turn out. If anybody's been listening all week, I told you it was going to be a game like that. It's two evenly-matched teams that play a similar style of football and I figured it was going to be close like it was, and I didn't know we were going to be down because I thought we were going to be ahead.

But our players did a great job of hanging in there and showing some character and grit and all those sort of things and kept fighting and eventually they took charge and we won the game.

Q. Can you walk us through the decision of going for it on fourth down, especially when you were in Wyoming's 17?
COACH ROCKY LONG: I don't know if that was the smart thing to do or not. We're not here to play analytics. We're here to win football games and I thought we needed to make a fourth down play to win the game, and it ended up okay, this time. If it doesn't end up all right and you think I shouldn't do that kind of stuff, you can write bad things about me.

Q. On Agnew's touchdown to Bellinger what was going through your mind when you saw Ryan rolling to his left?
COACH ROCKY LONG: Remind me of the game, the last game we had at home where he scrambled around and finally found a guy in the end zone and threw it to him for a touchdown. Reminded me of the exact same play, except this one made a lot more -- gave us a chance to win a lot more than the other one did.

Q. The defenders said you came in at halftime and told hem to play better. Was that as simple as it was? The quarterback was running all over you guy, and the second half you really put the clamps on them.
COACH ROCKY LONG: I don't know. How many yards did they have rushing? How many yards per carry -- before you say they were running all over us.

Q. In the first half, they were almost -- almost out ran by a hundred yards?
COACH ROCKY LONG: We missed two tackles that added up to over a hundred yards rushing. Okay. So you miss tackles, you give up rushing yards.

In the second half, we didn't miss tackles. The guys that were there to make the tackle actually made the tackle. The two big plays they had running the ball in the first half, we had a guy sitting in the hole that missed him, okay. That's the running back one, and then when the quarterback scrambled, we hit him and didn't knock him down or it's going to be fourth and five.

So it's totally missing tackles.

Q. Having said that, were you really happy with how you shut Chambers down in the second half?
COACH ROCKY LONG: No, because they scored in the second half. I'm not happy unless they don't score. I'd be happy if we only gave up field goals. But we had some mental errors in the secondary that gave them a couple touchdown passes.

You know, I say that, and then you've got to give them credit, too. Guess what, they have really good coaches, really good coaches. They have really good players. They have 85 scholarships like we do. They are a good football team.

So they are going to make some plays. We made enough plays tonight to win.

Q. My question being, you guys -- in the second half, just because they made plays --
COACH ROCKY LONG: We did not change one thing on defense in the locker room, if that's what you're asking. We were calling the same defenses that we called in the first half. Our players did a great job of executing them much, much better than they did the first half.

Q. Would you walk us through --
COACH ROCKY LONG: Well, no. It was all the adjustments I made at halftime. It's all those adjustments. (Laughter).

Q. Can you walk us through the first play, Bellinger's touchdown, seemed like the offensive lineman -- for a quick second -- what did you see --
COACH ROCKY LONG: What happened was the ball was snapped before it was supposed to be, so our quarterback improvised and did a darned good job of improvising if you ask me.

Q. Why wasn't the offense more effective in the first half, and what did they do to change that in the second half?
COACH ROCKY LONG: I thought the offense threw the ball well in the first half, pretty well in the first half, and I think that you have to give -- you know, obviously you give Ryan credit because he threw the ball pretty well.

But you have to give about three receivers a pat on the back for going up and catching contested passes where they were covered pretty well and they went and got the ball. And that's a receiver's job is to make a quarterback look good, and we had about three receivers tonight that made our quarterback look really good.

That's their job, but we haven't had that around here much in the last five or six years where we throw it up and our receivers go get it, in a couple critical, critical situations, too.

You talk about the fourth down play; how about Jesse Matthews catching the ball on the fourth down, and they were holding him. They were pulling his jersey, and the officials weren't going to call it.

Q. The return of Juwan to what looks like his old self, there were a couple of those stop runs it seems like, that's really fairly unique to him. What was it like to see him?
COACH ROCKY LONG: He makes us better. He tells me he's only 97 percent, though, he's not 100 percent. But you can see the talent that he has because you've seen it before. When he's playing well, he helps us. He helps us be a much better football team.

We struggled -- the other one that no one seems to talk about is Kyree Woods. You don't know how much we miss Kyree Woods tonight. A guy that was replacing him was the guy that missed the two tackles. There was one touchdown pass thrown on the guy that was replacing him -- now, we had two guys replacing him, so you can figure out which ones they were.

But there was three plays that they made tonight; that if Kyree Woods was in the game, they wouldn't have made. So there are some other injury issues besides just the running back.

Q. The defense in the second half -- two stops?
COACH ROCKY LONG: I think we feed off each other. Defense plays better if the offense is moving the ball, too. You know, offense did a nice job of controlling the ball and keeping the defense off the field in the second half, too. I think we fed off each other.

Q. On the penalty, almost a game-changing penalty, as a head coach, what's going on in your mind --
COACH ROCKY LONG: I didn't agree with the call. I don't think -- I don't think Dwayne did anything that was cause to throw the flag. But they threw it and there was probably several other penalties that were maybe not really penalties, either, I don't know. But that sure changed the -- I mean, that was going to be fourth and about eight or something when they threw that flag.

Q. Any other injuries of note tonight?
COACH ROCKY LONG: I don't think anybody got hurt, but I don't know yet. I mean, I didn't see us carry anybody off or anybody limp off, so that's a good sign.

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