With three games left in the season, the 4-5 Oregon State State Beavers need to win two in order to reach the postseason. For now, Beavers’ head coach Trent Bray is keeping his team focused on the challenge that a trip to the Air Force Academy presents and what lessons there are to learn from last week’s loss to San Jose State.

Bray met with the media this week to discuss what’s ahead for OSU and how his younger players can continue to get better. Watch the full presser below.

NOTES

-Reviewing the San Jose State game: “After watching the film of the San Jose State game, it was a lot like I thought. I thought we moved the ball pretty well, but just stubbed our toe in the red zone. Four drives in the red zone and we only get three points out of them. That’s a problem so we got to
be better in the Red Zone. Would have changed that game. And same thing with the explosive plays over our head in the back end on defense we we can’t allow that to happen to play the way we want.”

-Ben Gulbranson will continue to be the starting quarterback, moving forward.

-On Salahadin Allah’s development: “As you go through the season you get more and more work and more and more reps in practice and in games. You become a better player…I thought he played well and had some really good runs and still had some runs that, you know, we need him to break that he could have. So I’m excited about where he’s at and his progression.”

-On the morale of the team currently after a 4-5 start: “You watch us practice and you wouldn’t know what our record is. Which is great to come to work with those guys every day. We are process oriented and getting those guys to buy into the results will come as we continue to do the right process. It’s frustrating right now and there’s some things that are painful but we stick to the process and we’ll continue to get better and in the long run it’ll help us.”

-On improvements to the run defense: “It’s more guys just getting better, more experience in the system. I think early on in the run game problems were a lot of misfit issues. I think the players have done a great job. Coaches have done a good job of of just continuing to coach those guys and they’re starting to figure it out and play faster because they they know how to play off the front and I think a lot of that showed up.”

-On defending a triple option offense: “If you’re going to take away the inside part of it, there’s always things out on the perimeter as well. And so there it creates one-on-one plays. Whenever you have one-on-one tackles that have to be made, you break a couple tackles, they make you miss, and it’s an explosive play. So that’s what these offenses do. They make it a one-on-one game for most of the game.”

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