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SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 6, 2012Rocky LongHAWAIÂ’I – 14 Q. Coach, tell us how you guys played tonight? COACH LONG: I thought we played okay. Q. Just okay? COACH LONG: Yeah, I think we're going to have to get a lot better if we want to win the remaining games. We're going to have to play a lot better than we did tonight. I think Coach Chow is a great football coach, but what he has is a really beat up team. They have a lot of injuries. They're beat up, and they've traveled two weeks in a row. So they're probably pretty tired too. So I think we had an advantage because I think we were the fresher team, and I think that our players were upset by the way we played last weekend. I thought they came out and played hard and played physical. That's what happens when you play a beat‑up football team. Q. What was the difference this week with your pass defense compared to the past two weeks? COACH LONG: First of all, we played against a pro offense tonight. It wasn't the spread. Obviously, if everybody would stay in the pro offense, we'd have a good pass defense. We have yet to prove we can hang in there against a good spread football team, and I'm sure that's coming up here. Maybe not next week. I haven't watched any film, but I know there are a couple more teams on our schedule that run the spread. But I watched TV all day to day until we bussed over here. Guess what, nobody stops the spread. I watched Stanford and Arizona today, and it was, gee whiz. I don't know what the final score was 52‑48 or something, and both teams were throwing the ball all over the place. I think right now that the offense, the spread offenses are ahead of the defenses. When you play them, you just have to be able to outscore them. Q. What did you see from your defense tonight? COACH LONG: We stopped the run and stopped the pass. I thought they scored seven points they deserved. The other one they got the ball on‑‑ I don't know what yard line it was. Do you remember, Mike? The 20‑yard line or something. And I still think they didn't score because I thought the guy caught the ball and he was outside the goal line. So I would have loved to have gone for fourth down and tried to stop him. But right at the start of the second half, mostly because of a penalty, they had a legitimate drive and put it in the end zone. Q. Can you talk about your team's performance tonight? COACH LONG: Well, King started tonight because Josh Wade's had a strained calf all week. Now he practiced, but he was limping a lot, so King got to play because we don't play anybody that doesn't practice on Wednesday and Thursday. That's why Colin Lockett didn't play tonight. He was unable to practice at full speed on Thursday, so he didn't get to play tonight. That's just kind of our rule. But King got the start because Josh Wade was limping all through practice all week, and King did a nice job. He did a really nice job. Did a nice job supporting the run, and having a really good place in coverage. Thought he was going to intercept one, but it was close. Q. Based on that performance, would you say he has a chance to start some more and play some more? COACH LONG: Well, there are only a few positions‑‑ well, there are a few positions on our team that you know who is going to start. But that position is always a competition and practice, just like kickers are always a competition and practice. Q. Defensively, how do you think your offensive line moved tonight? Would you say it's a better performance? COACH LONG: Oh, yeah, it's a much better performance than at Fresno, sure. I'm not sure it was a better performance than San Jose. I thought Hawaii did a nice job against our run, other than Ryan Katz. I mean, we didn't get any big runs in the running game. I mean, we got a couple of toss sweeps late in the game, and a couple of fly sweeps out of our wide receiver late in the game. But our power plays and zone plays didn't tear them up. I thought Hawaii did a nice job against those. Now I say that, but I think Coach Ludwig did a great job of scheming a couple of those runs for Ryan Katz. Now our team executed it. The kids executed it really well. But the scheme put their defense in a real bind, and then Ryan is pretty good running the ball, so he scrambled a couple of times. But a couple of those plays were designed plays, and our team executed them well, and it was a great design by Coach Ludwig. Q. (Indiscernible) has he been more of a threat than you thought? COACH LONG: No, he's exactly what I thought he would be. We have to be careful on how much we use him. I think he's really important to our offensive scheme. If he runs the ball too much, he's going to get beat up. I think using him really helps our offense because he's multi- talented for sure. Q. Would you say overall that it's been successful? COACH LONG: Him being our starting quarterback? I think it's really helped us. Is that what you mean? Q. Yes. COACH LONG: Yes, I think it's really helped. Q. How much did your defense get back the defensive package from practice? COACH LONG: I think our players made more comments and made a lot fewer mental errors, not assignment errors. We haven't been making assignment errors, but we've been making mental errors technique‑wise, leverage on receivers, leverage on blockers, and we didn't make many of those. We've made a few, but we didn't make many of those mistakes tonight. Now that means we simplified it, and they understood what they were doing. They were more comfortable at what they were doing. But let me tell you one more time; that was not a spread football team we played. That was a pro football team. If we can promise everybody will play pro football against us, I promise you we'll play better defense. Q. How's Colin? COACH LONG: I think Colin was fine on Friday. So I think he's just fine. I think he'll be full speed on Sunday. Q. Special teams looked like there were some long runs. What did you see out of your special teams? COACH LONG: I thought our special teams was really shaky. I don't think we kicked off very well. The kicks were low and short. I thought our coverage on kickoffs was very inconsistent. There were a couple of three times we covered it really well. And there were a couple of huge hits in the game, if you heard them, and there was a fumble caused by a great hit on a kickoff coverage. But there was a couple of times that our guys got out of their lanes and he popped‑‑ not real long ones, but fairly long ones. So we have to be more consistent on our coverage. Then I think we have to kick the ball better, and we have to punt the ball better. Q. (Indiscernible)? COACH LONG: I don't know. He didn't have that choice. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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