University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Football Goes Through First Scrimmage Of Spring Season
3/15/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
March 15, 2006
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - The Southern Miss football team continued its spring workouts with a two-plus hour practice at M.M. Roberts Stadium, Wednesday, culminating in a 50-plus play scrimmage.
Head Coach Jeff Bower said he saw both good and bad aspects from the scrimmage, especially being pleased with the performance of the passing game.
"We threw and caught the ball well and made some big plays," Bower said. "That was a positive. The negative is that we gave up too many big plays defensively. Offensively, we did a good job all around, except in our third-down situational scrimmage. We weren't very sharp in that aspect. But we did do a good job of taking care of the football. Defensively, we have some work to do."
The quarterbacks combined to connect on 17-of-27 for 280 yards passing, led by Jeremy Young's 144 yards and two touchdown tosses on 7-of-10 passing. Stephen Reaves finished with 82 yards and a touchdown on 4-of-8, while Travis Clark competed 4-of-5 for 32 yards. Michael Burks and Todd Wilson combined to throw 22 yards on 2-of-4 passing with one interception.
Against the first and second defensive units, Larry Thomas led the running backs with 12 yards on five carries, while Cody Hull added eight yards on five carries. C.J. Barrows led all rushers with 37 yards on eight carries and had a three-yard score.
Joe Singleton shined with four receptions for 103 yards and two touchdowns, a 37-yarder from Reaves and a 45-yarder from Young, while Tavarres Williams caught a 41-yard touchdown from Young. Chris Rhoden followed with two catches for 37 yards, while Hull and Shawn Nelson each added a pair of catches for 27 and 23 yards, respectively.
Defensively, Ken Griffith had a team-best 3.5 tackles, while Eddie Hicks and Tokumbo Abanikanda followed with three and 2.5 tackles, respectively. Ladarius Webb and James Denley each had tackles for loss, while Don Loehr registered a sack. Shadler Manning finished with a pass breakup and TaRon Sims had the lone interception, to go along with a pair of tackles.
Bower was disappointed however, in the level of enthusiasm from the squad and hopes for improvement in that area.
"Our effort was just average; it has to be better." Bower said. "I don't think we were nearly as physical as we needed to be, and we have to get guys flying around a little bit better than we did today."
"We have to come back and correct some mistakes. We are trying to be very simple through this first half of spring because we have a number of young kids, and we are just trying to get them comfortable with our system. We'll come back and practice hard on Friday and get ready for our big scrimmage on Saturday."
Bower also said that the team was doing relatively well on the injury front, but receivers Chris Johnson and Anthony Perine did not practice.
The Golden Eagles now take a day off before returning for a pair of practices on Friday and Saturday to wrap up the first two weeks of spring drills. The team will practice four times next week (Tues., Wed., Fri., and Sat.) before wrapping up with three practices in the final week. The spring season culminates with the annual Black and Gold Spring Game, which is set for Saturday, April 1, at 1 p.m.
