San Diego State will hit the road this weekend to take on one of the hottest teams in college football, Boise State, Saturday night at Albertsons Stadium in Boise, which features a unique blue turf.
While the blue turf has served as a home-field advantage for the Broncos over the years, because it blends in with the team’s blue uniforms, coach Rocky Long is not daunted by it as his Aztecs have beaten Boise St. two years in a row, including two years ago at Boise.
“It has nothing to do with the blue turf, because we’ve had success on it,” Long said. ” But they’re pretty good, we’re going to have to play really, really well to stay in the game.”
Boise State averages 521.1 yards per game on offense, which is good for No. 7 in NCAA Division-I, and also possess the No. 16 scoring offense with 339 points on the season. They’re also coming of a 60-49 comeback win over New Mexico, where senior quarterback Grant Hedrick threw for four touchdowns, and rushed for two.
Long also serves as the team’s defensive coordinator and will not over-complicate his preparation, even for a hot Broncos team.
“The game-plan going into it is always to score as many points as you can, and limit them to as few points as you can,” Long said at his Tuesday press conference. “When you play a team that is as good as they are, and right now they’re hot, you have to be able to play on both sides of the ball.”
SDSU is also coming off a solid offensive outing after beating Idaho, 35-21, Saturday, but there’s a big difference between Boise State’s defense and Idaho’s.
“I think we had our best game throwing and catching the ball (against Idaho), but I don’t think Idaho presented near the problem Boise State does on defense,” Long said.
The Aztecs will need to win this matchup to stay in the hunt to play in the Mountain West Conference Championship Game; they are currently tied with Nevada in the West division at 3-2, but Nevada holds the tiebreaker over SDSU after beating it on Nov. 1.
Kickoff is set for 7:15 p.m. and can be seen on ESPNU, as well as heard on the Mighty 1090 AM.
