If you’re Dan Lanning, flushing last season’s loss to Oregon State wasn’t easy.
And it shouldn’t be.
Lanning and his Ducks held a 31-17 lead at the end of the third quarter appearing to be on their way to a huge in-state win over their rivals.
As a first-year coach, a win over your in-state rival would go a long way to setting the tone for the future of Lanning’s program.
But, as fate would have it, the then No. 9 ranked Ducks gave up 21 fourth-quarter points and literally got run out of Reser Stadium 38-34.
“We had poor gap control at times,” said Lanning after last year’s game in Corvallis.
“Tried movements, tried a couple of different things as far as getting hats in the box. Again, I think you go back and look at it and you’re gonna see a team that was more physical at the point of attack than we were. They were getting movement up front. We weren’t owning our gap. They were. They did a good job and their runners did a good job of running forward and falling forward.”
It was an incredibly disappointing loss for Lanning, his team, and Duck fans throughout the state.
That foul stench of loss most certainly sat with Lanning all last winter and summer and still haunts him today especially knowing it was the Beavers who were the more physical team.
On Monday evening at his weekly press briefing, if you looked really closely at Lanning’s demeanor, you could see and feel the remnants of that single loss on his face and in his body language.
It’s not difficult to understand that that single loss cut deeper than any of the three losses that Oregon suffered last season. “It resonates with every single one of us,” said Lanning when asked about the disappointment of that loss.
“It’s certainly not far from our mind. They’re a good team. We have to go play really well to compete against them and you’ve got to play an entire game.”
Short and sweet.
If you were hoping for a longer more descriptive answer, it wasn’t going to come.
Lanning doesn’t want to talk about it.
He wants to avenge it and unless something changes, it might he his only shot at avenging that loss with conference realignment.
And much like last season, a lot rests on this single game.
“Our players know exactly what’s at stake here for this game,” explained Lanning. “They want to go out there and have their best performance, leave it up to them and not something else.”
MONDAY BRIEFING; DAN LANNING DISCUSSES OREGON STATE AND THANKSGIVING