Defense Dominates First Scrimmage

LAJ's Don Williams writes that the defense dominated the first scrimmage of the spring and Captain Mike Leach felt that the scrimmage was competitive:

"I thought it was pretty competitive,’’ Leach said. "We’ve been alternating workouts, really, as far as who comes out on top. The biggest difference with whoever comes out on top each day is who’s most excited to play. Defense was far more excited today, but I thought a lot of young guys on both sides of the ball showed some promise.’’

The format was the 1st team offense goes against the 1st team defense; the 2nd team offense goes against the 2nd team defense, etc. Williams notes that it Taylor Potts (17-31; 1 TD; 1 INT) and Seth Doege (9-10; 1 TD; 0 INT) threw one touchdown each to junior flanker Alexander Torres (he hasn't been on my radar one bit).

Defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill sounds excited about the defense:

"I thought we were excited to play, excited to practice, which is always key,’’ defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill said. "I thought the kids did a good job responding. If some bad things happened, they kept playing the next play, which is what coach Leach preaches to the team. I thought we did some things well as a team defensively.’’

Williams goes into great detail on a number of series, so make sure and click on over. But according to Williams' descriptions of the action along with a boxscore for you to peruse, it was truly a practice dominated by defense, including 12 touch-sacks with three being credited to Daniel Howard and two a piece to Brandon Sesay and Rajon Henley.

Red Raiders Football Notebook

LAJ's Don Williams files his Red Raiders Football Notebook and let's run down some of the notes:

• Alex Torres (as mentioned above) is impressing Leach and said that he would be starting ahead of Jacoby Franks and Eric Ward:

  "He’s been playing well," Leach said. "Torres has played well since we started and, really, that started at the end of last year. So we we’re kind of optimistic about him, and he’s continued to improve. I don’t know if he’ll hang on to it or not, but if we played today, Torres is the starting (flanker)."

• The Captain didn't make any of the receivers available after the scrimmage because of too many drops, although Leach acknowledges that the different quarterbacks may have been one of the causes:

  "One of the problems is we threw five quarterbacks, so that’s always hard," Leach said. "Any time you use a bunch of quarterbacks, there’s always going to be some problems with that."

Hale and Whitlock Talk About Number Switch

DT's Alex Ybarra sat down with an unlikely #5 and #6, Ryan Hale and Colby Whitlock. Here's Hale and Ybarra on how it happened:

"We were just messing around, saying we're gonna wear five and six next year," Hale said. "We talked to the equipment managers (Zane Perry and Steve Pesek). We begged them and finally they gave it to us, and now we're stuck with it." The 6-foot-2, 281-pound Whitlock has yet to sport the No. 6 jersey in spring practice because the new one, without "funky sleeves," has been ordered, he said. Whitlock finished 2008 with 35 tackles, five for a loss of yards, and one sack, which was a safety in Tech's 39-33 upset of then-No. 1 Texas.

Make sure and check out the video report:

Neglected Video, Audio and Photos

TechTalk's second hour talked with left guard Chris Olson and it sounds like he's found a spot on the line after being moved around a bit.

Fox34 with a practice report from yesterday's scrimmage with lots of quotes and video, as well as a look at Olson.