Mustangs football bounces back

Dano Graves was the third Cal Poly starting quarterback this season. The Mustangs have used four quarterbacks in six games this season. By Owen Main

After changing quarterbacks due to an injury and after a tough upset loss, maybe Cal Poly has finally found their quarterback. On Saturday night, sophomore Dano Graves rushed for a team-high 116 yards, threw for three touchdowns, and restored some sense of normalcy to Cal Poly fans who were left scratching their heads a week ago.

In his debut as a starter, Graves was helped by a usual suspect in the Cal Poly backfield — Kristaan Ivory. Ivory rushed for 100 yards on 18 carries, caught two passes, and scored three total touchdowns.

“I’m starting to understand where we want to get the ball and I’m just being a point guard out there,” said Graves. “I can just dish the ball to the other players so they can do what they need to do.”

Graves, the shortest of the four candidates for quarterback at the beginning of the season, showed his knack for making positive yardage and making quick decisions. Because of that, Cal Poly had very few “second and ten” or “third and seven” situations offensively.

“Dano’s got a lot of experience,” said Cal Poly head coach Tim Walsh. “He came from Air Force, and even though he played on the prep school team, he’s had experience in this style of offense… . I thought that his responses were very good today. I thought he played very well for his first opportunity.”

The coach also liked the fact that Cal Poly committed zero turnovers under Graves’ watch.

“We protected the ball and when he ran, he went North and South,” said Walsh.

Graves and the Mustangs also spread the ball around, especially to the fullbacks. Between the three of them, Akaninyene Umoh,  Brandon Howe, and Matt Rulon rushed the ball 21 times for 111 yards and two touchdowns. Last week, fullbacks got only eight rushes. The threat of the fullback in a triple option offense has to be there, and Cal Poly showed the offensive efficiency they are capable of when defenses truly have to defend the fullback, the quarterback, and the pitch-man.

“Sometimes that’s called,” said Walsh of the give to the first back. “That’s what we do. So that might have been part of it, but also what they were doing, I think on defense, allowed us to do what we were doing… . I think coach [Saga] Tuitele did a good job and we were dominating the line of scrimmage.”

Graves credited taking what the defense was giving them.

“We were gashing them and it was working, so we just kept going to it until they were going to take it away and they didn’t,” said Graves

The shutout by the Cal Poly defense was the first for the Mustangs since they beat Savannah State 55-0 in 2006 — a big improvement for a defensive unit that had given up nearly 30 points per game coming in.

“We played assignment football,” said Walsh. “I thought we flew around on defense. I thought the speed we played with to the football was pretty impressive today and if we play like that with that kind of speed and that kind of tackling in the open field and physicality, we’ll be good.”

Cal Poly figures to be tested much more thoroughly next week at Montana, who was ranked 10th coming into this week and whose offense has averaged over 40 points per game so far this season.

“We left some points out on the field,” said Graves. “Even though we put up 47, going back and watching film I know there’s some things that we can fix and I can fix and I just need to be a perfectionist and I just need to keep getting better and kind of harp on myself [to be] perfect.”

The fourth quarter of the game saw another debut. Cal Poly saw it’s fourth quarterback of the season get mop-up time when redshirt freshman Tanner Trosin played most of the fourth quarter. Trosin was 2-2 passing for 46 yards and led two drives into the “red zone” including one touchdown drive.

“I thought Tanner did a really good job with his opportunity,” said Walsh.

After the game, Walsh confirmed that junior receiver Willie Tucker is out for the remainder of the season with a knee injury and is looking at surgery sometime soon.