San Jose State back at work on bye week after loss to USC

Entering a bye week, San Jose State coach Brent Brennan could have taken Labor Day off from work like so many other employees across the Bay Area. But he didn’t.

“There’s a lot going on even though it’s a bye week,” Brennan said. “Someone sent a text the other day, it said, ‘Hope you enjoy Labor Day with the family.’ I was laughing. There’s no Labor Day for coaches. It’s a full-time deal, seven days a week once it starts.”

After suffering a 30-7 loss at USC on Saturday, the

Spartans (1-1) went right back to work, preparing to begin their Mountain West title defense at Hawaii (1-1) on Sept. 18.

Sunday, it was a matter of thoroughly dissecting game film of the USC game.

“It’s really disappointing because I thought we had some chances in that game to make it fun and exciting,” Brennan said. “When it was 13-7 in the third quarter, I was like, ‘OK, here we go.’ We’re in it and it felt good, our energy was great, our sideline I thought were making good decisions. But we just couldn’t get over that hump, we couldn’t capitalize on that momentum coming out of the second half.”

The crushing moment came with 11:42 left in the fourth quarter.

Nick Starkel became the first San Jose State quarterback since Jeff Garcia in 1993 to open a season with back-to-back 300-plus passing yard performances, but the play that’ll stick in his mind is the interception returned 37 yards for a touchdown that moved USC ahead 23-7 and for all intent and purpose sealed the outcome.

“He wants that throw back,” Brennan said of cc. “Actually, he wants both of them back. … To his credit, part of our thing here is that when you make a mistake or when you do something that’s outside of what we’re trying to get done, you gotta own it and then you’ve gotta fix it. And that’s what he’s doing.”

Starting Monday, the staff got a head start on its preparation for next week’s trip to Honolulu.

The bye week also provides other types of advantages for San Jose State.

“That hopefully gives us some time to get some guys healthy that are a little banged up,” Brennan said. “We’ve been pounding it pretty good here for the last seven weeks, so now it gives us a chance to regroup and take a deep breath. And also get our coaches on the road recruiting a little bit, because that’s an important thing that’s going on right now and we have to get out there and see the players that we’re trying to bring into our football family.”

Two of the newcomers to the Spartan family include graduate transfer punter Will Hart and freshman linebacker Bryun Parham.

Hart, a transfer from Michigan, has made a seamless transition at San Jose State. He was named Mountain West Special Teams Player of the Week after his debut in the season opener against Southern Utah and is 29th in the nation with an average of 45.5 yards per punt.

“I think anytime a player makes a decision to leave a program where they’re at and go to a new program, you hope that it’s a good fit for both sides,” Brennan said. “And that’s been the case with Will.”

Parham, a 6-foot-1, 210-pound linebacker out of Long Beach, recorded one of the seven tackles for a loss against USC.

“It looks like he loves football,” Brennan said. “You can see when you watch him play there is no question that he likes to run and tackle and he’s tough. He’s going to be a really fun player over the next couple of years.”