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FAMOUS IDAHO POTATO BOWL: AKRON VS UTAH STATEDecember 22, 2015Matt WellsDavid MoalaBrandon SwindallBoise, Idaho Akron - 23, Utah State - 21 MATT WELLS: Well, congratulations to Coach Bowden and their staff. Tough team, hard fought ballgame all the way down to the wire. Proud of our guys for the way they battled at the very end. There were some things that obviously we didn't do real well early, namely in the red zone on offense. There were times even in the third and fourth quarter we didn't get off the field on defense on third downs. So that was disappointing, but I liked our fight and the character of our kids. It was a battle all the way down to the very end. Go ahead and open it up for questions from there. Q. How much did those early issues, red zones or the turnovers, have an effect even later in the game on the fact that you had to come back from a deficit for most of the game? MATT WELLS: Well, it didn't have an effect on us late in the game. It just had an effect on the scoreboard in the first half. That was the bottom line. I haven't looked at the stats, but I think we were in there four times and came away with a touchdown, two turnovers and a whatever, a dropped snap, fumbled snap, hold on the field goal. It didn't affect us mentally, I don't think, because we came out and took the opening drive and made it 14-13 and all that kind of stuff and scored down there late right before the very end. But you can't get all the way down in the red zone, guys and ladies. I mean, that's one of the points on our plan to win back home that we talk about all the time is you have to score 75 percent of the available points in the red zone to give yourself a chance to win, and we didn't do it on offense. Q. Can you describe the thinking behind the quarterback changes at various times? MATT WELLS: Yeah, I think over time, over this year, I've felt honestly that they both deserved to play. From what Chuckie has done through the years, I thought he deserved to start, and Kent obviously came in through the meat of the Mountain West schedule and played very well. They both had their times and their moments, and I thought they both deserved to play. We designed a few things with both of them in the game at the same time, and we practiced it that way. That was the thinking behind it. Quite honestly the bottom line is I thought they both deserved to play. Q. How much did the turnovers and missed opportunities define the end-of-the-season struggles? MATT WELLS: Well, maybe more so than turnovers because I don't think it was an epidemic, but you just can't get in the red zone and do what we did tonight. That's the bottom line, on offense. We didn't -- you go back and look at the games that we were explosive on offense, there were touchdowns in there, and I think you've got to run the ball down there, and we may have gotten away from that a little too quick. We didn't produce down there. You've got to come away with that minimum of field goal, and more times than not touchdowns, and if we'd have done that, we have a two-score lead at halftime. And I'm not one to say if and this and that, but going back to the first question on the effect of that, I just think it didn't have an effect on our players, but the bottom line is the scoreboard could have been lit up a lot more. Should have been. Q. Through the second and third quarter Devante Mays really got going, had over 100 yards, I think, in the two quarters. What was different from the first quarter to those two quarters? MATT WELLS: We just started changing it up, running it a little bit more on the perimeter with him. We weren't moving those big guys around very much inside and had more success on the edge. Q. Brandon, what's the emotion like for the players, kind of finishing the way it did, not being successful in the red zone and stuff like that, which is something you came into this game hoping that you would do? BRANDON SWINDALL: It hurts. Just the hard work we put in coming in, and the red zone is what we harp on in our offensive meeting room. It means us not being able to execute. It really hurts. Q. With this being Chuckie's last game, what do you feel like the impact he's had on the program over these five, six years, and obviously with Kent getting so much playing time the last few years, what does that do for you going forward? MATT WELLS: Obviously it's a bright spot moving forward. I think Kent Myers is a talented young man, and everybody in here, I think, has heard me say on multiple times on what Chuckie Keeton on has meant to this program. He is not any different from these two right here. He lives and dies being an Aggie. He breathes life and an infectious attitude, tremendous competitor, will be successful in whatever area he chooses in life, and as he moves forward he's going to be a successful man, and again, a competitive guy that really cares more about Utah State than he does himself, no different than these two right here. Q. Brandon and maybe, Coach, you can answer this, too, kind of the wild swing at the end of the first half when the defensive tackle is running for 60-some yards and they get a field goal. Did that have any effect on you? MATT WELLS: I think the positive effect was the effort by Jake Simonich. That was an unbelievable effort and tried to make it a point of a rally in the locker room in a that might have won the game for us. You take the first series of the second half and go down and score, make it 14-13, we've got to get off the field a couple more times on defense, and then I think it's a competitive game into the fourth quarter. But that was a tremendous effort play by him. Q. I know you guys aren't into moral victories, but Akron has been successful on the ground during all their wins this season. How much pride can you at least take in doing what you did against their rushing attack today? DAVID MOALA: I mean, Coach Wells and Coach Clune, they tell us every game, stop the run and run the ball. And that's what we harp on on defense. We take pride in stopping the run, and that's what we knew we were coming into this game, they had a good quarterback, good, mobile quarterback who was a two-way threat and was hard to bring him down. We knew we couldn't shoulder him. We had to ring him down. But yeah. Q. Coach, speaking of the running game, they took the lead in the third quarter and then in the fourth quarter it seemed like the offense kind of got away from the ground game, particularly Mays, who was averaging a lot. Was it kind of dictated by the score? MATT WELLS: A little bit. Probably you're referring to when we were down by two scores, and yeah, the last half of the fourth quarter when we needed to get a score and obviously tried to have two possessions there. Q. David, Nick Vigil has been so important for you guys' defense all year, nine tackles almost every game. Didn't get to that mark today, but how has he been so effective during the entire course of a season? DAVID MOALA: Nick is a tremendous player. Any time you have two good linebackers like Kyler Fackrell and Nick Vigil, it makes it easier on the D-line. All the attention is on them. We needed to win our one-on-one battles up front, and that's what we did today. Q. Matt, you mentioned maybe going away from the run a little bit too soon. Is that because Mays played so well, he ran the ball so effectively? Would you have liked to have tried him a few more times inside the 20, inside the 30? MATT WELLS: Yeah, I think you've got to run the ball a little bit better inside, and we may have gotten away from that too quick. Q. When you look back, what are you going to remember about this 2015 season? MATT WELLS: Well, first of all, I'll remember the kids because this deal is all about the players. I'm going to have another year. I'm going to have other years, and I had my time as a Utah State Aggie, but it's all about the players. That's what you go away with. You remember the 21 seniors as an individual group and then you remember them collectively. You remember a big win against Boise State, tremendous win for our program, some other big wins on the road that we haven't had in a while. Fresno, it's been the first time Utah State has gone in there in a long time and won. And then you're going to remember a couple disappointing games in back-to-back games in November, and then obviously this one. You always remember the last one. So there's some disappointment and there's some tough stuff, and there's things to be happy about and to build on to move forward, and the guys that will be back on January the 10th will absolutely move forward, and we'll tighten reins down and we'll probably -- you'll evaluate where you're at and make sure that how do we make this thing better. At the end of the day, we've done something the last five years that Utah State has never done before, and that's continue this bowl streak. Unfortunately we didn't continue a chance to win four straight. And again, I'd say congratulations to Akron. That team, that was a good team. They're very, very solid, and they played well today. They didn't give us anything. I can say that we gave them things, but really they created it, and so my hat's off to them, and congratulations. Q. Brandon, you were hampered by injuries early on in the season. How did your two touchdowns today feel to cap off your senior year? BRANDON SWINDALL: Really don't mean anything to me, honestly. We didn't get the win, and that's what I wanted, to finish my senior season. Really doesn't mean nothing to me, honestly. Q. Coach Wells, how much did the younger guys on the team this year learn about what it takes to -- you guys struggled a little bit in close games. How much did they learn this season that might be valuable to them moving forward? MATT WELLS: Well, that'll remain to be seen how much they learned, how much we learned as coaches, and how much young kids do learn. You've got to go make plays to win games at the end. We didn't do that. We didn't do that early enough, and we didn't obviously do it late enough, all the way down to the onside kick. We don't even give ourselves a chance to recover it. So those are individual things that can be learned throughout a season if they're willing to be learned because at the end of the day, to me it all comes down to attitude and effort from an individual standpoint, and hopefully we have learned from that. And to have a special season, you know, when you play this many games and you end up 6-7 and yeah, it's a disappointment because we didn't have a winning season, but you look back at how many close games you had, that's where you've got to go reach up, and leadership kicks in, the will to win. You've got to go -- somebody has got to make a play, but it's not always at the end of the game. That's what I think we're having a hard time learning right now. Sometimes those plays are early, early in the game, and I think that that's true and held true today. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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