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SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 22, 2018

Rocky Long

San Diego, California

San Diego State - 23, Eastern Michigan - 20 (OT)

Q. Thoughts on the win?
COACH LONG: Thoughts on the win. Uh, we won.

Q. How is Juwan?
COACH LONG: You know, I'm not sure. The doctors seem really positive that he's going to be okay. He strained something up here in his upper chest. So I think they x-rayed it but I'm sure they'll MRI it and all that to find out. But the doctors talk positive but they didn't say for sure. I'm sure they'll find out by tomorrow afternoon.

Q. Did John tell you he was pretty sure he could make that one?
COACH LONG: No. I told him after the game that I was mad that he missed the one. But I forgive him. Because he made those at the end.

Q. What were your thoughts on Chase Jasmin's performance coming in?
COACH LONG: I thought he did okay. I thought that you gotta give Eastern Michigan a lot of credit for how well they played the run. You know, they schemed up a few things that helped them. But they hung in their tough just like I told you whenever we have our press conference. I told you were they were that kind of team. I don't know why you don't believe me then.

But I told you those teams from that league, they're just like us -- they'll play hard, they'll play physical, they'll play it till the end. And they don't have the bells and whistles that the Power 5 guys do but they love playing football.

So no matter where they finish in their league in all those sort of things or where we finish in our league in all those sort of things, we're the same people. And whenever those two groups get together, guess what, it's going to be a hard, tough, physical football game. And that's the way this works.

We might play some guys that are so talented that we can't get them into a physical game. But they're just like us.

Q. Do you think Washington not being out there the second half affected the team mentally?
COACH LONG: I don't think so. I think our team is pretty mentally tough. Him not being out there at full strength probably hurt our performance a little bit.

Q. The interception in overtime, was that a great play on defense or --
COACH LONG: It was a great play because it was Darren Hall and he's young. A veteran cornerback will do that, which means he has a chance to be pretty good. Where they run a corner route -- we have a deep pass safety and they run a corner route behind the corner, and they run an out right in front of the corner because they're trying to attract the rookie to jump the out, and they throw the corner behind him for the big gain.

Well, veteran cornerbacks try to bait them. They try to act like they're driving the out and then they feather back into the corner. And they're taking a chance because if it's a perfect pass he probably can't make that play. But every once in a while they don't throw a perfect pass and he made a perfect play.

He made a veteran play. He baited him in like he was driving to the out and feathered back into the corner route and caught the ball, so that was a great play.

Q. Did you say anything to the team after that early whistle and obviously the whole stadium is booing and there's frustration? Did you have to tell the team anything or did they bounce back on their own?
COACH LONG: No, I hope we always are this, we pride ourselves in not worrying about the officials. I mean, they made a terrible call. Might have cost us the game. But it's one of those things -- I made a critical mistake this year; I sent some things into the conference office that I thought they missed some calls on and they protect each other. So it doesn't matter. I could show you the same calls and you would agree with me, but they don't agree, because they protect each other.

Q. What did you see differently from the first half to the second half because you guys started out so strong, 17 points and they --
COACH LONG: I think the critical part of the game was right at the end. I mean, we should have come in at halftime with a 14-point lead. But our young quarterback made a terrible decision and threw an interception with enough time on the clock that they were able to run down the field and score right before halftime. If you take last week's game and this week's game, the exact same thing happened last week but it was the momentum for us.

This was the momentum against us. The other team went into the halftime with great momentum on their side and they came out and played -- they played better, their team played better in the second half.

I think our team played about the same but their team played better. And so they made it a game. So I think the critical part was right there at the end of the first half.

Q. Glass coming in, you had talked earlier in the week about it was two different game plans for these guys, two different styles. Do you think that his style took a little bit --
COACH LONG: It took us a little while to get used to him, yes. Yes, it did. And I thought we played the other guy really good. And then when Glass came in, I thought his ability to move around and not get hit and making plays with his feet and giving themselves open lanes to throw in, I thought it took us a long time. We might never have gotten into him except Darren Hall baited him into throwing the corner that he intercepted. The rest of the game we didn't adjust we well to him.

Q. Reminded me of like the Agnew proposition for other teams in that he was able to --
COACH LONG: It's very similar, very similar.

Q. And also, I mean, sure there's a strong arm a couple times --
COACH LONG: I was disappointed watching warm-ups because when I watched the film, I thought the starter had the better arm. When I watched them in warm-ups, No. 9 has the better arm. So I was very disappointed when I saw that.

Q. What was the reasoning about the onside kick after the first score?
COACH LONG: It wasn't an onside kick. (Laughter). Now, this is maybe overcoaching or something. Up until our game they've been fair-catching everything, okay. And we're kind of proud of how we cover kickoffs. So we were supposed to be squibbing that and trying to get to the back guy so they had to return it.

Well, John Baron hit it right at one of their guys. He was supposed to hit it over the front line and then have it bounce crazy back in the back end so maybe they'd have a hard time fielding it and maybe we could cause something good for us to happen. It was a heck of a plan until it didn't work.

Q. How about the field position you guys got after they go ahead and they kind of, they do their short kick themselves, are you happy to see that?
COACH LONG: If you -- and it's going to be interesting to watch the film. On the sidelines it looks to me like we should have popped two kickoff returns for touchdowns and that's where we probably missed Juwan there more than we did at tailback because I think at least one of those, maybe both of them, if it's Juwan Washington back there, they're touchdowns. So I think they saw the same thing I did and that's why they squibbed it because they didn't want the possibility of one of those popping out.

Q. How important was it for Kyree to come back and force that fumble after having a couple of struggles earlier?
COACH LONG: Well, I think -- I don't know if it was Kyree. I think it was Ron Smith. Wasn't it Ron Smith that got the sack? It was Kyree? It's in there it's Kyree. I mean it's in here as Kyree. Now I've got the film and I know which corner plays which side. I actually know which corner plays which side. So I'm not going to dispute it until I have proof. But I think it was Ron Smith, I think. I think it was Ron Smith.

Q. How important was it for --
COACH LONG: I thought it was really important because they were in scoring range and it was a third-down play and obviously the fumble got us the ball and got us the momentum.

Q. You kind of came yourselves a gift going into the bye week, taking a deep breath getting ready for the conference, what are your thoughts?
COACH LONG: I think we have to get a lot better. I think if we want to make a run for the conference championship we have to become a lot better team. But we're playing about like I thought we would. I mean, we have a young coaching staff and we have very young players. So being consistent and good is really hard for both of those groups.

I thought we were going to struggle. Sooner or later we have to stop struggling and play more like a veteran team than we are now.

Q. How much more of a challenge does it come losing a couple of starters?
COACH LONG: Makes it a lot harder, losing a starting quarterback and lose your best defensive lineman and now we lost Tim Wilson for this game; he should be back for the next one. We lost him for this game. He was playing really, really good.

We had four or five guys on the sidelines tonight that are starters. So not only are you young and you lose starters, obviously you're not going to play very consistently and probably not play very well.

I'll go back, maybe it was Kyree. Was it Kyree for sure? No, it might be, because tonight if you noticed we played a lot more corners tonight than we have in the past. So I mean we had four corners playing tonight where we've only had two in the past and they were playing both sides. It might have been Kyree. I called the defense. I don't know who ran it.

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