Feb. 4, 2009
“The one thing I want to express is that we met our needs. What we needed to do right away was increase our team speed at receiver and running back and find some linemen. You want the numbers to balance out. I think we signed every need.”
“We had to go find some playmakers. The offensive guys we have signed are all explosive-type athletes, who are big-play, game-changing type players. Our offense needs playmakers and we found some. We also needed some big guys who are athletic and we found them. We made some steals.”
“In our process, we have at least three coaches evaluate a player on a numerical system. If he gets the numbers and fits the need we have, if we’re happy with his character, then we’re going to offer the kid.”
“You have not seen anything yet in how we will recruit. This was the condensed, fast version,”
“You can’t afford to go out and make hasty, uninformed decisions. The guys we have coming in represent our staff and they are players coming from a coach, a program, an area we have great knowledge of.”
“This class is coming from a lot of areas that we might not go to as much next year. This class doesn’t represent the geographic area we eventually will center on, but these are all kids we wanted.”
“We’ll definitely recruit Texas and New Mexico more. We’ll still use some of these areas as secondary sources, but we know the core group of our recruiting classes will come from the Mountain West areas.”
“Some things just jump out at you. There are numbers you want in each position for your team to functionally go on each season. One thing that jumped out is we have 12 scholarship offensive linemen going into this season and four of the 12 are seniors. I’m used to having 18 scholarship offensive linemen, so that told me we needed to sign at least five this year and probably another five next year.”
“Part of what made this job so attractive was the Lobos we have coming back. We have a core group of tough-minded, hard-nosed, disciplined players who are hungry to win and that’s a testament to Coach (Rocky) Long and his staff. We have a solid group of guys who have character and that’s also something that you win with.”