Nov. 11, 2003
SAN DIEGO -
SDSU Head Football Coach
Tom Craft's Weekly Press Conference Quotes
Aztec Athletics Center
Craft on running back Lynell Hamilton's injury:
The hottest topic today in the conference call was obviously (running back) Lynell Hamilton's injury. He has surgery scheduled for 3:15 today. He's going to be in a non-weight bearing cast for 10 weeks. He had such a traumatic high ankle sprain that it snapped his lower leg in two places: complete in one area and partially fractured in the other. He also had ankle damage in which they're going to have a plate and some screws inserted to hold those two bones in place so that they can heal. It happened because the turf, the synthetic turf at UNLV, is so long. They didn't put a lot of the rubber compound that's in our turf, maybe because of the heat. Our synthetic turf is a lot shorter, and has a lot more rubber, so it has more give. They don't have as much give on their turf and it made it a pretty difficult playing surface. Lynell will probably not have much contact at all in spring football. At about the end of the school year in May, we'll have the plate and screws taken out and he'll continue to do his rehab. He'll be running around during spring ball, but I don't think we're going to contact him at all. It's the same injury (wide receiver) Oz Hakim had when he was here in 1996, when I was here before. I expect Lynell, because of the type of person he is and his work ethic, he'll come back even stronger off of this.
Craft on quarterback Adam Hall's injury:
Hall has ligament damage in the back (of his ankle), by the Achilles. His status right now is probable (for Colorado State on Saturday). We just don't know how much and how far we can go with him. It's going to be based on what he can tolerate pain wise. I thought (quarterback) Matt Dlugolecki did a great job. He hit 3-for-3 for over 60 yards and that big fade route out of the end zone. He checked the run away from (UNLV defensive back) Jamaal Brimmer very well and did some nice things.
Craft on Webb and Kracalik's injuries:
Obviously (wide receiver) Jeff Webb right now looks like he's out for the year with a shoulder sprain, and damaged ligaments. (Offensive tackle) Mike Kracalik has a MRI. He may have a torn labrum but we expect him to try to play through it. Those four guys (Hamilton, Hall, Webb and Kracalik) are probably the best players at their positions and that was a pretty dramatic loss for us, but we expect to have two available this week.
Craft on the Colorado State game this Saturday:
I think in a game like this, going to Colorado State, we're going to have to make sure we make the big plays, because it's going to come down to that. They're a much better offensive football team than UNLV and it will be a bigger challenge for our defense. Obviously, we're not going to stop (Colorado State quarterback) Bradlee Van Pelt. He's the best athlete in the conference and we've just got to try to contain him. He's very much like a two-back presence in a one-back offense. When they empty the backfield and he's back there, it's more of a spread offense with him being the one-back. The big thing that he's done this year is really improved himself as a passer. He's done really well there. (CSU wide receiver David) Anderson's having a great year. They're going to be tough up there. We've got identical records. I don't think anybody thought we would have an identical record with Colorado State, who was picked to win the conference, this late in the year. We're going to go up and try to do some creative things to stay alive.
Craft on adjusting to the injuries:
When you lose players who are significant to you, you don't try to take the next person, insert them and then tweak what you're going to do based on their abilities. What you do is, at this point and time in the year, when you have a lot of your scheme and your offenses and defenses established, is give the load to a number of people. If that means we have three different receivers take Jeff Webb's place to do the things we want to do, we do it instead of saying we can't do this and we can't do that. The other subject of interest is what will we do with (running back) Brandon Barnes. Brandon right now is redshirting. If (running back) Michael Franklin was to go down with an early game-ending injury and (running back) DeAngelo Nedd for some reason struggled, we would go right to Brandon and he would carry the ball 20-30 balls in each of the next two games. He would also be the kickoff return man. If there is any risk of him losing that redshirt year, it's because he's going to have a presence in our quest to get to a bowl game. But that's a contingency plan and it's not likely.
Craft on the injuries in the UNLV game:
I don't think I have ever been involved in a game (like UNLV) where one side of the ball kept taking a hit. And they weren't just subtle hits, they were big hits. At the time I didn't know (running back) Lynell (Hamilton) had broken his leg until the game was over. On the field the doctor told me that he had fractured it in two places, and he was out for the year. He went through the scenario with me and I kind of broke down about that one. I didn't expect we would have (quarterback) Adam Hall. He tried to move around on the sidelines. The thing that impressed me about him, and this is where he's come a long way, is that he realized he couldn't move away from pressure the way he needed too. There is no more of a fierce competitor that would play through any type of injury than him, but I told him, 'You know this is a game where you're going to have to escape pressure and you've already made some plays like that.' And I walked away from him and he kind of came back to me about a minute later and said, 'Coach, I can go in if we go into overtime, but I don't want to not be able to do the things that we need to do to win, so if we need to go with (quarterback) Matt Dlugolecki, that's fine.' And I looked at him and I said, 'Hey thanks. I really appreciate you saying that.' And that to me means a lot. It sounds maybe kind of corny right now, but when I was revisiting that in the locker room and Lynell's laying on his back in pain and (offensive tackle Mike) Kracalik's couldn't finish the game and (wide receiver) Jeff Webb's out, probably for the year, it was really emotional. That is as an emotional experience as I've ever been through as a coach, to see the guys go down (with injuries), and still find a way to win. (Wide receiver) Kyle Conerly steps up, makes a great catch dragging his feet. Matt Dlugolecki does a great job of running the offense. A couple of times, he stopped motion when we had it when the clock was running down, so that we could run the ball, just heads-up little things that shows that he's come a long way. (Offensive lineman) Zack Barnes comes in and does a nice job while Kracalik is out. There were some good things going on in that game. We've got to try to be as resourceful as we can and as creative as we can to go up and try to beat a real good Colorado State team.
Craft on facing Colorado State:
You go into the week trying to probe a little bit. The starting point is what we need to do to attack this football team offensively, defensively, and on special teams, and who do we have who can fill those roles. Again, it's not going to be one person. It can't be. It's going to have to come from a variety of people, as I mentioned. You do it with the running back position and you do it with the quarterback position and you do it in a number of areas. We're banged up in linebacker too. We have a couple of guys who have stingers. We have some depth on that side of the ball and we're real fortunate, but it's going to be real critical for us to have it generate and start up front. Everything we've done in these two wins, and that was a physical game against UNLV, is to capture the line of scrimmage as best as we can and contain them. Van Pelt, we're not going to stop. He's going to make some plays and he's going to hit his receivers at times, but that shouldn't discourage us at all. We've been playing real good as late and we've got some momentum going.
Craft on the running back situation:
Our starting point is (running back) Michael Franklin. He's done a nice job, but he's been limited because of (running back) Lynell Hamilton's presence. He was a starter off and on last year. Michael's very capable and he's got a lot of experience, so we're real confident with him. (Running back) DeAngelo Nedd's got some experience this year and also done a nice job. He's going to have an opportunity to carry the load. So those two in particular are the starting point. Then we get into (running back) Jason Van, (running back) Fale Poumele and those combinations and roles that they're going to play in this game. But I think it would start with Michael as he's done a nice job.
Craft on the comparison between Hamilton and Franklin:
(Running back) Lynell Hamilton is a very physical strong runner. I think they have similarities with their footwork in the hole. Lynell's really learned not to accelerate to the hole, but to have the patience to wait and accelerate in the hole. Particularly when we played Wyoming, a stunting team up front, that if you get too anxious, you can run into color. He's had to really work on his patience in sorting things out. Michael Franklin does that naturally, but he's not as physical as Lynell. DeAngelo Nedd is closer to Lynell's type of style and power as a runner and those two guys are going to be a good compliment.
Craft on the underdog role at Colorado State:
We were (underdogs) against Ohio State. It doesn't matter. At this point, our guys are pretty hungry to go up there and play another great team. We told our football team that for us to have a chance at this thing, we've got to beat some teams that we beat last year. We beat Wyoming, we've beaten UNLV, we're going to have to beat Air Force in back-to-back years. But we're also going to have to beat somebody this year that we haven't beaten last year. I think if you had said (at the beginning of the year) that we would have to beat Colorado State to stay alive in this thing, I don't think we would have imagined that. I think that's just a tribute to the (Mountain West) Conference, and how tough this conference is each week. Everybody's beaten everybody. It's a great race when it's like that. There's not a top tier of teams and a lower tier. They just keep jiggling. I think (media relations director) Kevin Klintworth told me that there's one game separating seven teams going into this last week, so it makes an interesting race.
Craft on the UNLV turf:
There wasn't a lot of rubber in the turf. It was longer than ours and there wasn't a lot of give. That's the first thing you always worry about in the back of your mind as a coach, is this could be one of those games with knee or ankle injuries. Anytime there's not a lot of give, when you cut, that's when the high-ankle, not the minor-sprain, the high-ankle sprains, the real serious ones, occur. It just so happens that if (quarterback) Adam Hall had not had that orthopedic brace on, he might have had the same thing. I don't know what the history of the turf is or what they've done or how many injuries they have had, but it wasn't good.