More from Bronco

Periodically, I’ll include excerpts from last week’s 30-minute interview with coach Bronco Mendenhall.

Here’s a few more tidbits…

DN: What’s it like to welcome back returned missionaries, like McKay Jacobson, to the program?

Mendenhall: ‘It’s an amazing experience to see these kids. You kind of bask in their glow for quite a long time. Their goal, and our goal, as a program is to help them keep that forever. McKay is so eager to be back and anxious to participate and get back in physical shape and hold on to the spiritual experiences that he’s had. He wants to contribute. He’ll be hosting a recruit this weekend already. It’s one of the best parts of the program. We finished last year with 84 returned missionaries on the team. I think we’ll end up exceeding that this year. That transition is an amazing experience. I think there will be 16 more that will come back in the summer. When you talk about the influx of 20 new players into your program, not talking about recruits, that’s a lot of new/old faces. It’s a very unique thing.”

DN: What was the biggest disappointment about the 2008 season?

Mendenhall: ‘The biggest disappointment would be in myself. Possibly not being able to accurately portray where our team was as we won our first six games. The team culture and everyone around us was considering that an extension of the previous team, which I believed also was possible. I didn’t believe we were there yet. The warning and reality … was fueled by a 59-0 victory over a team (UCLA) that had just beaten Tennessee, which at the time seemed like a huge game. My inability to express and gauge and prepare a team to learn the lessons through the first six before they needed to see exactly where they were versus TCU. That was the best indicator of where this current team was and the level we were playing at. From there, we had the benefit the previous two years of losing games early and losing those lessons and putting a streak together. Midstream, overcoming that disappointment and putting another streak together, and then competing and going to the very last game to win the conference championship is what that got us to. Then through three quarters in a 27-24 game (at Utah) with the outcome in the balance, our execution and ability to handle chaos in that difficult environment wasn’t strong enough to win a conference championship. That in and of itself became too little too late. That lesson as a head coach to be able to predict and then portray exactly where we are and what we need to do, without a loss to do it, is something I need to get better at.’

DN: What was the most valuable lesson your players learned from last season?

Mendenhall: “What they’ve learned through last season is one of the core points of our program and understanding is there are 3-5 plays a game that determine the outcome. Championships are won through execution and performance usually in those 3-5 plays. Sometimes, games are determined or are very close through 3-5 plays. Momentum can very quickly shift if there are 2 or 3 or 4 plays you don’t make in the critical moments. What they’ve learned, I think, is the relevance of execution and preparation and how that translates into the critical moments of any game and how that then lends to your chance of winning a championship.’