Football travels to San Jose
Fresh off their first win of the season, Coach Brent Guy’s Aggie football team travels to San Jose to try and cool off the red-hot Spartans, who are on their first three-game win streak since 2002.
“I told the guys, you’re going to get to class and people are going to want to talk to you about Fresno State and you need to talk about San Jose State,” Guy said Thursday on his weekly radio show.
The focus on Saturday will be on USU freshman quarterback Riley Nelson and USU’s defense, which roughed up the Bulldogs in it’s best performance of the year.
Kevin Robinson reemerged as a gamebreaker against Fresno State after a few quiet weeks, which should have the Spartans worried. Last year in Logan Robinson scored all three USU touchdowns in a 24-17 win.
While Robinson will be looking to scorch talented San Jose cornerback Dwight Lowery and the Spartan’s secondary and Nelson will be looking for his first road win after a great debut, USU’s Marcus Cross has been the MVP on offense. He leads the Aggies in rushing and receiving.
It looks like a favorable matchup against the San Jose State run defense for Cross. The Spartans are allowing 181.5 yards a game rushing and Cross could top his season-high 124 yards, a mark he set against BYU.
San Jose has been able to overcome their weak rushing defense to get off to a great start, thanks in large part to a good pass defense spearheaded by Lowery (who leads the nation in interceptions with seven.)
“We’ll have to know where he is,” Guy said of SJU’s Thorpe Award candidate.
Their offense is scoring 28 points a game while their defense allows 21.5. For the second straight week USU’s defense will face a marquee running back in the WAC, after containing Dwayne Wright last week this time they must face speedy Yonus Davis, who averages 5.9 yards a carry.
Adam Tafralis is the major reason for San Jose’s success on offense. The quarterback is comes into the game completing 76.7 percent of his throws. He has riddled the secondaries of SJU victims such as San Diego State and Stanford to the tune of 819 yards and six touchdowns. His favorite targets are James Jones and John Broussard, who have 30 and 25 catches respectively.
“We have to play better this Saturday in their stadium than we did last time in our stadium,” Guy said. “They’re a good team that doesn’t beat themselves.”
The last three games in the USU-SJU series have been decided by a total of 11 points.
By holding Fresno to just 12 points, the USU D limited the Bulldogs to their lowest point total in 61 games.