Friday, April 28 Practice Story

By Bruce Wood
www.biggreenalert.com

Hanover -- Saturday's Dartmouth football practice is going to be worth watching.
Don't take it from me. Take it from coach Buddy Teevens.

"My comment to the guys after practice," Teevens said with a wicked grin Friday, "was that it ought to be real interesting tomorrow. The way it went today, I'm going to be r-e-a-l excited to see how we play."

After drills and pass skeleton Saturday morning, Teevens plans to run as many as 60 or 70 snaps of full-contact (except for the quarterbacks) scrimmaging. Making the action interesting: what happened Wednesday, what happened Friday and how Friday's practice ended.

Rewind to Wednesday and the long-suffering offensive line started to blow holes in the defense, allowing Jason Bash, Milan Williams and several other tailbacks to pile up the yardage.

Friday was a completely different story.

"It was interesting to see how we responded to having some offensive success," Teevens explained. "We haven't had a whole bunch of it and all of a sudden the defense couldn't stop anybody. But the offense comes back today and feels like, 'Hey, we've arrived,' and we haven't.

"Then the defense gets angry and they gear it up. It was a much more complete performance today. They really responded while the offense was complacent and not as sharp in terms of focus. We had some alignment errors. We had some execution errors and we can't afford to do those things. It will be interesting tomorrow."

Now factor in how Friday's practice ended.

When a short completion was followed by a questionable hit on a day when contact was limited, the offense took, well, it took offense. The resultant shove or two led to the defense taking offense. That led to the to the closest thing you'll see to a baseball fight where both dugouts empty and not much happens.

Making sure it didn't was Teevens, who alertly pulled out his whistle and put away his smile.
"It's nice to see the guys be as competitive as they were," he said, choosing his words carefully. "You don't want them to get cheap or dirty or retaliatory, but you want to keep them right on the edge, which I think they were.

"I think it got them stoked up knowing there's scrimmaging tomorrow. We had three more plays to go and I blew the whistle. We didn't need anymore. We'll save it for tomorrow."

PRACTICE NOTES Once again, one of the most noticeable plays was initiated by quarterback-turned-safety Casey Frost, whose well-timed hit on a receiver jarred the ball loose and into the air. Picking it off to great fanfare on the defensive side was Jamie Whitticom. The linebacker followed a few minutes later with a nice deflection that thrilled his position coach. ...

But Frost was hardly the only defender who stepped up.

"Mike Rabil and Brian Osimiri did a better job inside today," Teevens said. "Joey Gibalski made some strides. There was some good energy on the defensive side." ...

Among those looking on from the sidelines was graduating senior Erik Hinterbichler, last fall's first-team placekicker and punter.

UPCOMING Teevens on Saturday's practice: "We'll do some pass skeleton and some preliminary stuff. We need to tackle better in the secondary and linebacker position. We'll get the guys real sharp and then go into a scrimmage format. It will be drive format. We may segment it down and do some red zone area stuff but I'd like to just drive the football and see how it all ends up.

ETC. On Wednesday coaches from Division III Vermont school Norwich University were in town to watch practice. Friday saw a large contingent of coaches from New Hampshire Division III school Plymouth State University. Plymouth (I refuse to call the school PSU because there's only one real PSU) was a D-III national powerhouse in the early '80s and drew national attention when running back Joe Dudek became the people's (and Sports Illustrated's) choice for the Heisman Trophy. Dudek, by the way, finished ninth in the 1985 Heisman race.

LOOKING AHEAD TO THE GREEN-WHITE Teevens hasn't settled on a format for the scrimmage that will end spring practice a week from Saturday.
"The biggest thing is injuries," the coach said. "You are always directed by who's available and who's not. We had one guy go down with a hamstring and a couple other guys are coming back so we don't know who we're going to have. I haven't decided how we'll play it.