Spring Practice Report: Day 5
March 20, 2012
Interviews: Coach Golden | Allen Hurns | Curtis Porter | Clive Walford
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – The University of Miami football team returned to the practice field following their 12-day spring break on Tuesday, and once again the weather provided a beautiful day for football. The coaches and players appeared eager to get back into the swing of things, as evidenced by the number of big plays and hard hits seen over the course of the practice.
The Weather Report: 78 degrees with winds out of the ESE at 16mph and 54% humidity.
The first part of practice consisted of mainly position drills. These included linebackers pass rushing running backs, wide receivers and running backs running with resistance, tight ends running through pads, and offensive linemen run blocking defensive linemen.
Following the position drills the team moved into more collective drills, including 7-on-7 quarterback scramble drills, field goal blocking, kick return coverage and run play simulation.
The rest of practice featured hard-hitting full team action. Some highlights of the first session included Ryan Williams connecting with Rashawn Scott on a beautiful deep pass on the first play, Mike James pushing the pile for an extra 10 yards, then following it up with a 60-yard run up the middle, Scott taking a reverse to the house and Vaughn Telemaque making an acrobatic interception.
The players were given a quick break before cranking the intensity right back up with more full-team drills. Coach Fisch captured the mood with this statement, “Go get hydrated, then you better come back with some energy.”
The coaches were very active today, being their usual vocal selves, but also getting in some exercise of their own. Coach Barrow showed he was still in decent shape by running around covering running backs while demonstrating for his linebackers. He then kept the energy up leading the defense in different chants as they tried to simulate crowd noise during the goal line drills. Coach Franklin ran on to the field to celebrate with the defense after making a goal line stop, and Coach McDonald ran laps around the offense after their first score.
More highlights during the second full team session included Asante Cleveland making two nice catches in the corner of the endzone, Dallas Crawford eluding numerous tacklers in traffic, Tyrone Cornelius making a diving pass break-up over the middle of the field, Eduardo Clements breaking some ankles on a long run up the middle, Kendal Thompkins bursting through the defense and catching a screen for a touchdown, and Ladarius Gunter laying a big hit on Philip Dorsett to close out the action.
Cane Spotting: ProCanes Ray Lewis, Reggie Wayne, DJ Williams, Jonathan Vilma and Jimmy Graham took in a little of the Hurricanes practice today. NFL prospect Jacory Harris was also in attendance.
The Canes will return to the practice field on Thursday before their first scrimmage on Saturday at Ted Hendricks Stadium in Hialeah.
