University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Eagles End Week Two With "Inconsistent" Scrimmage
3/28/2002 12:00:00 AM | Football
Eagles End Week Two With "Inconsistent" Scrimmage
Hattiesburg, Miss. - Southern Miss moved past the halfway point of spring football workouts with a Thursday scrimmage that saw the offense dominate early and the defense fight back with a strong second half in the 96-play, 70-minute scrimmage that took up the second half of the Golden Eagles' eighth workout of the spring.
Head Coach Jeff Bower's team now will enjoy a three-day Easter weekend, work four days next week, culminated by a Saturday scrimmage and then end the spring with a three-workout week that will include the annual Black & Gold Game April 13 at 1 p.m., in Roberts Stadium. The team will work Tuesday and then Thursday through Saturday next week, and Bower says he also will announce spring game honorary head coaches next week.
"We started the scrimmage really good on offense, with a lot of big plays, but then we became very inconsistent offensively," Bower said. "To their credit, the defense really picked it up in the second half of the scrimmage, made some big plays, created some turnovers and ended up winning the second half of the scrimmage.
"We were inconsistent on both sides of the ball. We had too many negative plays offensively, bad plays and turnovers that we didn't have in the first scrimmage, but we also probably made as many big plays offensively as we did in that first scrimmage."
Dustin Almond completed 7-of-13 passes for 63 yards, Micky D'Angelo 5-of-13 for 113 yards and Zac White was good on 11-of-16 for 125 yards and had one of the two passing touchdowns of the game, an eight-yarder to LeRoy Handy. D'Angelo had the other, a 35-yarder to Thomas Hosey.
Almond scrambled in for a 10-yard score, and Lorenzo Young, and Anthony Harris had the other two touchdowns, on runs of 34 and 24 yards, respectively. Five different players had three catches each to lead the receivers, Marvin Young (3-19), Karlin Riley (3-25), DaRon Lawrence (3-30), Rocky Harrison (3-54) and Thomas Hosey (3-61).
During the scrimmage, Eagle special teams were successful on all three field goals they attempted, from 34, 26 and 24 yards.
Greg Brooks had the only interception of the game, and returned it 12 yards.
Southern Miss opens the 2002 season Aug. 31, at home, against intrastate rival Jackson State.
