Washington State University Athletics

Football is now 2-0 on the season.

September 14, 1998

COURAGEOUS BOISE VICTORY - "(The win) was good, bad and ugly. One of the things that wasn't ugly was that we took a young football team on its first away trip, half the team had never been on a trip before, into a hostile environment with a loud crowd, did everything to give them the game. And we still fought back. It was a courageous effort by a young group of improving Cougars."

2-0 START - "I think we've done good in that fact we've gone on the road, playing a team we're supposed to beat and we did it all. It wasn't pretty all the time, but we got the mission accomplished. And we did get better in a lot of areas. We're not where we need to be by any means, I'm not suggesting that, but I am suggesting that we're 2-0, we feel good about our progress and we are improving. We can't stop here."

IDAHO HERE - "It's going to be great to have Idaho here. We should have a great crowd because of their fans and our fans. Let's keep this rivalry going. It's a good, clean, competitive rivalry and I want to keep it established. Idaho grabbed everyone's attention. They beat San Jose State, which just got through beating Stanford. It was a road game for them and a tremendous win. I'm happy for them. I'm glad they're 2-0. We don't want them to be 3-0, we want them to be 2-1."

IDAHO ATTACK - "It's very similar to our attack. They have two good quarterbacks. In the first game (Ed Dean) did real well and the second quarterback (Greg Robertson) came in against San Jose State and did very well. Their running back Joel Thomas is a tremendous player and tough guy to bring down. He works our Cougar summer football camp. Joel is a real good player and a great person. It will take more than one guy to bring him down."

COUGAR-VANDAL TIES - "Craig Bray (WSU defensive secondary coach) coached at Idaho and Casey Dunn (running back coach) played at Idaho. We have some Vandals (on our staff) who definitely want to win this game for WSU. Phil Early (Idaho offensive coordinator) worked for us at Washington State. And I have a lot of respect for the job that Chris Tormey is doing at Idaho. He is doing a great job and needs to get more credit."

FOCUS ON FUNDAMENTALS - "There are a lot of areas we need to work on. I don't know if there is one glaring area. I think, overall, fundamentals. We're just not good at fundamentals. We're young and have to walk before we can run."

OFFENSIVE IMPROVEMENTS - "Our line can block better. (Boise State) was blitzing just about every single down. We have to be able to execute the passing game and burn them with the long pass or break a long run. We didn't do that until the end of the game finally with (DeJuan) Gilmore's long run. They made us look ugly for awhile."

RED ZONE WOES - "I'd like to put ourselves in a position where we are kicking extra points instead of field goals. Again, we stopped ourselves in the red zone. We're pitiful in the crimson zone. I'm very disappointed in that. I thought we had a plan and it didn't work. We're going to go back to the drawing board and see if we can come up with something else."

DEFENSIVE SECONDARY SPARKLES - "I don't know if I've ever seen a secondary play as well as our guys did (at Boise State). Our two corners, Dee Moronkola and Chris Martin, played as well as any corners we've had here. And both the safeties came up and hit. Our secondary is impressive."

MORE MARTIN - "I don't know if we've had a defensive back who has come in here without a spring game, a spring practice and summer conditioning and done as well as he has. He just came out this fall and played. Chris is a talented athlete, a great kid. He played tremendously well Saturday night."

DEFENSE CAUSES BRONCO TURNOVERS - "Turnovers were tremendous (against Boise State). Bill Doba, our defensive coordinator, is going to be paid double this week. I asked him what kind of an offense he is going to design this week because they moved the ball better on defense than the offense did. Some great individual and team efforts on defense."

KICKING GAME - "Rian Lindell was awesome, four of four (field goals. Their kicker was 0 of 2, so we won that battle again between the kickers. Kareem (Anderson) did a good job (punting) and Erik Larson did tremendous in snapping. He corrected the errors he made the week before and that's what we intend to do at every position. That's a perfect example."

KICK-OFF TD RETURN - "Dee (Moronkola) had a great kick-off return. (Coach) Levenseller put that new kick-off in this week, we practiced it all week and it worked to perfection."