March 27, 2010

RUSTON, La. - Head coach Sonny Dykes comments on Friday's practice.

"Today was actually one of our cleaner days. Less false starts, less turnovers, a little bit better execution particularly on the offensive side of the ball and that got us rolling. What I like is that the defense played extremely well at the end of practice. It was a day where we traded blows but we got a lot better today. We cut practice back a little bit, trying to freshen up for our scrimmage tomorrow. I like where we are right now and I am excited to see how we perform tomorrow when we go live."

On expectations for Saturday’s scrimmage:
"I’m not really sure. We have to make sure we take care of the football and put it all together, playing smart and being disciplined. We’ll see how we respond to live situations, how we handle adversity and things like that. We’ll know a lot more about who we are tomorrow."

"The most important thing to accomplish is to make sure you make some first downs. That’s the thing that is really critical, making sure you move the football and move the chains. Once you do that, you can start stacking up a bunch of plays as the defense wears down a little bit and the offense builds momentum. That’s when you’re able to score some points and are really able to get into your rhythm. We’ll see if we can get to that point tomorrow. Hopefully both sides of the ball will step up. We’ll go 1s on 1s and 2s on 2s throughout the day. It’ll be interesting to see what happens."

On who stood out Friday:
"I thought Steven Ensminger had a good practice. I felt like it was one of his better practices thus far. He is throwing the ball well. I thought our receivers as a whole had a good day. Those guys are improving. Ahmad Paige made some nice plays today, Richie Casey made a couple of big plays today and looked a little fresher. The offensive line did a good job. Toward the end of the team period, I was really happy with the way the defense responded, getting a good pass rush there at the end. Randy Grigsby made a couple of plays and got in there."

On the lingering injuries:
"We’re trying to take care of a couple of guys, trying to get them to the scrimmage tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll have a few less guys in the red jerseys tomorrow but we just have to be smart. We have a lot of guys coming off some pretty serious injuries and we need to get them enough work but we also have to take care of them so we don’t have any setbacks. It is always a balancing act, making sure we get enough work but at the same time taking care of them well enough."

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