April 9, 2011
Comments from Head Coach Gary Pinkel
Highlights and Player Comments
Columbia, Mo. -
The University of Missouri football team held its final full scrimmage of the spring season prior to next week's annual Black & Gold Game, as the Tigers worked under beautiful 85-degree weather on Faurot Field.
The defense claimed an 18-12 victory. Here's a recap from today's scrimmage...
Practice Report: April 9, 2011
Injury Update:
The team remains moderately healthy going in to their final week of spring practice going into spring game. Two players Austin Wuebbels and Greg White were injured during today's practice. Wuebbels sustained a high ankle sprain and was carted off the field. He is expected to be out through the spring game. White pulled a hamstring during a punt drill at the beginning of practice.
Practice Highlights:
In attendance at today's scrimmage was former Tiger captain, Kurtis Gregory. He spent the beginning of practice working out with the injured players. Also in attendance were several high school coaches from across the state. They were in town for the Tiger Coaching camp and stayed to observe today's scrimmage.
The defense once again won the day in the team's final full practice scrimmage before the spring game, winning the black jerseys for the 4th time in a row. The defense grabbed four interceptions in all, returning two of them for touchdowns, and later scored a third touchdown of a fumble return by Marcus Malbrough. The interceptions were made by E.J. Gaines (32 yards and a touchdown), Trey Hobson (42-yard touchdown), Kenronte Walker (no yards), and Randy Ponder (14 yards).
Kony Ealy has been very impressive the last few practices. He red-shirted last year but has shown skills similar to that of departed Tiger, Aldon Smith, through spring camp. In today's scrimmage he picked up a sack, forced a fumble, recovered a fumble, as well as blocked a field goal.
Sophomore QB James Franklin enjoyed the best day of the top three quarterbacks, as he was 19 of 30 passing, for 222 yards and a touchdown, while he also closed the day by running for a 12-yard touchdown in the two-minute drill. Tyler Gabbert was 14 of 26, for 103 yards. Ashton Glaser had some impressive moments, as he was 15 of 24 for 175 yards and two touchdowns. Each quarterback was picked off once, while Glaser had a pair of interceptions.
The top receiver for the day was tailback Jared Culver; he had 4 receptions for 81 yards. Freshmen Eric Water, and Bud Sasser were the only receivers to score a touchdown. Waters had 5 receptions for 30 yards, while Sasser had 1 reception for 11 yards. Others scoring touchdowns were De'Vion Moore, and Henry Josey and defensive players Trey Hobson, E.J Gaines, and Marcus Malbrough.
Quotes:
Opening Statement…
“You know it was a typical scrimmage. There's good things on both sides of the ball and bad things on both sides of the ball. The thing I talk to our football team about is when you're having problems you come back out and you correct the problems and you're better the next week. There were some snap issues today, there's a lot of things you can't see. Certainly, I think we're making progress but we've got a lot of work to do.”
On the center position…
“Well I think you're always concerned. What we have here, you have to understand is our second unit is young, one sophomore and the rest are freshman so now what you have when you move a couple guys up, because you have a guy that's gotten hurt, you have your threes playing two and your twos playing ones so you deal with that. I wouldn't look too much into that. I'm always concerned about everything but when you mix and match people like that and you get injuries like that, what you see is the importance of all the depth. The importance of those guys and they move up to be able to do the right thing.”
On reaction of quarterbacks…
“ I think you always think about the whistle blowing. What do you when the whistle blows until the next snap? What do you do in your mind? Quarterbacks so quickly have to get to the next play that in some ways puts them in a little bit different position than a receiver or something that's just out there. There's great lessons to be learned of throwing a pick and then coming back and trying to win the game. So unfortunately we probably had a little too many lessons on that today. I've been here before and I've seen great quarterbacks have their struggles as they mature. So that's part of what we do.”
On improvement seen by cornerbacks…
“Well Kip (Edwards) was really a starter last year. He split time with the other two guys and E.J. (Gaines) played an awful lot. Really all the others, Steeps (Robert Steeples) is doing a really good job, Trey Hobson is really doing good. We just have a lot of depth there. We really run a lot of defense and we're excited about that. A lot of competition there too, and I think it will be interesting to see how all that stuff works out.”
On impact of losing Aldon Smith…
“Well we do lose a great player but when you look at the guys we have in there; Brayden Burnett is playing really, really well. Michael Sam, by the way, he's not bad either. Then you have Jacquies, as well as Brad Madison who was second-team All-Big 12 last year as a reserve player. So we have pretty good depth there. We've got some young guys; we've got Matt Hoch down there, he's coming up. So you look at all those guys and I think that's probably the most depth we have at any position. I think the nice thing about that is we can play a lot of guys, the competition is great, and it's a great place to have a lot of good players because that kind of is to me the great equalizer against a great quarterback to have a great pass push. So that's exciting. We're trying to work inside to get the tackle position and strong as that.”
Here are the statistics from today's action...
SCORING PLAYS
Scoring Description
· Eric Waters 9-yard pass from James Franklin
· E.J. Gaines 32-yard interception return
· Henry Josey 5-yard pass from Ashton Glaser
· Trey Hobson 42-yard interception return
· Bud Sasser 11-yard pass from Ashton Glaser
· De'Vion Moore 3-yard run
· Marcus Malbrough 40-yard fumble return
· James Franklin 12-yard run
PASSING STATISTICS
Tiger Comp. Att. Yds. TD Int.
James Franklin 19 30 222 1 1
Tyler Gabbert 14 26 103 0 1
Ashton Glaser 15 24 175 2 2
TOTALS 48 80 500 3 4
RECEIVING STATISTICS
Tiger Rec. Yds. TD
Eric Waters 5 30 1
Jared Culver 4 81 0
De'Vion Moore 4 60 0
L'Damian Washington 4 35 0
Gahn McGaffie 4 29 0
Jerrell Jackson 3 54 0
T.J. Moe 3 39 0
Henry Josey 3 38 1
Marcus Lucas 3 25 0
Michael Egnew 3 12 0
Kerwin Stricker 3 10 0
Wesley Leftwich 2 24 0
Andrew Jones 2 9 0
Marcus Murphy 2 9 0
Bud Sasser 1 11 1
Jimmie Hunt 1 9 0
Wes Kemp 1 (-1) 0
TOTALS 48 500 3
RUSHING STATISTICS
Tiger Att. Yds. TD
James Franklin 4 27 1
Kendial Lawrence 5 24 0
De'Vion Moore 7 19 1
Marcus Murphy 3 17 0
Ashton Glaser 1 14 0
Henry Josey 6 12 0
Jared Culver 2 8 0
Gahn McGaffie 1 4 0
Kellen Wright 2 (-1) 0
TOTALS 31 124 2
INTERCEPTIONS
Tiger INTs Yds. TD
Trey Hobson 1 42 1
E.J. Gaines 1 32 1
Randy Ponder 1 14 0
Kenronte Walker 1 0 0
DEFENSIVE SUPERLATIVES
Tackles For Loss - Braylon Webb (1)
QB Sacks - Brad Madison (2), Jimmy Burge (1), Kony Ealy (1), Marvin Foster (1), Zaviar Gooden (1)
Passes Broken Up - Trey Hobson (1), Kenji Jackson (1), Brad Madison (1), Randy Ponder (1), Matt White (1)
Forced Fumbles - Kony Ealy (1), Brad Madison (1), Randy Ponder (1)
Fumbles Recovered - Marcus Malbrough (1-40, TD), Kony Ealy (1-0)
Field Goal Blocks - Kony Ealy (1)
FIELD GOALS
Tiger FG-FGA Makes Misses
Grant Ressel 4-5 39, 50, 30, 43 30 (bloc.)
Trey Barrow 2-4 30, 30 39, 50
Blake Owens 2-4 30, 30 39, 50
PUNTING
Tiger Punts-Yds. Avg.
Trey Barrow 4-199 49.75
Christian Brinser 4-158 39.50