Oct. 5, 2004
San Diego State Football
Tom Craft Weekly Press Conference
Aztec Athletics Center
Oct. 5, 2004
Head Coach Tom Craft
General comments:
"We are pleased about getting out of the UCLA game without any real injuries. (Offensive lineman) Pat Justman has a slightly sprained ankle. He's limited but we expect him to play this weekend. (Offensive lineman) Mike Kracalik will play, but we don't know how much. We plan on having (offensive lineman) Will Robinson rotate at left and right tackle. (Offense lineman) Chris Pino won't be able to play in 80 snaps at altitude like he did the last two weeks. (Running back) Michael Franklin has a sprained ankle and didn't play in full pads today. We still expect him to go on Saturday. We plan on increasing the role of Lance Louis at the tight end spot. He has really progressed since the beginning of the season and we feel like he needs to play more on Saturday. Defensively, we are still healthy."
On the health of quarterback Matt Dlugolecki:
"I do think it was a concussion. It's hard to tell sometimes, but he hit that turf pretty hard. I think because of some of the communication and technique problems, he did in fact have one (concussion). He didn't have a great practice today and is still quite sore. We still plan on Matt starting against Wyoming. I think he (Dlugolecki) has improved tremendously since the beginning of the season and his numbers show that."
On the quarterback situation:
"Kevin O'Connell will play this Saturday along with Matt Dlugolecki, who is banged up right now. We plan on starting Matt, but we will play Kevin. That doesn't mean that there is a controversy - it is a good thing. It's no different then Michael Franklin and Brandon Bornes sharing the running back position. Kevin is a great athlete and did a nice job against UCLA. We just feel like he (Kevin) gives us an added dimension with his scrambling ability."
On Wyoming:
"They are a very interesting team. Corey Bramlett has the ability to be better than his older brother Casey was and I felt like Casey was the best quarterback in the conference last year. Corey is a very good athlete and he makes good decisions for a first-year starter. They have a good supporting cast, too. They are very balanced on the offensive side, so we are going to have to go in there and stop the run to make them one-dimensional. Defensively, we are going to see everything. They run a lot of different schemes and it will be quite confusing. They'll be a good test for us and we're ready for the challenge."
On the start of the Mountain West Conference schedule:
"Every game is important to us. There is no one game that is more important than the other - they are all meaningful games. The other (non-conference) games are a good way to measure how we've progressed and a win would have been nice for the program, but we need to focus on conference now one game at a time."
On last weekend's play against UCLA:
"I was more disappointed on how we played than the outcome of the game. Football is a game of momentum. We rallied after (UCLA's) Maurice Drew ran for that long touchdown in the first quarter, but we threw that interception and it took the wind out of us. We made some mistakes where we lost faith and we need to learn how to work through that."