Day 1
Well we will start off with the first day of practice. Coach Steve Sarkisian started off by “saying that his players were like leased dogs on the porch that were let free.” The first day saw the defense rise up, as they were many turnover including interceptions by Shaq Thompson. When asked about Shaq, Sarkisian said "First day, you know? I think he is like a lot of our young kids where they have moments where they do some really cool stuff like Shaq did and then there are moments where they would like to have some plays back. But I think we saw Jaydon Mickens do some things, saw Kendyl Taylor do some stuff today, Erich Wilson had a couple runs in there. Pleased with a lot of the young guys and Shaq had his moments, which were good.'' Some other turnover where created by John Timu (interception), Josh Shirley (returned fumble), Tre Watson (force fumble and interception). The first team defense saw Talia Crichton and Shirley at the ends and Andrew Hudson and Shelton at tackles; Timu, Nate Fellner and Princeton Fuiamono at linebacker; Justin Glenn and Parker at safety and Desmond Trufant and Greg Ducre at cornerback.
The No. 1 offensive line was left to right, Drew Schaefer, Dexter Charles, Kohler, James Atoe Ben Riva. After Kohler went down it was Micah Hatchie, Charles, Schaefer, Atoe and Riva. There was a scary moment at practice for the offense of line when Kohler went down because his kneecap popped out according to Steve Sarkisian, but he said he is fine and should recover in a few days from it. The last thing mentioned in Sark’s after practice conference was that both kickers Travis Coons and Korey Durkee each wore the No. 46, and each got seven attempts and Coons was 4-7 and Durkee 7-7,
Day 2
The second day the offense got the better of the defense including a couple long passes from Keith Price to James Johnson for touchdowns. Here is what Sarkisian had to say about the offense today: "It was good for the offense today," "They bounced back. They created some big plays down the field, which was good. I thought we had some good learning lessons for some of our younger players about the value of the football." Sophomore Austin Seferian Jenkins made several difficult catches and Cody Bruns even got into the touchdown act throwing one down the sideline to Kasen Williams for a score. "The beauty of Cody is he can just about play anywhere," Sarkisian said. "The versatility he brought today. Obviously you saw it with the pass. He can return punts. He holds on field goals. He's the emergency punter. The guy just does it all." One person who didn’t practice was Erik Kohler who injured his knee yesterday but Sarkisian said he plans on Kohler playing September 1st. Sarkisian said that this injury was similar to Mark Sanchez during his Junior year at USC,"It's the exact same thing," Sarkisian said. "He dislocated his knee cap in the first day of training camp. So the timetable realistically with him (Kohler) full go is probably more to a couple of weeks. We'll probably work him back in, but he should be fine the first game. Mark played in the first game and he was great. We know what it is, it's just a matter of how his body is going to respond."
Links
Here are tons of video interviews courtesy of Bob Condotta of the Seattle times Hauloi Jamora, Josh Shirley, Kasen Williams, Bishop Sankey, Keith Price, Deontae Cooper
More stuff from Bob’s blog about the Illinois game being moved to Soldier Field, and his Tuesdays Links
Ted Miller looks at the Top 25 players in the Pac 12 and coming in at #23 Austin Seferian Jenkins
And finally Kevin Dowd of the Seattle P.I. takes a look at Deontae Cooper’s comeback
