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Story and photos by Liz Alper
Full quotes courtesy Jamie McConeghy
November 22, 2016 (San Diego) - With the Aztecs' final regular season matchup against Colorado State looming on Saturday, which also happens to be Senior Day, head coach Rocky Long and senior warrior Malik Smith talked about what this game means and how emotional it will be for the senior class in today's press conference.
Coach Long wished everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and made a cute quip about what he's thankful for. "I’m thankful for the players in our program...I’m thankful where the program is, I’m thankful for the kids in the program and I’m thankful for the unprecedented success we’ve had over the last six years here," he opened with.
“I think this senior class deserves a lot of credit (for the program’s success)." Long got a little emotional and told us that he'd miss the seniors when they're gone. "They have great pride in what they’ve done. “This year’s senior class is a little more jovial than last year’s senior class. Last year’s senior class was a little more serious. This year’s senior class has some real characters in it that kind of dominate the scene."
“On the field, we’re all hungry," Smith said of the senior class. "We all want the best for each other. We all push each other to do good things, even in the weight room. Right now, we’re lifting during the season just to stay fit but we’re pushing each other in there right now. We want each other to be great and do great things so there’s a lot of team camaraderie in there.”
Obviously, there will be a lot of emotions from Long and the seniors going into Saturday's game. Long addressed how he thinks his seniors might feel. “It’s their last home game that they will play. For a lot of them it’s probably the most memorable game they will play. Some of them are going to be very, very sad and some of them will be very, very happy. They’ll be emotional about it."
Of course, it wouldn't be an Aztec football press conference without some love for Donnel Pumphrey. "He’s one of the best competitors I’ve ever been around. He wants to be really, really good all the time. Every day in practice he wants to be really, really good. Every game he wants to be really, really good. He wants to win at everything he does."
Now that the emotions were out of the way, it was time to talk about Colorado State. “Colorado State is a very good football team, very similar to Wyoming. They do similar things on offense and believe in the same system of pounding the football on offense and getting the ball over the top. They’ve got three really good running backs, they’re really strong up front on both sides and they’re playing at a very high level right now. This ought to be a great football game as both teams should have the same mentality. They just got bowl eligible so they should be happy, excited and confident. We’re playing in the conference championship game no matter how well we play this week. Our team should be excited, happy and ready to play."
In regards to Pumphrey winning the Heisman, Long's answer was short and sweet: "He ought to be the Heisman Trophy winner. There you go, there’s my unbiased opinion.
“I think it’s going to be the same way people think about Marshall Faulk. I expect DJ to go on and have a good NFL career too. He’ll always be remembered as either the best running back that has ever played here of the second-best running back that has ever played here. We can argue about that for 100 years. I think that he’ll have a good career in the NFL, too, so people will know about him and that will continue for years. Around here people will always remember Marshall Faulk. And guess what, around here forever and ever, they’ll always remember DJ Pumphrey.”
“This is going to be pretty emotional," Smith said. "Last game here at Qualcomm maybe, it’s going to be pretty emotional. I love this place, I gave four years of my life to this place, and there have been a lot of ups and downs. It’s the great memories here, great people I’ve met, it’s going to be pretty emotional. I know a lot of seniors feel like that. It’s going to be pretty emotional for us.
“It’s going to hit you before the game even starts: the last Warrior Walk, walking through the stadium. Then once the game starts, it’s more so just playing ball again. Then after the game, it hits you again probably even harder, that this is it. During the game, you don’t think about that stuff. You’re more so focusing on the game.”
Smith was asked if this year's seniors set the bar high for underclassmen. “I think we set the bar pretty high. People expect a lot of things since we got here and started winning games. When I first got here, my true freshman year, people expect you to win but it wasn’t highly expected. Now, you lose two games and it feels like it’s the end of the world. We definitely set the expectations high these last couple of years and they’re going to have to keep reaching that bar every year after we’re gone.”
Overall, Smith says he's grown a lot through his four years at SDSU. “I’m more open as a person. When I first got here, I didn’t want to be super open. Now, I have no problem expressing my feelings to my coaches or teammates. I’m more willing to speak to people every now and then.”
SDSU takes on Colorado State on Senior Day Saturday at 6:00 p.m. at Qualcomm Stadium.
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