Day Four, and the Anticipation Builds

Saturday, August 02

7:20 p.m.

Two days of work in shorts and shirts for the Troy Trojans, followed by two days of work in “shells”, or shoulder pads and shorts, has everyone anticipating Sunday's practice, which will be the first in full pads.

It's good to see senior defensive lineman Steve McLendon back at work tonight. He got a little dinged late in Friday's session, but was back at work today.

Senior receiver Gerald Tate is still struggling with a sore hamstring that he first “tweaked” before the start of camp. He's been doing a lot of stretching, but not much running yet.

One person who is back in action tonight is defensive line coach Mo Crain. The first three days of camp have been quieter than normal without his booming voice. Like last year, he missed the first few days, including picture day again, while participating in the NFL's minority internship program.

Crain went to Arizona to work in the Cardinals' camp for the second straight year. You would think that would be hot duty, but the Cards' hold their camp in Flagstaff, which is in northern Arizona, in the mountains. Highs there are normally in the low 70s with lows at night down into the 40s.

New assistant coach Randy Butler has been covering for Crain, coaching the entire defensive line for the first three days of camp.

Speaking of Butler, this is his 30^th season as a college coach. He has spent most of his career at Southern Miss, but also had stints at SMU and Tulane, in addition to a junior college stop. He and I were together for five seasons in the late 1990s at Southern Miss.

Troy coach Larry Blakeney couldn't have hired a better person, coach or recruiter than Randy. I asked him yesterday if he had gotten used to wearing all the “red” clothing yet. He quickly corrected me, “you mean CARDINAL.”

The offensive and defensive lines are going at each other pretty hard right now, down at the closed end of Movie Gallery Stadium. Freshman Dan Parker is handling the QB duties in the drill, which means he is handing the ball to various backs.

The receivers and returning QBs are to my left, running pass routes and working on their timing. With young quarterbacks and young receivers, getting their timing down will be a big key to success early this year.

I mentioned picture day earlier. I spent most of the day today loading images onto TroyTrojans.com. All of the head shots and group shots have been loaded into photo galleries and all of the player head shots have been attached to their bio pages. You wouldn't think that would be a big job, but it was pretty much an all day affair.

All of the players who have submitted their questionnaires have bios available. Others have partial information listed that I have pulled from internet searches. With 140 guys on the roster, almost half of which are walk-ons, it's tough to get information from everyone.

The backs just got called out of the smash (my term) drills at the far end of the field to participate in skelly drills. Basically, it's a six on seven drill, with no linemen -- backs and receivers working against linebackers and defensive backs.

I just checked site traffic for the last few days and it looks as if we are getting between 500 and 600 page views for each of our blogs. Those are pretty good numbers for something new. I hope those numbers will continue to go up and we get closer to the season.

Business will pick up even more tomorrow when the soccer and volleyball teams report to campus to open camp. Both of those teams open their seasons in late August. Expect to see some blogging to come from Travis Jarome (volleyball) and Taylor Bryan (soccer) in the coming days. Both are also working to lineup someone from the team to write a blog.

I'm still trying to find some more football players to blog, but I think most are afraid that Micah Grimes has set the bar too high with his blog. I know there are some other guys on the team that would be interesting to hear from, I just have to find them and get them started.

It's 8 p.m. now, and the skelly period is over. It's now full 11-on-11, coming out from the closed end of the stadium. Sophomore Jamie Hampton is triggering the first team offense against the first team defense. One thing I have already noticed is that our defense is fast -- really, really fast.

Despite that speed, the offense appears to be making some plays tonight. Every time I look up sophomore DuJuan Harris is running free downfield. Between him and Jerrel Jernigan, the Troy offense has two really speedy sophomores to build its attack around.

Levi Brown, running with the second offense, just got picked by Jorrick Calvin on a deep out intended for freshman Chip Reeves. It was a nice, leaping catch by Calvin, who looks like he will be able to help pretty quick at corner.

Reeves has a lot of talent, but he has a lot to learn before he will be ready to play.

Tomorrow night's practice should be fun. Remember, all Troy practice sessions are open for fans to watch. Monday will mark the first of two two-a-day sessions, so we'll find out pretty quick how this team handles fatigue.

I'll be back with more tomorrow.

Troy University Athletics

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