WAC Title for Taking by Aztecs : Wins Over Hawaii, BYU Would Ensure First Championship

Denny Stolz says he remembers the talk of last December, when the fate of the San Diego State football team, and perhaps all Aztec athletics, was resting on his shoulders.

“Hey, Denny, you have to win because we’re going to sell all these tickets and get all these crowds. Hey, Denny, all the pressure is on you,” were the words he remembers hearing most of the time.

“Well, the pressure is all on Denny,” Stolz said Sunday, a day after his Aztecs beat Wyoming, 31-24. “(People were saying) ‘You’ve got to build buildings’ and that kind of stuff. ‘You’ve got to win.’ Well, we are winning. Now what?”

The Aztecs must beat Hawaii and Brigham Young in their final two games to earn their first Western Athletic Conference championship.

“We’re in the championship race,” Stolz said. “I think now its been crystallized. . . . We knock Colorado State out of it (two weeks ago) and then we knock Wyoming out of it. Now there’s three of us.

“You do feel like you have accomplished a little something. We’ve done well. The team has done better than I might have guessed.”

Tight end Robert Awalt has been among the most reliable offensive players. Last Saturday, even when he wasn’t catching passes, his presence on the field boosted the SDSU passing game.

On SDSU’s opening drive of the second half, quarterback Todd Santos completed his longest pass of the season, a 49-yarder to split-end Brett Blanchard, which set up a two-yard touchdown run by Corey Gilmore to tie the score, 21-21.

“That’s the beauty of our scheme,” Stolz said. “We don’t care whether they defense (Awalt) or not, we’ve got four more receivers.

“(Awalt) was responsible for the long completion to Blanchard. He drew the coverage. The underneath people all grabbed (Awalt). And we waited and Blanchard ran smack down the middle and there was nobody there.

“That’s the value of having a player like Awalt in the hub of your passing game. They have to defense him.”

The Cowboys had a tough time defensing halfback Chris Hardy, who ran for 116 yards in 28 carries. It was Hardy’s fourth 100-yard game this season. Last year, when he was the WAC’s third leading rusher with 1,150 yards, he had only three 100-yard games.

All was not perfect, however, for the Aztec defense.

Wyoming quarterback Craig Burnett threw 65 passes and completed 37, both are records against SDSU. But Stolz said it was the Cowboys’ big runs that upset him.

“I was more disappointed in the two or three long runs than I was the passing,” Stolz said. “Those were the plays that really hurt us.”

Wyoming’s Gerald Abraham had runs of 44 and 18 yards to set up the Cowboys’ first touchdown of the second half, a 7-yard pass from Burnett to Abraham, putting Wyoming ahead, 21-13.

“They slapped that touchdown in the end zone in no time,” Stolz said of the seven-play, 78-yard drive, consuming 1:28.

The Cowboys, however, were charged with 14 penalties for 125 yards. SDSU had only eight for 43 yards.

“We’ve been going the other way for nine weeks, so it’s about time we had a little break in the penalty category,” Stolz said.

The Wyoming win guarantees the Aztecs of a winning record, something SDSU hasn’t earned since 1982.

“I hope it’s not the last one,” Stolz said of the winning record.

With its 5-1 record in the WAC, the Aztecs are still building.

“We don’t have everything, to say the least,” Stolz said. “We have got a few holes. We’ll let our opponents find them.”

And, although much of the pressure of Stolz’s first year with the Aztecs has been relieved, he still has his worries.

“When you win, you worry about the next game,” he said. “When you lose, you worry about the last game.”