While he was ecstatic to get his first win as a head coach last Saturday night against Oregon State, Jimmy Lake isn't one to dwell on the past. Heck, he even admits the fact that losses stick with him more than wins do. Even with that in mind, Lake was able to give his thoughts on how a handful of individual players played in the first game of the season, a 27-21 win over the Beavers, and he said he expects the team to build off of what they did well and to improve on what didn't go so well in game one.
Asked about the play of the offensive line, Lake said that as a whole, that group had a very good game and he feels that M.J. Ale and Henry Bainivalu are two of the better guards in the conference. Both were dominant in a 267-yard effort on the ground for the Huskies and he also felt like Luke Wattenberg, who made the move from left guard to center during the offseason, had an outstanding game at center where he was able to be the leader of the offensive line and make the calls to help out a young signal-caller.
Lake admitted that he got a big grin out of the fact that a coaching friend of his called and said that the first third down conversion of the season came on a fullback dive play to Jack Westover. That's his kind of football and he noted that while Westover may not have gotten many carries before he set foot on a college campus, the sophomore tight end told the media he got just one carry as an eighth-grader, that during training camp, he probably got 150 as they worked on those dive plays over and over again, so it wasn't something they were worried about.
Overall, the first-year head coach said his team has practiced well this week, they've come in and focused on preparing for a good Arizona team that has a lot of weapons that can hurt you.
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