Whittingham not ready to hand keys over to Wilson yet

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 Sports) – With so much uncertainty as to when Cam Rising will be able to return at quarterback for the Utah football team, is there a point when head coach Kyle Whittingham will move on from Rising and hand the keys to the offense over to freshman Isaac Wilson?

“There is a point,” Whittingham said. “I’m not going to pin ourselves down to an exact specific time. But but as things progressed and then also the conference race, it certainly could come to that point. But we’re not there yet.”

Rising has missed the last three and half games with injured fingers on his throwing hand. Wilson doesn’t know when Rising will be back, so he has to prepare as though he’ll be the starter against Arizona State this Friday night.

“I’ll prepare like I’m the starter like I do every week,” Wilson said. “If I’m the second string or third string, I’ve got to prepare like I’m the starter every week.”

While Wilson has shown glimpses of greatness in his three starts, he has been far too inconsistent. Wilson has thrown seven interceptions in five games this year, to go along with six touchdown passes. But he’s learning how to move on and learn from his mistakes.

“Everyone’s got to have a short memory,” Wilson said. “I could be mad at myself after the game. I could be mad at myself when I’m watching film. But in that moment, I got to be there for my teammates and move on to the next play.”

“I mean, everyone’s going to make mistakes,” said senior tight end Brant Kuithe. “The biggest thing for him is if he does make a mistake, just forget it and go to the next play. Dwelling on mistakes, especially a starting a quarterback that has to know a lot of different things, he can’t bring it to the next play.”

“Cut down on the interceptions, first of all,” Whittingham added. “He’s had some some interceptions along the way, but there’s not any one glaring area that we can say, boy, he’s really lacking in this or that. It’s just that he’s a freshman, a true freshman.”

“He’s getting better each and every week,” said leading rusher Micah Bernard. “That’s what you can only hope for. A young guy, we just got to make sure he’s moving in the right direction every single week. But I mean, it doesn’t matter who’s that quarterback, we got to go out there and play.”

After that disheartening loss to Arizona, a lot of people gave up on the Utes during their bye week. But Bernard says don’t count them out just yet.

“You know, everybody was down on us for losing that one game,” said Bernard, who has 547 yards rushing this year. “I read the tweets. I see every day what everybody be saying. But, we know what we can do. And now y’all see he’s just not easy to play college football. Anything can happen.”

#16 Utah (4-1) and Arizona State (4-1) will kick off at 8:30 p.m. Friday night in Tempe.

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