Cal Poly trying to put it all together
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Cal Poly goes into Saturday’s Big Sky home game against Portland State as something of an enigma.
When the Mustangs have been good, they’ve been very good. When they haven’t, they've blown leads or played themselves out of games, all to the tune of a 2-4 record (1-2 in the conference).
Now, coming off a bye as well as a hugely disappointing 42-41, overtime loss at defending Big Sky champion Eastern Washington, Cal Poly coach Tim Walsh is interested to see what he has for the second half of the season.
“I think it was a good week (off) for us, but we’ll see,” Walsh says. “Offensively, we’ve played really well, and sometimes you lose your timing by not playing.”
But, after an extremely challenging first six weeks against assorted top-25 teams and Big Sky rivals, some time off was welcomed at San Luis Obispo.
“The schedule for our players is somewhat ridiculous, because school is so competitive and almost every class has group projects and labs the players have to participate in,” says Walsh, a former PSU head coach. “The kids get here at 5:30 in the morning and are doing things till 10. That grind is tough on your players. And some of our games have been really emotional. So the bye has been a plus, I think.”
• Cal Poly was in position to win a couple of other games this season, especially the Eastern Washington encounter, in which the Mustangs had a 15-point lead in the fourth quarter.
Defensive breakdowns have been a culprit.
“Our immaturity on defense has showed a little,” Walsh says. “We have four or five guys starting for the first time this season, and when their eyes get bad, bad things happen. We have given away some touchdowns just from being positioned wrong with our eyes. Just terrible mistakes.
“Defensively, we’ve always prided ourselves on being aggressive and keeping the ball in front of us, and we’ve not always done those things this year.
“And, against Eastern Washington, when the momentum changed, we didn’t respond as well as we should have.”
But, Walsh says, “we can no longer use the experience thing as an excuse. Our players have played six games now.”
• The Mustangs will give Portland State a steady dose of their triple-option when the teams meet at 6 p.m. Saturday.
“We are who we are,” Walsh says.
Cal Poly hasn’t had as many breakaway plays as Walsh would like, but the Mustangs have had numerous long drives. Senior Chris Brown, who has been banged up, is the key to the attack and the main running threat.
“Offensively, we’d like to make some more big plays, either through the pass or the run,” Walsh says. “It’s tough sometimes to go consistently 15 plays for 75 yards, though that’s a good thing, too.”
• Special teams have been important to both teams this season, and Portland State (5-1, 2-1 Big Sky) has had more early success on special teams than Cal Poly.
“We’ve made one big mistake on special teams in all four of our losses,” Walsh says.
• Which team will win Saturday?
“The team that plays the hardest and can run the ball the best, and not give up,” Walsh says.
• Walsh and several members of his staff have PDX and Portland State ties. Assistant coaches Saga Tuitele, Juston Wood and Jim Craft coached with Walsh on the Park Blocks. Assistant coach Aristotle Thompson played for Jesuit High and coached under Diallo Lewis at Grant.
“I spent 14 years of my life up there, and Portland State was important to Saga, Juston and Jim, too,” Walsh says.
• Two of Walsh’s four children, all grown, live in Portland, and all the kids visit Walsh and wife Jody on occasion, usually coming to San Luis Obispo for one game a year.
Daughters Casey, 33, and Megan, 26, work in Portland. Casey plans to be married in Colton in July. Son Sean, 31, is an outdoors type who works in sales in Bend, and eldest son Luke, 34, is in Chicago and also is in sales.
• Cal Poly has beaten Portland State the past three seasons, and the Mustangs dominated last year, winning 42-14 after leading 35-0 in the fourth quarter.
PSU coach Bruce Barnum, who was the Vikings’ offensive coordinator last year, says that Cal Poly team gave Portland State a physical beating the likes of which he has seen only a couple of other times.
“We’d throw a five-yard hitch and there’d be six guys teeing off on our guy before he turned around,” Barnum says, recalling the 2014 loss at Cal Poly. “I told our offense, ‘You’re playing a violent game, and right now you guys are getting hit so hard and are not responding.’ It was bad. They embarrassed us.”
The only other times Barnum says he has experienced anything like that as a coach was one year when he was at Idaho State and the Bengals lost to one of Boise State’s top teams, and when Portland State faced Oregon at Autzen Stadium in 2010, the year the Ducks first went to the national championship game. Oregon won that game 69-0.
“We couldn’t move the ball on the Ducks,” he says. “After they went up on us about 35-goose or whatever, I’m calling the plays and I said to myself, ‘You know what? Let’s go to all these packed formations and run the ball and run our plays real slow.’ … I wouldn’t call a play until right at the end, to make sure the clock went down as far as possible. I didn’t want that scoreboard looking like a Las Vegas slot machine.”
• Cal Poly took advantage a year ago of a Portland State defense that was not nearly as solid as it is now.
“Last year, what I saw was that their offensive plan was better than our defensive plan,” Barnum says.
• Barnum predicted before this season that Cal Poly could win the Big Sky championship.
“This is the most dangerous game we will play, in my opinion,” he says.
Defending the triple-option presents a unique challenge to the PSU defense, and Barnum says he understands why the Mustangs use that offense.
“Their school is known for engineering, and they probably can’t get the guys everybody else can get,” Barnum says. “But Tim is a tough football coach, and the guys there play hard for him.”
• The triple-option is based on running similar plays over and over, forcing the defense to make decisions and cover multiple possible ball carriers. The offense hopes to turn a mistake here or there into a big play.
“They’re going to run for two yards, four yards, eight yards, and then pop one,” Barnum says. “We just have to make sure we’re in position, defensively, and rally to the football.”
