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POINSETTIA BOWL: BYU VS WYOMING

December 14, 2016

Craig Bohl

San Diego, California

THE MODERATOR: Good evening everyone. I'm Gina Beckman, welcome to the 2016 San Diego Bowl Games press conference. We have a little bit of a timing issue with some of our coaches, not all of them are here at the moment but we will start with the SDCCU Poinsettia Bowl coaches so we will start with Craig Bohl from Wyoming and he's going to give remarks and open it up for questions.

COACH BOHL: Thank you, it's great to be here on behalf of the University of Wyoming. We're certainly excited about the invitation to play in the 2016 Poinsettia Bowl. Also on behalf of the Mountain West Conference we are excited about representing the Mountain West. We had a very competitive schedule this year and we were fortunate enough to win the Mountain side.

We also have a great deal of respect for Brigham Young University and Cougar football, I want to say congratulations to Coach Sitake. They've played well not only this year but the previous year, and at all times in the short time that I've been at the University of Wyoming I've been aware of the longstanding games that BYU and Wyoming have had. We're excited about being here. We believe we've got an excellent football team. We're a young, emerging football team but we have a handful of seniors who have done a phenomenal job changing the culture and going from a 2-10 football team to an 8-win football team this season, so it's a pretty dramatic turn-around and we're excited about closing off the football season with a competitive game against BYU.

Q. Do you like renewing the rivalry with BYU?
COACH BOHL: Rivalry is -- I don't want to use an ambiguous term. I do know that a lot of our former players have contacted me and a lot of our fans remember the great games that we've had and the competitive games.

Anytime you have a chance to get on the Gridiron with an opponent that there was a longstanding history and it's kind of had maybe an abbreviated time, where we haven't played I think it certainly ads an awful lot of excitement. I believe this, this game is going to garner a lot of national attention so we're excited about that.

Q. What exactly have you seen out of BYU since you have been studying?
COACH BOHL: First of all I know that they suffered a loss of a great quarterback, but I think Mangum is an excellent quarterback and we've watched a lot of tape on him, he's an excellent passer. I'm an old defensive coach along with Tracy in the back and it's either defensive front, they're big strong physical guys, and everything I was told with BYU bore out on tape. When you say BYU is strong, physical and smart that's exactly what you see. You see a defense that flies around but they maintain their gaps, they have great pursuit angles, offensively you see a big strong offensive line, they know what they want to do offensively, they've got a great running game so they're balanced and they can run the football. They have a solid kicking game.

It's not by chance that they had a successful year, and it will be a big, big challenge and a great opportunity for us to have a chance to win.

Q. Are you working on a surprise or two?
COACH BOHL: Oh, yeah, got 'em right up here on my sleeve.

I can't divulge my information right now though, but typically you know what you do see in bowl games. We're all creative. We sit in dark rooms and draw plays and things like that so there is always going to be a couple new wrinkles that we have and I'm sure BYU has a couple new wrinkles as well.

Q. Can you tell us about Brian Hill?
COACH BOHL: Brian gained 1700 yards this year. Last year he gained 1600. He's an unselfish player. He's a tremendous running back. He's a guy that I would describe as a slasher. I don't know how much you would say he is but I know this, every time he gets in the open field, very few people run him down. He's a relentless runner and has a big, big impact. Last year he gained 1600 yards, but we've been more explosive with him this year, I think we've been more diversified on offense which has allowed him to get some bigger plays.

You are you're going to see an exciting running back he's one of the top rushers in the country, a semi-finalist for the Doak Walker Award, he was up are for the Heisman Trophy. He was down the line a little bit but I saw the ballot come into my office, so it's been great to see Brian's performance and we're going to need him to play well if we're going to have an opportunity to beat BYU.

Q. You saw San Diego State a couple times. Any similarities between their tact and preparing for BYU. You played San Diego State a couple times and you find a bowl game in San Diego?
COACH BOHL: I can tell you this, there is no better spot to play a bowl game than San Diego. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I had an opportunity to be here in San Diego at a bowl game when I was a younger coach. Coach Long and I are great friends. They play, I don't want to say traditional football, but it looks like football. When you look at BYU, we certainly see a lot of similarities. BYU is very disciplined as I said, but they're very pointed, very focused. Everything that they have within their arsenal, there is a reason for it.

It's a great opportunity but a great challenge, just like it was for us and San Diego State. We played them twice in a close amount of time. As a coach going into it you looked at all the potential opportunities to be in a bowl game. This is going to be great, great opportunity for us and a great opponent.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach.

COACH BOHL: Thank you very much. We're excited about being here.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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