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By Liz Alper
Videos courtesy goaztecs.com
For video of the student athletes’ portion of the press conference, click “read more” and scroll down.
September 3, 2019 (San Diego) - After defeating Weber State 6-0 on Saturday, SDSU football is back in action this week when they travel up to Pasadena to face UCLA. Coach Long, senior linebacker Kyahva Tenzino and senior offensive lineman Keith Ismael sat down with the media today.
“I think it will be a good football game,” Coach Long scouted UCLA. “...They play hard. They’re very talented...UCLA is a very good football team.
“I think they have a great coaching staff and they give you a lot of issues that most people don’t. I see personnel groups out there that line up certain ways and shift all over the place in order to try to get a numbers advantage, so they’re hard to prepare for. Especially on defense because they are all over the place. They end up in some unusual formations and they end up in different places than they start in, so your team has to really be sharp mentally…”
From then on, Long was succinct and to the point. Asked what the biggest challenge with UCLA was: “Speed. They’ve got a very fast football team. Watching it on film, I think they are faster than we are.”
Tenzino echoed the speed factor and also added: “...The majority of the guys are four-star athletes. They’re going to be a lot faster and a lot bigger. That’s probably the difference that I got from it. But we just have to come out of there and play our game and hopefully we will come out with a win. They’re just another college football team. They have dudes like we have dudes. They all want to win their championship. We want to win our championship. It’s a bunch of student-athletes doing what they love. We don’t see them as FCS or as Power 5 if we play one of those schools. It’s just another college football team for us.”
Long had simply this to say about the Aztecs’ offensive issues against Weber State: “We didn’t play very well.”
What can the Aztecs do to improve? “I’d like to score a touchdown or two or three or four.”
Have Long’s players lost any confidence? “I don’t know if our players have lost any confidence. I wouldn’t think so. I mean whenever you start the season and play a first real game at full speed game speed, a lot of things don’t go quite right. The best thing that happened is we found a way to win anyway. But I think everybody is a little disappointed on how they played the first weekend...You don’t know what kind of football team a team is until about halfway through the season.”
Long had an update on running back Juwan Washington. “...He’s got an ankle sprain. He practiced a little bit yesterday and is going to practice more today. Hopefully he’ll be 100 percent by game time.”
Tenzino listed what the Aztecs have to improve on. “We just want to improve on getting better on every facet of the game, especially on offense and defense. We are going into this next week with UCLA starting over again we want to go in and prove ourselves, start over and make sure everything is perfect.”
Ismael's thoughts on what the Aztecs can improve on from Weber State: “We want to go in with a clear mind. We put out the win but like everyone obviously saw it wasn’t the prettiest of wins, so we have a lot of things to improve on. In all aspects, every position on offense and defense and just get a whole lot better.”
Ismael noted the difficulties in taking on Weber State's defensive line. “They showed us a variation of fronts, they stunted and stemmed and showed pressures. We have a lot of new bodies in there, guys who don’t have a whole lot of experience in there so we are just trying to get that cohesiveness and get on the same page but we are ready for it. (It’s) nothing we haven’t seen before. We just need the veterans like myself and Daishawn Dixon and Kyle Spalding, who played a little bit last year, to step up and lead the pack.”
Ismael praised senior quarterback Ryan Agnew. “He’s done a great job all offseason and all through camp to just hold us together. He’s a key figure to our offense, he’s the quarterback, he runs the whole thing. He’s really stepped up and owned that role for himself and brought all those younger players who are starting to play more with him and with us. He’s one of the key figures on our team and our offense.”
SDSU takes on the Bruins on Saturday at 1:15 p.m.
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