Today’s weekly news conference with coach Dave Christensen and players was highlighted, or in this case lowlighted, with the news junior running back Ghaali Muhammad is out for the rest of the season with an injury suffered against TCU last Saturday.
True freshman Kody Sutton will have the redshirt pulled off him, and Christensen said he could play at Air Force Saturday. Christensen wants to have three running backs available, and Sutton gives UW three with junior Alvester Alexander and sophomore Brandon Miller, who has been playing more at receiver the last couple of games.
Good move or bad move to burn the redshirt off Sutton?
For more on that, see Tuesday’s Wyoming Tribune Eagle and Laramie Boomerang.
Some other notes and quotes from Monday:
“That play will probably be with me the rest of my career. Its hard to see that, and even the other hits he took were hard. He had tremendous courage to keep getting up and fighting.” — junior center Nick Carlson on the hit that knocked true freshman quarterback Brett Smith out of the game against TCU, and about others. Christensen said Smith is fine and will start at Air Force.
Christensen said missed assignments were the biggest factors on why Smith took as many big hits as he did against TCU.
Junior linebacker Korey Jones gets his first look at Air Force’s option-oriented offense Saturday, but Jones said he played Air Force’s junior varsity team a couple of times while he was at Garden City (Kan.) Community College.
Christensen said from how he saw the game on film, there were “virtually no penalties” on UW against TCU. The Cowboys were called for one penalty for 15 yards. That came when true freshman cornerback Blair Burns was flagged for a hit above the shoulders. Christensen wouldn’t comment specifically on that call, or some of the hits on Smith in the TCU game, but did say: “There’s a huge emphasis on targeting players and hitting above the shoulder pads. Unfortunately, sometimes they call it right, sometimes they call it wrong.” See Tuesday’s Wyoming Tribune Eagle and Laramie Boomerang for a couple of other interesting facts about UW and penalties this season.
UW’s team captains will be senior linebacker Brian Hendricks and senior receiver Mazi Ogbonna.
Other than Muhammad, there was no other injury news.
Check out the MountainWest Sports Network, or the mtn. as UW graduate Brett Brown has a piece on former Cowboys football player Mitch Unrein, who is playing defensive line for the Denver Broncos. Show airs Monday night at 7, and likely will be played a few times during the week.