Monday afternoon’s monday press conference was rather uneventful, but that’s probably a good thing for Paul Petrino after what happened during the post-game handshake on Saturday evening.
The controversial exchange between Petrino and Mike Leach didn’t come up on Monday (though it did with Leach) but other important topics did.
On his quarterback play
On Chad Chalich: “I thought Chad did a lot of good things. He had a couple crucial things that we’d like him to do better on third downs, but overall he did some good things. He was accurate, don’t think we had a dropped pass the whole game.”
“I thought he played pretty well, still a growing process, just like the rest of us, we have to remember he was a freshman. There were a couple things that he knows he can do better, but overall he’s a competitor who did everything he could do to help us win.”
On Josh McCain: “Josh struggled a little bit. Josh knows he can play a lot better. Got dinged up a little bit, he could play better. I think I’m always going to work on that and a lot of that will be how they practice. Last week actually had his best week of practice he had and then just went out and didn’t play as well as he could.”
“I still think it gives Chad to come off to the sideline and not have as much pressure of him. A lot of that will depend on how the two practice this week.”
On this week being homecoming week: “It’s exciting, there’s going to be a lot of former great players and some of them that I was fortunate enough to be around when I was here. I think anytime it’s homecoming you have all those great players coming back to watch you, and all the former students that you owe to them to give the maximum effort you have. Put together the best game plan you can, we need to go out there and make all of those former students, players and faculty proud and put on a good show.”
More notes:
– Petrino said the film they’ve seen on Temple indicate that the strengths of the Owls come in the trenches, presenting the biggest challenge to Idaho fronts which have struggled this season.
– Petrino praised the play of true freshman corner Desmond Banks, who received playing time due to Solomon Dixon sitting out with an injury. “I think Desmond Banks is going to end up being a really good football player here,” Petrino said.
– Petrino said Richard Montgomery’s lack of playing time last Saturday was because of his sub par week of practice, but that he expects it to be a learning experience for the true freshman heading into the match-up with Temple. “He didn’t show enough on film in practice that he was going to do as well during the game, he’s going to learn from it … I expect him to play well each week,” Petrino said.
Idaho will perhaps have its best chance to get the first win of the season this Saturday when the Vandals host Temple. The Owls, of the American Athletic Conference, are 0-3 and are coming off a bye week. Their latest lost was a 30-29 defeat at home to FCS Fordham.