Go to any Web site that covers college football, check the morning newspaper, and you'll find tons of great things said about the 3-1 San Diego State football team. How coach Brady Hoke has turned things around, about how freshman RB Ronnie Hillman compares to Marshall Faulk and how receivers Vincent Brown and DeMarco Sampson are running circles around the competition.
It's way too early for the hype. That could change in nine days, but not yet.
Sure, SDSU is about a minute from 4-0, but the three wins include a bad FCS team in Nicholls State, a winless New Mexico State squad, and a decent but injury-battered Utah State group that had no heart for a road game. The coaches threw away what turned out to be a winnable game at Missouri, for reasons stated in previous posts, and when you look at it, the Aztecs' Mountain West Conference has been better than the Big 12 North for a few years now, so it's not like they were playing over their heads. The coaching staff, which has done everything else well, has yet to prove it can win a big game.
Such a contest is surely what is ahead at BYU on Saturday. A victory puts the Aztecs two wins from a bowl game, three from a post-season game in its own stadium. Leave Provo with more points than the Cougars, and the Aztecs will come home to a large and enthusiastic crowd the next week against Air Force.
But whether the Aztecs are up to such challenges are still questionable. Hoke has to get his team ready to play on the road after a bye-week in one of the toughest places in the conference to play a game. Hillman carried the ball 23 times for 89 yards in the 41-7 rout of Utah State, but 15 of his carries by my count went for less than five yards (though one went into the end zone from short yardage). That's not consistency from him or his offensive linemen. He had two sweeps in which he let himself lose ground while looking for a hole and took losses of five yards each. As good as the kid is, he is still a freshman who has played in only four college games. Give the kid a break, lower expectations, and let him grow. About Brown and Sampson, it really wasn't until the Utah State game that the passing game came together, when the star receivers got back on the same page with QB Ryan Lindley. Then they took a week off, so it will be interesting to see if they can get right back on track.
It is cool that interest is finally rising in the Aztecs, and I think that over time the faith will be justified. But time is what Hoke and the Aztecs need most right now. The worst thing is for fans and the media -- local and national -- to get whipped up in the excitement of a rebuilding program, only to have the air come out of the balloon if they lose at BYU. There are a lot of places where SDSU needs to improve, and a lot has rightly been made about the Cougars being a wounded bear playing at home in a game they need to have to save their season. The Aztecs indeed might dance circles around them, but if they don't, you can't let all your enthusiasm about the program dissipate and say "same old Aztecs" in despair. It is a long climb up the ladder and there will be some mis-steps. Also, when you look at BYU's record, it is not so bad. They beat Washington, which downed USC, and the losses came to a pretty good Nevada team, at Florida State, a Utah State squad far more ready to play at its own home and on the road at Air Force. Only one of those losses was in Provo.
If SDSU gets past BYU, then in will come an Air Force team that ran for 350 yards in a three-point loss at Oklahoma and has the best pair of cornerbacks in the MWC.
After those two games, we'll know if the hype is deserved.
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