Lubick remains confident in himself and team

CSU head football coach Sonny Lubick said he is expecting his

team to improve this week against San Diego State at his weekly

press conference Monday at CB & Potts in Fort Collins.

“We like to think we have made some progress,” Lubick said. “But

this will be a test.”

Lubick, whose team is coming off a bye week after losing the

conference opener to BYU 31-21, said the team was going to get

better.

“You get the feeling something is wrong?” Lubick said,

questioning the assembled press. “There’s nothing wrong with

me.”

Addressing concerns about his coaching and his team

underachieving, Lubick said he doesn’t have any doubt that the team

played as well as it could have.

“The kids did everything they could to win (in all our games),”

Lubick said. “They played hard, that’s it. I feel good about this

group.”

Lubick said winning the remaining six games on the Rams schedule

is his goal.

“We need to start acting better and playing better,” Lubick

said. “We will go from there.”

Even though CSU lost the conference opener, Lubick was

optimistic about the Rams’ chances of competing in the Mountain

West Conference.

“I’d wait till it plays out,” Lubick said of his team’s chances

in the MWC. “We’ll go play football, and be the best we can

be.”

Facing SDSU this week, Lubick said it would be a challenge

facing a defense that only gave up 264 yards to Wyoming this past

weekend, still losing 20-10

“They are as good on defense as anyone in this league,” Lubick

said. “(But) we have a quarterback who can move the ball, and we

have been running better and our offensive line is blocking

well.”

Lubick said the team had been working this past week on red-zone

scoring, which has been a struggle for the offense. CSU is second

in total offense in the MWC but only scores an average of 21 points

per game.

“We’re pretty good, we just haven’t scored any points,” Lubick

said. “But I don’t think we’ve played any bad defenses.”

Lubick admitted that things change when teams approach the end

zone.

“When you get to the 12-yard line or whatever, you have to do

things differently,” Lubick said. “You have to see what works and

what doesn’t. We’re working on that and should be better.”

Facing the first 1-4 start of his term at CSU, Lubick said this

was a critical game for the rest of the season.

“We don’t want to say this is the turning point,” Lubick said.

“But we have got to come together as a football team. It is time

for us now to see if we can shock the media and the sportswriters

and win some games.”