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GILDAN NEW MEXICO BOWL: CENTRAL MICHIGAN VS SAN DIEGO STATEDecember 21, 2019Rocky LongKeshawn BanksAlbuquerque, New Mexico San Diego State - 48, Central Michigan - 11 Q. Keshawn, just talk about how special it is to come back home, get this win, and not only do you get it, you and Jordan being from here and Coach Arnett, Coach Long, all of you guys together, how special is this for you guys? KESHAWN BANKS: It's very special. Like all those guys talked about, this program is built on so many great things. Having a 10-win season is very important to us, and that's something we strive for every year. Obviously it's not our ultimate goal. Our ultimate is to win the conference championship, and we came up short. But God willing, we were able to accomplish something great and be a great team, so I'm just happy that we sent the team out the right way, and not only the team but the seniors. Q. And you're at home already; what are you going to do for Christmas? KESHAWN BANKS: I don't know, probably like Jordan said, just get some home-cooked food and just relax. We've been grinding for so long and working for so long, it'll be nice just to relax for a couple days. Q. What does it say about this defense? What makes your defense so special? KESHAWN BANKS: We have a great man in charge of this defense. Coach Long, he prepares so much and he watches so much film and so much preparation goes into the scheme of our defense, and we just have 11 guys on the defensive side who want to go make plays every play, and when you have something like that, it builds something special. Q. How have you been able to adapt so fast? You played as a freshman, you're doing really well. What do you attribute that to? You seem to be very mature for your age. KESHAWN BANKS: I think when you come into a great program like this who wins a lot and has a lot of success, it kind of forces you to be mature faster than I would like to be. But just this great program, they helped me build something special, and I was able to come in, be comfortable, and they just pushed me to work hard every day, and that's what we do, work hard every day. ROCKY LONG: Obviously we're very, very happy that we played so well because when we -- any game we play, I never know exactly how they're going to play. We've got -- the best part of our program is we've got great kids in our program. Some of them aren't kids. They come in as kids, they leave as men. You saw one of them up here in Kyahva. But they come in as boys and they leave as men. And we have very few issues in our program because they're such great people. They have great families. They know what's right, and they know what's wrong, and they work hard. I get the question all the time about, well, how do you handle this age group since they're so much different. Let me tell you something: They're not any different than the age group was 25 years ago. All you've got to do is prove that you care about them and give them a structured environment, and they thrive. So all that other baloney, you can throw that out the window. Q. Jordan was saying you were telling him all week, you're going back home. Was there anything you told Jordan coming into the game? ROCKY LONG: No, we're lucky to have those two New Mexicans on our team. They're great players, and they're just scratching the surface. They're going to be better than they are now, and I was shocked that Jordan got caught, too, because if we had a 100-yard dash -- and we've got some fast guys on our team now. I'm not sure he would win the 40. We've got a couple guys that might beat him in a 40, but there's no one on our football team that can beat him in a 100, I'll promise you that. There's no one else on our team that ran a 10.3 100 meters in high school, so I was pretty shocked that he got caught. But you know, I tell them they're local heroes, and we were -- I think they were really happy, but our whole team was happy to come here and play in this game, and I think they were especially happy, those two, but I kept telling them that they're going to have to come back here and play well because they're local heroes. Everybody knows them. I actually thought we'd have more people at the pep rally. I sent them to the pep rally, those two. I thought we'd have more people there since they were at the pep rally, but I heard they weren't as enthusiastic as the other team. You noticed that both of them are kind of quiet and they don't talk very much, but they talk pretty loud on the football field. Q. A lot of firsts today, first touchdowns for Jesse Matthews and for TJ out there. How impressed were you with your team's receiver depth today with over 12 players catching a pass for Agnew? ROCKY LONG: I didn't know that, but that's pretty impressive, but TJ's catch was unbelievable. That's one you're going to see on TV tonight as one of the best plays. And I'm going to talk about Jesse Matthews. This just shows you that people evaluate and other people aren't always right. Do you all know that Jesse Matthews was a walk-on? He walked on and was on the scout team last year, and we didn't think much of it, and then all of a sudden during spring practice and this fall he became our most consistent wide receiver. He can beat you deep, he can out-jump you for the ball, he can make tough catches. He's on scholarship starting second semester, I promise you that, so don't get the idea we're going to let him transfer someplace. But there's a guy, and he wasn't recruited because he played at a little tiny high school, and he's not very big. So because of his work ethic -- now, he's got athletic ability, too, but that's just him wanting to be good. Now, he had to have some athletic ability, don't get me wrong, but that's him wanting to be good. He's our best receiver. Nobody in this whole country recruited him. Not even us. So every once in a while you get really, really lucky. Q. Can you talk about the defense and some of the turnovers, interceptions and what they did for the win, as well as what it means to have another 10-win season? ROCKY LONG: I'm going to say that this is the best defense obviously that we've had at San Diego State for the last 10 years. There's no doubt in my mind. Now, I can't compare them with all the defenses that San Diego State have had, but I'll bet you it's pretty darned close to maybe the best one they've ever had. We're not exceptionally talented on defense. We have good players, but very few of them are going to be in the NFL. But they buy into our scheme, which is unusual. A lot of people don't think our scheme works because we do things differently, but guess what, it works. But our kids buy into our scheme and they play extremely hard and they don't make mental errors. So most of the time they're in the right place. Now, the long pass, our cornerback was in the wrong place, and we got beat on that, and then there's an idiot calling the defenses on the long run because sometimes my want-to gets the best of me, and instead of just playing it safe, I want to stone every play. I don't want them to get one yard. So we called the defense to stop them dead, and that happens, and if they break the line of scrimmage, guess what, it's a long touchdown run. So that's not their fault, that's my fault. The wrong defense was called. But I'm going to say it again; we've got great people in our program. Last year we kind of lost our way, and this year's senior class with a lot of work got us back to who we want to be, and that's team guys first, and we play and like each other and we play together. Win, lose or draw, they're all in it together. I like to hear them say that, and I don't think they were saying it because I was standing over there, but this team really likes each other. Q. How does the head coach and your staff feel? What's the fulfillment and joy or satisfaction when your team plays so well both sides of the football? ROCKY LONG: I mean, obviously we're really, really happy because the last two years we haven't played well in bowl games, so we're happy they came to play today and they played to their abilities. Obviously that's kind of fun to be around. The only part is I wish the last quarter would have gone faster because the more you play, the more chance of a guy -- the game was over, and the more you play, the more chance of somebody getting hurt, especially late in the game when it gets a little sloppy and that sort of thing. But it's fulfilling. It's fun to win. But if you listen to our players, we always have higher expectations of ourselves. Kind of makes me mad when the fan base has higher expectations than I think they should, but our players in our program, we have higher expectations for ourselves than anybody else. Keshawn said it. Anybody that can win 10 games in a season, you're a great football team. You can say what you want. There's only going to be a handful of them that won 10 games. So we're a great football team. But you notice what he said? Did y'all listen? He said, well, we're happy we're a pretty good football team because we won 10 games. Well, guess what, that's not our main goal. Our main goal is to win the conference championship. He said that sitting right there. That makes me proud. He could be patting himself on the back right now telling everybody how wonderful he is. Instead of brings up we didn't win the conference championship. That's pretty cool stuff. Q. You've said before that you like New Mexico kids, that if they can play you want to recruit them. I think Danny Gonzales was kind of your point guy. ROCKY LONG: He was. I'm guessing we're not getting any more New Mexico kids because they hired Danny Gonzales. Q. But will you try? Has anything changed there? ROCKY LONG: No, nothing has changed. I mean, the young people in this state that can play, we know who they are. I mean, with this day and age and computers, we can watch everybody on computer. We know who they are and we'll try to recruit them, but Coach G is not going to let that happen, I'll promise you. Q. Just a friendly competition? ROCKY LONG: Yeah, I told him I want them to win every game except one when we play each other. Q. Just talk about how special that win is. You come back and you used to look out that window and see the field and all that and you're here at a bowl game, got some players from the state and you win here. ROCKY LONG: Well, I think it's really special for me because of my ties to New Mexico and how much I love this place. It's really special for Keshawn and it's really special for Jordan. I think our team is really happy about winning, but I don't know how special it is to them except that coming here, the three of us, and Zach Arnett, I told them every single day in practice how much they would like it here, and then we got all those Southern California kids on our team that got here and it was cold and they're complaining about how cold it is, and then we get in the game and the game is beautiful. That's as good a football weather as there could ever be. So if we get out of here before it snows, I mean, I'm not leaving, but if our team gets out of here before it snows, they're going to think this is the most wonderful place in the world. Q. I asked your players, there was a lot of talk about the defense here. You're ranked second in rushing defense, and we wrote about how good the defense was. What did you tell your offense before the game to step up, to ignore what we write about, about the lack of scoring and get them to step up and score 48 points, well above the season average, to really perform offensively? ROCKY LONG: I'm going to try to -- it's a really interesting question because -- and I don't want to downplay it at all. We don't tell them any different from week to week. We don't practice any different from week to week. We work hard as coaches and break down film and try to develop game plans and then we try to teach our players the game plan and have them execute the game plan. Nothing changes from week to week. We just played a whole lot better today. The offensive kids executed better. Our quarterback threw the ball well. Some kids went and caught some passes. Jordan ran it really well. Our offensive line, if we had a good running game, the offensive line must have blocked pretty well. There's no difference. We didn't say anything different to them than we say to them every week. We didn't coach them any different than we do every week, just thank goodness they played really good. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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