University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Saturday Scrimmage Pleases Bower
8/18/2001 12:00:00 AM | Football
Saturday Scrimmage Pleases Bower
Hattiesburg, Miss. - The Southern Miss football team underwent its second scrimmage of the 2001 fall preseason practice today at M.M. Roberts Stadium and drew qualified praise from Head Coach Jeff Bower.
"The coaching staff has to look at the tape, before I can give an opinion," Bower said. "But off the top of my head it was pretty good. It was a little inconsistent. I saw our offense come out and do a lot of good things. After the second kick phase, we had a lull and we didn't do much then, but we finished strong.
"I think we looked pretty good running the football at times. I think the effort was good. We just have to look at the tape and see what it looks like. We held several players out of the scrimmage, including Terrell Paul (shoulder injury), whose a really good player. I saw us doing some things better, I really did. We just have to get some people healthy. It looked like we had two or three knee injuries and some ankle injuries today. People went down, and I don't know how long they will be out. I don't think it was anything real serious but we have to get some people back. Rod Davis got hurt early. I don't know how serious Rocky Harrison's shoulder injury was, I have to talk with our Matt (Smith- Head Athletic Trainer) yet. I will know more about Derrick Ducksworth's MRI on Monday.
"I think we are on target. I think we've had a good camp of two-a-days and I think we've worked hard. The attitude has been good. We're not there yet and that is why we have two weeks left. I think we are on schedule. I think we got a lot of good work done on the kicking game today. We still have a lot to do though."
With classes starting on Monday, the Golden Eagles will practice once a day. "This is a real important week coming up for us," Bower said. "We have to have good practices next week. We have to do a lot of work on our conditioning, because I think overall this has been a fairly cool two-a-days. Thank goodness today was a pretty hot day, we needed it. We have some work to do there. We will work up to a partial scrimmage Wednesday, and I'm sure we will look at some positions where we might make some moves."
After the scrimmage, Bower announced that Mark Haulman and Nathan Grace were moved from walk-on status to scholarship players. "We put Mark on scholarship last spring but we recognized him today at our post scrimmage meeting. Nathan graded out 95% last year. He did a great job on short yardage, goal line situations, PATs and field goals."
Fifth-year senior quarterback Jeff Kelly looked impressive during the scrimmage, completing 14-of-21 passes for 160 yards, threw one touchdown and was intercepted once. Working with the second unit was Zac White, who finished 6-of-14 for 49 yards and one interception. True freshman Dustin Almond completed 6-of-11 for 73 yards.
Fifth-year senior running back Dawayne Woods led all rushers, carrying the ball 18 times for 76 yards and scored three touchdowns with two in goal line periods. Tim Blackwell picked up 31 yards on 13 carries and finished with a two-yard touchdown run.
LeRoy Handy led all receivers with six catches for 84 yards and Bobby Garner finished with five receptions for 48 yards, including a three-year scoring pass from Kelly.
Defensively, the Golden Eagles came up with nine quarterback sacks for 53 yards, led by true freshman Eric Scott with three. A total of 29 different players had at least one tackle. Senior all-conference defensive back Chad Williams led the way with eight stops, and Etric Pruitt followed with five total tackles.
Defensive back Corey Hosey had a pair of interceptions, Corey Yates had one that he returned for 43 yards, and Pierre Hutchins returned a pick 61 yards for a touchdown.
Brant Hanna connected on all his field goal attempts of 34, 34 and 51 yards. Curt Jones missed from 41 yards, but was good on kicks of 31 and 33 yards.
The Golden Eagles put extensive time on all phases of the kicking game. They are scheduled to work Monday through Thursday, including a Wednesday scrimmage and then give the players a long weekend, prior to the beginning of game-week preparation for the Sept. 1 opener against Oklahoma State at Roberts Stadium. Kickoff is set for 11 a.m. and will be televised by ESPN.
