What San Diego State's Sean Lewis said heading into Week 4 home game against Cal
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The San Diego State Aztecs knew it would be a long 14 days between games after they were routed 36-13 at Washington State on Sept. 6 to drop to 1-1. They had their first bye last weekend and are now preparing to host the California Golden Bears (3-0) on Saturday night at Snapdragon Stadium.
“Everyone's good. Doing great, doing great, doing great,” coach Sean Lewis said on Monday. “I was excited to be back in game week here. The guys handled the bye week well. We had some good developmental time, and some good early work. Obviously, we have a great opponent coming in here as we go. Staff did an awesome job with prep and getting out and doing some recruiting and everything over the weekend, but in a good place.”
Lewis and the Aztecs also spent time around campus and the community, handing out 4,000 free tickets in an effort to get a bigger crowd at Snapdragon Stadium.
The home team has never lost in this series, which Cal leads 5-4. But the Golden Bears are 12.5-point favorites and have dominated their opponents so far this season.
Here are the highlights of Lewis’ news conference
Lewis on campus and community engagement
“We went out and did some school last week during the bye, got some chem [chemistry] class in, got some stats [statistics] class in to encourage our students to come out as well. Tickets on me, and we're giving away some sweet shades as well. So, students, if you would, come out, wear shades and have a good evening.”
Lewis on the lessons learned from year’s matchup against California
“I think there's some validity to it, right? Especially defensively, there's been some nuances and some changes, probably at a granule level, right? But you can still tell that, you know, the style of ball that they want to play, particularly defensively, has consistently rang through and rang true.
“There’s that familiarity, almost like a conference foe to where you’ve got to have enough in the repertoire that protects your main concepts with the various compliments, but also not deviate and get too far away from who you are and the concepts and the calls that you've accumulated a ton of reps on as you've gone with it.”
Lewis on the challenge of facing freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele
“Based off the film he's got a lot of things figured out already. There’s a calm and there's a composure to what he's doing. Again, I value the game reps. He's obviously mature beyond his years, but anytime you're able to accumulate more game reps, see more pictures, it's only going to lead to greater confidence and greater conviction in the decision making, a greater familiarity with what they're doing within their scheme.”
Lewis on using the bye week to emphasis core concepts and fundamentals
“Yeah, so fun half of the week. Put major emphasis on that as we went. Again, throughout the week, we were introducing some of Cal and the things that they were doing with the information that we had through the first two weeks of their opponents. Then, being able to refine the plan over this weekend with what we had seen from the Minnesota game, and dotted the I’s, crossed the T's, and we'll get into those situational specifics of it all as we move through this week.”
Lewis on the emphasis on ball security
“The biggest thing that we always talk about when it comes to ball security, we have a simple phrase that ball security is job security. Like the kids’ and mine. It's so important, they name the game after it, so it's always a priority for something that we do. Our kids have done a great job, obviously, making that a piece of who we are.”
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-bd678ba4dbad4f453246f539ee56a3b4.jpg "Bernie Wilson")
Bernie Wilson recently retired from The Associated Press after nearly 41 years, including stops in Spokane, Los Angeles and, for the final 33 years, San Diego. He grew up in Coeur d'Alene and graduated from the University of Idaho.