Oct. 16, 2006
Head Coach Rocky Long
Watch coach Long’s press conference
Listen to Long’s press conference
(on whether he has seen something in Utah’s offense that he can take advantage of):
“No, in fact we watched the film hoping that we’d find something. Wyoming just played very, very well. They didn’t make mistakes, played extremely hard and just played well. So Utah struggled because Wyoming was playing so well.”
(on his overall evaluation of Utah this year):
“I think they’re a very talented, very good football team that has had trouble with consistency. When they’re playing well, they’re as good as any team in our league and as good as most teams in the country.”
“They’re big and strong and they’ve got great speed, but if you talk to (Utah head coach) Kyle (Wittingham), he probably says they’re inconsistent and if you look at the scores they are inconsistent. One week they play as good as anybody in our league and the next week they’ve struggled. The trouble is, we’re on the week that they play really, really well. They’ve been kind of going up and down and we happen to be on the up week for them.”
(on how the short week affects practice and preparation):
“It makes you eliminate a lot of game plan things that you would do in a normal week. So you’re restricted to doing basically your base offense and your base defense, or doing things that you practiced last week. You can’t really game plan for (the opponent) because you’re missing one whole day of practice. With us, if we don’t have three or for days practicing the same thing, we make a lot of mistakes.”
“I think other than the soreness that you might have from Saturday game before, I think players like short weeks. Players want to play, they don’t want to practice. So if they have short week, they don’t have to practice (as much) and they get to play again (sooner).”
(on Utah DB Eric Weddle):
“Eric’s a great athlete and they use him in a lot of different ways. He makes big time on defense and he’s probably as good a cover guy as we have in our league. He has an ability to make big plays with interceptions and fumble recoveries. They use him as a punt returner and sometimes as a kick off returner and then they put him in for four or five plays a game on offense where he’s the primarily ball carrier and he’s thrown a couple passes too. So they’re using his abilities as much as they can. He’s a great athletes that does a lot of things really, really well.”
(on his team growing up a bit with their come-from-behind win at UNLV):
“I don’t know if they have or not, but I hope that they have. I mean, that was a pretty special thing for a young football team to be playing that poorly going into the locker room and with things looking that bad be able to come out and play well enough in the second half to overcome the deficit and eventually win the game. There was a lot of time, even in the second half, when our team could have folded their tents. The way the second quarter went for us, most teams fold their tent. Then when we let them go 80 yards to tie the game (at the end of regulation), there’s a lot of team that would have folded up right then too.”
(on Donovan Porterie’s first career start):
“I thought Donovan played well for his first start. Whenever you put a freshman in there and its his first start, you never know what to expect. He threw one interception that might have been the receiver and quarterback not being exactly on the same page, but we didn’t turn the ball over a lot and he managed the game well. He made some nice throws, but he missed some wide open receivers too that could have really helped us win the game. So for a first start he played pretty good, but he’s not an established, polished quarterback by any means. Hopefully he will be this week or he will be pretty soon.”
Junior Wide Receiver Travis Brown
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(on where the offensive leadership comes from with a freshman QB):
“There’s a lot of leadership coming from me and (offensive guard) Robert Turner. He definitely is one who steps up when the game is on the line. Rob is always saying to buckle down and stay focused. It’s one thing we definitely do not do enough. I would like to say the receivers have taken it, but we haven’t played to our potential yet. So I can’t say we have taken the leadership roll because you need to lead by example.”
Junior Safety Tyson Ditmore
Listen to Ditmore’s press conference
(on the challenges of playing a Thursday night game):
“I think that the hardest part about the short week is you have to focus more mentally than physically. Your body is still tired from the game on Saturday, but you’re right back out there practicing Sunday and Monday, and Tuesday is basically a shape-up day. It’s real tough, but it’s also fun because you get to be back out there playing sooner.”