Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: The new Washington State coach loves life in the Northwest.
Mike Leach joined Fox Sports Radio with Petros and Money to talk about how this transition to Washington State has worked out for him, on the difference between Pullman and Lubbock, how the football in Pullman is different than it was in Lubbock and the QB competition.
How this transition to Washington State has worked out for him:
"It's worked out good. Everybody I have ever met that has been here loves it here. It's a great place, small town, has all the stuff, warm people, a few folks odd enough to be interesting and it's really a pretty setting. There's a lot of teamwork and the Pac 12 has really good energy right now and this school has really good energy. Between our President, our AD, everybody pulling in the same direction and the folks here are really good to work with. I think the other thing is you live right by all of them too."
On the difference between Pullman and Lubbock:
"The folks in Lubbock were great people there's no question. Lubbock was a bigger place. Pullman is about 30,000 people and Lubbock was about 220 (thousand) but both of them have great airports. A lot more flights come out this direction between Spokane and stuff like that, you can get more direct flights out here so even though it's smaller, maybe it's not quite as isolated. Both places, great people and both schools, one that's kind of out there and has their own identity so the fans and everybody are excited about everything going on so it's a lot of fun."
How the football is different in Pullman than it was in Lubbock:
"I don't know. Anywhere you go, if players want to play, they play. Our guys are excited to play, we have a lot of young guys that are making an impact, every day they surprise you with what they can do and we've had good effort. We had a scrimmage on Saturday that I thought was very enthusiastic, we were explosive and inconsistent which is to be expected this time of year but overall good work. I've been pleased overall with our work this year."
On the QB battle between Jeff Tuel and Connor Halliday:
"Yeah both have been playing really well. Jeff is really stable with a lot of leadership. Connor is really talented, we didn't get to see as much of him as we really liked in the spring but he's playing really well now and they both throw a really good ball, they're both good in the pocket, they can both move their feet a little bit, they throw on the run pretty good and I think they have both played really well in camp."
This post, written by Chris Fedor, appears courtesy of Sports Radio Interviews. For the complete highlights of the interview, as well as audio, click here.
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