READY TO MAKE CONTACT : Al Luginbill Says He’ll Begin Learning a Lot More About His SDSU Football Team When The Hitting Starts Monday

Since Al Luginbill became San Diego State football coach in November, he has ended his answer to almost every question about his team’s personnel with the same half-dozen words: “But I haven’t seen them in pads.”

Starting this week, he will.

Luginbill, the 13th football coach in SDSU history, will open his first spring practice Monday. By its conclusion with an intrasquad game May 6, he will have seen almost his entire team in pads. Only then, he said, will he know more about what kind of team he will field when the Aztecs open their season Sept. 2 at Air Force.

“I like what I have seen so far,” Luginbill said last week. “But a lot changes when you put players in pads. That is when their personalities come out.”

And once the hitting begins, Luginbill said, he is looking for one quality more than any other.

“I am much more concerned that we play hard on every down regardless of what we do X-and-O-wise, regardless of what we do on special teams, regardless of what we do defensively, we have to play hard,” Luginbill said. “That is what we are going to work on every day, and that is what I want more than anything else as the head football coach.”

Luginbill said he has tried to set that tone since taking over for Denny Stolz, who was fired effective at the end of last season one game before a 3-8 finish. Luginbill said his staff has worked the players hard in an off-season conditioning program and that he has demanded better habits in their athletics and academics.

“I am very sensitive to the fact that there is a fine line when you are demanding a lot of students both physically and mentally,” Luginbill said. “We’re going to see if they reject it or accept it. We realize we are walking that fine line, but this is a program at the crossroads.”

So far, most of the players have stuck with Luginbill and his staff. Fewer than a half dozen have left the program or been suspended for what Luginbill said were academic reasons since he took over.

Several other have been placed on a shape-up program designed to shed what Luginbill said were excess pounds that helped make the Aztecs an out-of-condition team. Primary among those were Joe Heinz, a 6-foot-3 freshman offensive tackle from Chula Vista High School, who has gone from 334 pounds to 260 since mid-December, according to Luginbill.

“We haven’t had a mass exodus,” Luginbill said. “These are neat, fun kids to be around. That’s the biggest thing for me: That they are a fun group. They many times might question where I am coming from, but now I think they are about to see clearly what I am after.”

Yet Luginbill will be doing more this spring than setting the tone for his team; he will be looking to install new defensive and offensive schemes. The Aztecs have switched to a one-back offense and a four-man defensive front after playing a two-back offense and a three-man front under Stolz. Finding the right players for those schemes will be much of what the next five weeks are about.

The most prominent opening is at quarterback. Senior Brad Platt, the starter for the first seven games last season, and sophomore Scott Barrick, the starter for the final four games, both return. But they are being challenged by junior Dan McGwire, a 6-7 transfer from Iowa.

Luginbill has said that the two quarterbacks who lose out in this competition will find themselves behind Cree Morris, an incoming freshman from Orange Glen High School, on the depth chart this fall.

The Aztecs’ biggest task might be finding a replacement for tailback Paul Hewitt, a two-time 1,000-yard rusher. Senior Ron Slack, junior Tommy Booker and freshman Darren Wagner are the main contenders.

Slack is the most experienced but is known more as a pass catcher than runner. Booker, who was highly touted coming out of Vista High School, has gained only 460 yards in two seasons. And Wagner is back at SDSU after a tiff with the former coaching staff and a brief transfer to Nebraska.

The Aztecs also will be looking to find a successor to Kevin Wells, a three-year starter at center. Steve Blyth, an offensive lineman who was tried on the defensive line last season with little success, has returned to offense and is the likely replacement. The rest of the offensive line is back almost intact, as are most of the wide receivers, led by senior Monty Gilbreath, whose 60 catches for 799 yards led the team.

The questions on defense are more numerous and troublesome.

SDSU has had one of the worst defenses in the country the past two seasons and yielded an average of 34.9 points and 431.5 yards per game in 1988. Eight starters return from that 1988 defense, but Luginbill has moved several offensive players in an effort to shore up this area.

The situation is not helped by the likely absence from all of spring practice of senior Brad Burton, the team’s top defensive lineman last season. Burton still is recovering from a staph infection in his ankle that kept him out of the final four games last season. The best news might be that Luginbill has 14 players to chose from for the four starting line postions.

The situation at linebacker is of even more concern. Tracy Mao, who started most games last season as a freshman, is the most experienced player among a group that does not include a senior.

“If there is a place on the football team where I wish we had more experience, this would be the spot,” Luginbill said. “We are not where we want to be at linebacker yet. This is a spot where we have to make great strides this spring.”

The secondary offers more hope with two returning starters, Lyndon Early and Clark Moses. But the outlook is changed by the defensive scheme that will require the Aztecs to play much of the time with five defensive backs.

For all the questions about personnel and schemes this spring, Luginbill continued to emphasize that his main theme has more to do with attitude.

“We have to have football players who will play hard on every down,” he said. “That philosophically for me is the whole key to our program for this point on. We have to have be known as a group of athletes who are extremely intense all the time.”