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Wilson makes no excuses for UTSA's 42-point loss to ASU in season opener

The Roadrunners will try to bounce back against Baylor in their home opener Saturday.

UTSA football coach Frank Wilson was succinct Monday when asked to assess Arizona State’s 49-7 dismantling of the Roadrunners in their season opener Saturday night in Tempe.

“We ran into a buzz saw,” Wilson said at his weekly session with the local media.

The loss was the second-worst in the short history of the UTSA program. Oklahoma State routed the Roadrunners by 55 points, 69-14, in 2015 at Stillwater.

ASU dominated UTSA from beginning to end, churning out more than twice as many total offensive yards (503-220) and holding the Roadrunners to only two yards rushing. The UTSA offense never found its rhythm, giving up nine sacks and finishing with three turnovers.

While the Sun Devils’ beatdown in the Arizona desert was thorough, Wilson still was able to glean some positives after watching film of the game Sunday.

“We ran into a quality opponent, a good team, a well-coached team that was much improved from two years ago,” Wilson said, referring to ASU’s 32-28 comeback win against the Roadrunners in 2016 at the Alamodome. “If the game played itself out and we were an inferior opponent, it’s one thing. The score would indicate that, but the film doesn’t show that."

“For whatever reason, we didn’t play the type of football we’re capable of playing. Call it first game, first time, Division I story, jitters – whatever it may be – things that we fundamentally practice, we didn’t execute. The good is that they’re all correctable mistakes," he said.

Wilson wrote off the loss more to breakdowns in communication and blown assignments than ASU being physically superior to the Roadrunners.

“It wasn’t that sheer brute power and (that they) just outplayed us,” Wilson said. “They put themselves in a position to make plays. But they just didn’t outman us where we were incapable. They just took advantage of the things that we did not do correctly from an alignment and assignment standpoint.”

Wilson expressed confidence his players will bounce back against Baylor on Saturday in UTSA’s home opener. The Roadrunners beat the Bears 17-10 last year in Waco, making history with their first victory against a Power 5 team.

Baylor rolled to a 55-27 victory against Abilene Christian in their season opener Saturday, piling up 606 yards of total offense and snapping an eight-game home losing streak. The Bears already have won as many games as they did last year, when they went 1-11.

“I thought they played Abilene Christian well,” Wilson said. “But you look at the back end of their season even a year ago, when they played Texas and Duke. They were much improved, even then. They're a talented team that continues to improve. Matt Rhule and his staff do a really good job."

“We’ll have our task cut out for us because it’s so much of what we have to do. We’re such a work in progress, and fixing the things that we need to do. We did a lot of things incorrectly that need to be rectified in order for us to continue, or to have promise into this season,” Wilson said.

Besides opening the season against a Power Five opponent on the road, UTSA faced the added challenge of breaking in a new quarterback. Steady Dalton Sturm, a former walk-on, started the last 31 games of his career before completing his eligibility last year.

Junior college transfer Cordale Grundy got the start against ASU, but graduate transfer D.J. Gillins also played. Grundy completed 16 of 33 passes, with one interception, for 187 yards, and Gillins went 3 for 10 for 31 yards.

“I think our quarterbacks did some good things,” Wilson said. “Still yet a long way to go from establishing ourselves as a good football team. We’re not there yet.”

Wilson said he’ll “wait and see” whether he plays both quarterbacks again Saturday.

A 4-yard touchdown run by running back B.J. Daniels with 6:03 left averted the Roadrunners’ second shutout loss in program history.

“It’s one game,” Wilson said. “There are no alarm bells going off. There’s no panic. But we need to fix those things that we did not do well. We identified it. We owned it. We’ve started the process of correcting it as early as yesterday and will continue at Tuesday’s practice.”

Wilson met with the team Sunday, as he always does, before the Roadrunners went through a light workout.

“We spoke the truth of the things that we did not do, as a team, well enough in all three phases,” Wilson said, referring to offense, defense and special teams. “When your average drive starts at the 18 and theirs start at the 29-yard line, you give yourself a tougher task. With five of those inside the 10 and two of those inside the 5, that’s a special-teams piece we’ll have to fix.

“On offense, when you give up nine sacks and lose 80-plus yards rushing, because of those things, that doesn’t bode well. On top of it, turn the ball over three times, coupled by a defense that needs to be aligned properly and needs to tackle well."

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