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SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 30, 2019

Rocky Long

San Diego, California

SDSU 13

BYU 3

HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: All right. I'm ready.

Q. Initial comments?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: Initial comments. It's great to win. I mean, it's great to have nine wins on your record and we're looking forward to the Bowl game. BYU is a very good football team and they are a class act. So any chance you have to play them, you know you're going to get their best and we gave our best tonight. I guess we made our field goals and they missed theirs, so we actually won the game.

Q. BYU came into the game averaging 30 in the season, 40 over the last three games. You gave them three. What does that say about the defense?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: Now that the regular season is over, I think our defense has played as well as any defense I've been around, and in the ten years I've been here, that's by far the best defensive performance when you count the first game to the last game.

I don't know what it's going to look like statistically because we gave up about a hundred yards on that last drive but if you look national statistics, I think we are in the Top-25 in about eight or ten categories of defense.

After 12 games, that's a pretty amazing thing for the teams that we play, because the teams that we play score a whole bunch of points normally and I think we're in the top two or three in scoring defense and Top-10 in total defense. I mean, the players have to be commended for playing that well.

Q. Coming into the season, the biggest concern was up front on the defense. Was that the catalyst?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: No, I think it's all of them together. In fact, I was real frustrated the last two games that we give pressure on the quarterback and he scrambles out there have and gets big yardage. Our defensive linemen need to learn how to squeeze the pocket instead of just running right by those quarterbacks.

But the defensive line played better than probably expected or anybody else expected, too. But secondary was really good and we got the best defensive player in the league in Kyahva. I don't know if he's going to get it, but they are making a mistake if he's not the Defensive Player of the Year.

Q. That last drive, showing how the secondary progressed, do you agree with that?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: Well, I think they did a nice job of keep things in front of them and when they tried to go over the top of them, made some nice plays. When you play as good of defenses as our guys have played this year, it's very frustrating to let people do that, to try to run the clock, by the way. But you have to be smarter than your heart tells you to be, so we gave up the yardage and let them run the clock.

Q. Talk about some of the turnovers that Tariq caused, the fumble and interception?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: We were really lucky on the first one. Now, he made a really good play. We all-out blitzed them and we blew up coverage and there was a guy running down the middle of the field with nobody covering him. They ran two trick plays, one of them worked and one of them didn't.

So we blitzed everybody, they didn't have enough people to block everybody, Tariq didn't get blocked and when they did the free flicker, that gave Tariq just enough time to get there and hit the quarterback. If the quarterback would have had time it would have been about a 70-yard touchdown pass. We took a chance and Tariq made a really good play and got there before the guy could throw it.

Q. Your thoughts on Carson Baker's performance?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: I thought it was okay. I didn't know what to expect. I thought he had handled himself confidently. He didn't look like he got frustrated. He didn't look like he got off-kilter. He stayed in the game. He did what he could. He made a couple really good throws. Made a good throw before halftime, that was a great throw and then a nice throw down the sidelines where the receivers went up and caught the ball. But he put it up where they could catch it and the defensive back couldn't make a play, so he made some really nice throws there.

For the first time out and never playing in a college football game, he played really, really well. Hopefully that's a sign he's going to be a good quarterback.

Q. Your thoughts on possibly playing Brookshire?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: We thought Carson was doing just blind -- Brookshire played. He didn't play the whole series but he went in there for a couple running plays.

Q. What are your thoughts now?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: 50/50. We play one more game; we could win, we could lose.

Q. What does that say about the program?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: I don't know. I thought some of the comments about us winning eight games, and that wasn't good enough, I thought that was ridiculous. I think that any time you win eight or nine games, you ought to be celebrating. The people that don't celebrate that, they must have a real sad life.

Q. Does ten wins mean anything to you?
HEAD COACH ROCKY LONG: Yeah. It's another win.

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