Utah State Players Are Ready For Rivalry Game Despite Disappointing Loss

LOGAN, Utah – The Utah State football team has already moved on from their disappointing 27-3 loss to Boise State and are looking ahead to rival BYU on Friday.

It was a prime opportunity to get a signature win early in the Blake Anderson era on network television but Utah State came up short. Coach Anderson was pleased with the attitude of his players despite losing to the Broncos.

“Honestly, we got a ton of guys doing that,” Anderson said. “Towards the end of the game, Nick Heninger and Byron Vaughns, two guys have stood out over the defensive side that were very vocal. Kyle Van Leeuwen came up to me right there at midfield saying, ‘hey coach keep your head up, we’re good.’ The attitudes were perfect. Nobody likes losing, we don’t accept losing but everybody had the right attitude that we could have played better and we can play with these guys. We’re ready to go back to work. Energy in the building was the same way yesterday, I expect it will be again today. I think the majority of our team, I can name them all, if there are guys that are frustrated and in doubt it’s disappointment in missing an opportunity but not frustrated with the process. We know we’re getting better. We got plenty of buy in and a ton of great attitudes.”

⚫️𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗢𝗨𝗧⚫️

Fri. Oct 1st
| #BeatBYU | pic.twitter.com/p5e3LQSuzr

— USU Football (@USUFootball) September 27, 2021

Anderson will be a part of his first BYU/USU rivalry on Friday night. He was asked about what he has learned about the rivalry.

“Everybody that I’ve met since I moved to town has made it really clear to me how much this rivalry means to them,” stated Anderson. This is one we got to win and need to win. I get all that, I love college ball for rivalry sake. I’ve been a part of some good rivalries in the past, I’ll learn more and more about this one. Not say that it’s not a huge rivalry and not to say that it’s not something that is important. But to me right now the most important thing is the attitude and the mindset of our football team moving forward and making sure that we’re in the right spot. We can’t be nearly as focused on BYU as we can about us getting better. I don’t want that one game that we played poorly derail that, I want to focus on us. Now, I want to beat BYU as bad as anybody in Cache Valley. But for probably even different reasons. This just happens to be the next opportunity for our team to show what we’re capable of.”

Utah State and BYU will kickoff at 7 p.m. MT on Friday, October 1 on CBS Sports Network.