SDSU’s Lewis Is Happy, Now That He’s Home Again : College football: Transfer from Ohio State wants to help improve defense.

San Diego State’s media guide calls safety Darrell Lewis an intimidating hitter with good quickness. Brigham Young’s Brad Clark and John Walsh will vouch for that.

Clark was clobbered by Lewis as he fumbled a punt with 1:36 left in the Aztecs’ 45-38 victory last week. That turnover, perhaps caused by Lewis’ impending head-on collision with Clark, sealed the victory in Provo, Utah.

It was Lewis’ finishing touch on the game. But the 6-foot, 205-pounder from Morse High opened the Western Athletic Conference free-for-all by snaring Walsh’s sideline pass and returning it 57 yards for the game’s first touchdown.

On two of SDSU’s biggest plays, Lewis was indeed intimidating and quick. But the junior transfer from Ohio State would rather describe himself as, well, human.

“I didn’t play one of my better games,” he said. “I didn’t tackle as well as I should have. The defense as a whole didn’t execute as well as it should have.

“I had some exciting plays that I was proud of. We won the game and that’s what matters. But we’re not satisfied with the way we played.”

Lewis said Tuesday he had no idea the Aztecs were ranked No. 102 of 107 Division I defenses in total yards allowed per game this week. But the news came as no surprise to him, since SDSU yielded 380 passing yards and five touchdowns to Walsh last Thursday.

“A lot of times we came out of coverages looking at the (scrambling) quarterback and some people slipped through, and they got big plays off of that,” he said.

“We really have to work on our tackling and staying in our coverages when the quarterback starts to scramble--and let the people who are responsible for the quarterback be responsible.”

Lewis points time and time again to the good things the defense did against BYU: the interception, five sacks, eight hurries and four deflected passes. Yet it might have been as much fear as frustration that led to the biggest of the big plays, Clark’s fumbled return and the recovery made by Steve Matuszewicz.

“I was running top speed (on the coverage), really getting down,” Lewis said. “After giving up a touchdown right before that, we didn’t want to put the game in the hands of their team again.”

Lewis, who played as a backup last year after redshirting in 1990, said the Aztecs are better than they’ve shown on defense. In two preseason scrimmages against its own high-scoring offense, it allowed only one big play for a score. This is a team that has recorded 10 sacks in two games, yet is near the bottom of Division I.

“We’re a much better defense than that,” Lewis said. “We can stop our offense when we play them. We can stop other offenses if we execute. Me coming from Ohio State and playing for another program, I know our defense here is just as good as theirs.”

Returning to play his college ball in his hometown, Lewis is apt to take the victories, the losses and the criticism more personally.

“(At SDSU), I’m trying to help turn it around to where now, when high-school kids come out of San Diego, they can say, ‘We want to make our city a better place,’ ” he said. “When I was at Morse, San Diego State was on a downside and there was never any publicity.

“When I left out of high school I didn’t know much about anything outside of this city. I wanted to get away and learn something. I learned it isn’t ever better than home. Home is always the greatest place to be.”

If the Aztecs are looking for a few leaders to step up on defense, Lewis is a candidate, if for no other reason than the fact that, at 21, he is married and raising a 9-month-old daughter--Dejzenelle. Being a father, playing football and majoring in business while his wife, Dawn, works and attends school, Lewis has a strong sense of responsibility.

Lewis, however, relishes these days.

“(Dejzenelle) is the joy of my life. She makes my every day. Anytime I’m down, I think about her. I love her to death. I couldn’t imagine being without her.

“When I first had her, I was worried. I was thinking I was going to have a lot of struggles. She’s made my life 100% better. Dawn takes care of me great. We have a strong relationship. We’re really in love.”

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Matuszewicz said he was misquoted when another newspaper quoted him as saying, “We’re WAC champs, man” after the BYU game.

“I said, ‘We’re on our way to winning the WAC,’ ” said Matuszewicz. “And I don’t think I said ‘man’ like that.”

Matuszewicz, like other Aztecs, was celebrating the victory over BYU in the locker room after his recovery of Brad Clark’s fumble with 1:36 left prevented a Cougar comeback.

For Matuszewicz, a fifth-year senior who has faced injury and disappointment, the recovery was his biggest highlight since he sacked a New Mexico quarterback for a safety in Denny Stolz’s last game as coach in 1988. Matuszewicz was then a true freshman starting at outside linebacker.

Now a backup defensive end, Matuszewicz is at a loss to explain how he slipped after being a starter his first two seasons and sitting out his third with a cervical nerve injury.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I didn’t gain the weight. That’s all I know as far as that goes. It’s hard, because I’m used to playing on defense more and making an impact there. I’m not used to playing special teams.”

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Aztec linebacker Shawn Smith, a transfer from Notre Dame, said he cringed Saturday when he saw his ex-coach, Lou Holtz, playing for the 17-17 tie with Michigan by running the ball with 1:07 remaining in a televised game. Holtz was apparently hoping to preserve a chance at a postseason No. 1 ranking for the Irish.

“I would have been shocked,” if he had still been wearing an Notre Dame uniform in South Bend, Ind. that day, Smith said. “I would have been very, very disappointed.

“They have the talent. Shoot, you can’t wait for the (Michigan) defense to show. Put the ball in the end zone.”

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SDSU had sold slightly less than 30,000 season tickets by Monday, up more than 5,000 from last year, but Jayne Hancock, associate athletic director, is expecting a jump. With the Aztecs tying USC and beating BYU, Hancock said, the ticket office at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium has been swamped at times with ticket requests.

“Friday was unbelievable. We sold over 300 season tickets alone,” she said. “The weekend of the USC game, our answering machine in the ticket office had 841 calls on it.

“I can’t believe it didn’t blow up.”