The first question to San Diego coach Sean Lewis during Monday\u2019s midday press conference referenced an ongoing health issue with the SDSU football team.<\/p>\n
\u201cMumps situation \u2014 is it real serious or just isolated, odd cases?\u201d Lewis was asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s players that are up, there\u2019s players that are down, for a lot of different reasons,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cDue to FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), due to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and respecting the privacy of our student-athletes, I\u2019m not going to say anything further about the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four more SDSU football players have tested positive for mumps, sources said Monday.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 18, SDSU confirmed three cases and two probable cases of the mumps. All five cases were \u201cconnected and within\u201d an unnamed athletics team, the school\u2019s campus health department said. Sources have confirmed that the team involved was the Aztecs football team.<\/p>\n
SDSU (1-3) is scheduled to play its Pac-12 opener against Texas State (2-2) on Saturday night at Snapdragon Stadium. SDSU, Texas State and Pac-12 officials did not immediately respond to what impact, if any, the developments could have on the game.<\/p>\n
Some clarity on SDSU\u2019s situation will come Wednesday evening, when the first Pac-12 availability report of the year is released.<\/p>\n
The list is updated each of the three days leading up to game day, and then at least two hours before kickoff on game day. The reports do not provide a specific reason for a player\u2019s injury or illness but whether he is probable, questionable or out for the game.<\/p>\n
Running backs update<\/p>\n
The status regarding SDSU\u2019s top two running backs, Lucky Sutton (high-ankle sprain) and Javion Kinnard (knee injury) remains uncertain. Both players were injured in Saturday\u2019s 41-16 loss to Toledo.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll get some more (diagnostic) images today, and they\u2019ll continue to work with our medical team to see how they can progress as we go forward,\u201d Lewis said.\u00a0\u201cRight now, I would say that they are questionable to be able to play this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Redshirt freshman Jordin Thomas and true freshman Josiah Lucas are the only other running backs on the roster, although safety Max Garrison has worked with the running backs since spring and could provide depth at the position.<\/p>\n
Lewis was asked if Christian Washington, who left the team a week ago, could return.<\/p>\n
\u201cNope,\u201d Lewis said without elaborating.<\/p>\n
Emanuel?<\/p>\n
Starting wide receiver Bert Emanuel Jr. did not play against Toledo and was not seen on the sideline. Lewis was asked why Emanuel did not play last week and if he will play this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgain, there are a lot of different things that are going on, both football related and non-football related,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cDue to FERPA and HIPAA, I\u2019m not going to comment any further on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fresh start<\/p>\n
While some are looking at SDSU\u2019s 1-3 record as a poor start, the Aztecs are looking at the beginning of Pac-12 play this week as a fresh start.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a good conversation this morning about how we have eight weeks left in the regular season,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cWe are only guaranteed 12. You want to maximize opportunity with the time that you do have to create more opportunities as you go forward and to generate more time. So, again, we sit here and we talk about certain individuals. We talk about results every single week on a Monday. I\u2019m going to continue to reiterate that we\u2019re going to dive into the process of how we do it right.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in this position quite a few times as a head coach, given some of the non-conference schedules that I\u2019ve battled at previous places, where you know we were 1-3, and we found a way to have very successful seasons. That\u2019s me personally. There\u2019s also been great historical success here. There have been times when an Aztec football team started out slow and then ripped off a ton of wins (SDSU\u2019s 2015 team started 1-3 and finished 11-3). I have tremendous belief in our staff and our players and the guys who are doing the work and the women who are doing the work each and every single day. I pour into them and I tell them and I show them exactly what they can be.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere everyone else is going to tell them how bad they are. That\u2019s fine. You guys can stand outside the arena. You guys can write those things, and you guys can say those things like that. No problem with that. We all know what we signed up for. But we\u2019re the ones living in the arena. We\u2019re the ones that are pouring into it. We\u2019re the ones that you know get to feel the tremendous highs and the tremendous lows each and every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of adversity<\/p>\n
Wide receiver Jacob Bostick: \u201cI\u2019m a man of faith, and so I believe that everything happens for a reason, and so that\u2019s kind of what I tell myself in certain situations. I think you look back on our training. For us, we work for 12 guaranteed opportunities all year, but our training starts in January. So, I start thinking about the hard days back in winter or some of the tough days in spring, and even just the summer workouts. So, just relying on those days and how we have pushed through those, we can get through anything because we went through those.\u201d<\/p>\n
Safety Jalen Thomeson: \u201cThat\u2019s human nature; it\u2019s normal to feel a certain way when things don\u2019t go your way. One thing I preach to my boys is adversity is the university of life. When you go through adversity, this is your time to learn from everything. You aren\u2019t going to get better if you don\u2019t learn, and we\u2019re all in this learning process. It\u2019s all about the process, so we\u2019re just going to learn and just stay positive. This comes with it, so just keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first question to San Diego coach Sean Lewis during Monday\u2019s midday press conference referenced an ongoing health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1327,181,74,76,75,305,127,1696],"class_list":["post-479333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-college-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sdsu-aztecs","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}