Jags Prepare For The Red & Blue Game On Saturday
On Thursday the Jags had to move their practice indoors due to impending thunderstorms moving into the area. Their final practice before the Red & Blue Spring Game.
Their practice in Jaguar Gym lasted about 45 minutes in total. It began with special teams drills in helmets and shorts. They then broke into teams to go through scripts for the game on Saturday.
Head coach Joey Jones spoke after the short practice in Jaguar Gym. “I think the concerns we had going into the spring were the offensive line and the secondary,” he said. “I feel really good about our first offensive line. Now we have to continue to develop depth there. The secondary is another area where I feel like we have gotten better, and we’ve got a couple more guys coming in this summer who might be able to help us there too.”
“The three things we concentrated on this spring, and will continue to work on, were leadership, discipline and toughness,” Coach Jones continued. “We’ve been preaching all spring that you don’t always wins games, you lose games. Teams that make mistakes end up losing games. We became a more disciplined team this spring, and I think we have developed some leadership on this football team. You see it in the locker room, in the weight room and on the field, and we’re real proud of that. I think we’ve been a pretty tough team, and will continue to do that. Overall, as a team, there was so much more focus.”
Coach Jones previewed the Saturday’s game by saying, “It’s going to be a short game, the clock will be running. It will probably be about half a game with the amount of plays we run.”
Coach Jones also said that fans will only see about 25% of the offense because they will be holding out the rest for the fall.
On the Friday morning edition of the Morning Sportsdrive, Coach Jones spoke with Lee Shirvanian and Mark Heim about his team. Coach Jones said that C.J. Bennett has, so far, nailed down the starting position at quarterback with Trey Fetner moving up to the #2 spot. The first-team offense is farther along in their progression than he anticipated, but the gap between the first- and second-team offense is quite noticable. But he had compliments about lots of Jaguars from the spring.
The parking lot will open at 10am and gates will open at 1pm and both will be free and open to the public. Beginning at 11am the University of South Alabama College of Medicine will hold its annual Gumbo & Chili Showdown in the East parking lot with admission for the event being $10.
Seating will be available on the West stands as well as both end zones with limited concessions being sold in the West concourse only. Also in the West concourse the USA Ticket Office will be availabnle for anyone interested in purchasing season tickets and selecting their seats for the 2012 season. The USA Bookstore will be set up selling JagWear and Springdale Travel will have information available for travel packages through the “Runnin’ With the Jags”.
Following the game the fans will have a 30-minute session to go onto the field and get autographs from the Jaguar athletes and coaching staff.
As for the game, it will have 10-minute quarters with the first half having a regular game clock then in the second half will have a running clock with the quarters expanding to 12-minutes each.