Jag Hold Final Preseason Scrimmage
Head Coach Joey Jones talking with wide receiver Carr Tigner during preseason practice.
Thursday morning the South Alabama football team held their final of three scrimmages in preparation for the 2012 football season. The scrimmage lasted about an hour and a half and was conducted in full pads, however there was no tackling during the scrimmage. The Jags did run through numerous game situations though.
The first and second team offensive and defensive teams took numerous snaps on the field. Additionally they worked on all aspects of special teams play with work on kickoff and punt coverage, kickoff and punt returns, field goals, Point after conversions and kick blocking. Later in the scrimmage they focused on several special game-like situations the Jags could face this season.
The team will return to the practice field for over an hour on Friday morning beginning around 8am then they will work out at 2:30pm on Sunday following a day off on Saturday. Also on Sunday, the coaches and players will be at the Mitchell Center from 6-7pm for “Fan Day”.
Head coach Joey Jones commented about the scrimmage afterwards.
“I think they were sharp today, I don’t think we had anybody miss from a substitution standpoint,” he said. “We were calling guys in and out, having the special teams running out there, and they were very alert. That’s what I was looking for today. Obviously it wasn’t a physical scrimmage, and we didn’t want it to be. It was three-quarter speed. But the mental side of it was real good.”
“I know the kids are excited and we are too,” Coach Jones continued. “Any time you have been in camp for three weeks straight you are ready to play somebody else, that’s just the way it is. You do all this to play games. I told the kids that we have done a good job in camp, now we can focus on our opponent. If you can’t get ready now, then you don’t need to be playing football.”
Additionally South Alabama formally announced that the Jags game vs Nicholls State will be televised by ESPN3 with kickoff scheduled for 4pm. Also the Jags road Sun Belt finale at Louisiana-Lafayette will also be broadcast on ESPN3 and Cox4 in the state of Louisiana.
USA Quietly Updates 2012 Schedule With Viewing Options
South Alabama quietly updated the online schedule recently. It added that the Jaguars second game of the season on September 8 against Nicholls State will be carried exclusively by ESPN3.
ESPN3 is an online streaming service provided by ESPN that delivers both live streams and replays of sports events. The network is available to households who receive their high-speed internet connection or cable tv subscriptions from an affiliated service provider. It is also available to about 21 million college students and US based military personnel with college/university and US Military IP addresses. It is not carried by traditional cable and satellite provider.
Jags Prepare For Final Scrimmage Before Game-Week Planning
Wide Receiver Bryant Lavender waits on the ball during Jaguars preseason camp.
South Alabama returned to the practice field to continue preparing for next Thursday’s season opener against Texas-San Antonio with a two hour session.
Players began with position drills before moving into goal line and short-yardage situations in the opening sessions of the practice on Wednesday. Then the offense faced the scout team defense.
Later, the offense practiced blitz pick-up against the defense. It was highlighted by a three receptions by Bryant Lavender and a touchdown run by Brandon Bridge. C.J. Bennet connected with Lavender twice while Ross Metheny also found him.
Towards the end of practice the Jags practiced skeleton passing drills. Metheny highlighted that session with two touchdown passes.
“I thought it was good,” head coach Joey Jones said after practice. “They came ready to work. I think our staff is doing a great job of getting the kids ready to practice. We talked to them about winning the game now, and not on Thursday or on a Saturday. We have to win it now and they bought in. We certainly have some things we have to clean up and get better at, but I’m pleased with the effort. We just have to get ready for that ballgame.”
The Jags will have their final scrimmage on Thursday morning which will be closed to the public. They will begin their full game-week preparation beginning Friday.
Help Jordan Means Kick His Cancer
Jordan Means – Photo from usajaguars.com
Former Jaguar kicker Jordan Means is fighting cancer. Friend Jacey Blaire has graciously announced that 100% of her tips from 5pm til close today will be donated to Jordan for his fight against cancer.
Jordan, the first Jaguar football All-American, graduated in May then diagnosed in June with cancer. After surgery to remove it in July, he received bad news from his oncologist that most recent bloodwork showed that he needs chemotherapy immediately.
Jacey works at Picklefish at 5955 Old Shell Road, right across from campus and the Jaguar Softball Complex.
Come out Jaguar Nation and help one of our own.
If you can’t make it out today you can also donate online at http://www.giveforward.com/insuranceexpired
Jags Return To Practice Field And Begin Prep For UTSA
Junior tight end Jared Palmer jumps to bring in a pass during preseason camp for the Jaguars.
After a day off to get settled into classes, the Jags returned to the practice field and the coaching staff began their preparation for their first game of the season.
The Jags practiced for almost two hours Tuesday morning with more time devoted to installing their game plan for Texas-San Antonio. The defense ran plays against the scout team for nearly an hour. The offense went against the scout team as well, but split into two sessions with the last one being about half an hour.
Near the midway point of practice, a 10 minute session was dedicated to inside running plays followed by a 10 minute session was dedicated to blitz pick-up for the offense and finished off with another 10 minute session of skeleton passing drills.
“There was good focus this morning,” head coach Joey Jones stated. “Sometimes after the first day of school they come in and are not focused on what they are doing, but I thought they looked pretty sharp on offense. I didn’t get on the defensive field as much, so I don’t know what they did.”
The coaches and players will return to the Jaguar Practice Facility on Wednesday at 7:25am. This will be the final preparation for Thursday’s final preseason scrimmage that will commence at 8:25am also at the Practice Facility. They will then return to practice on Friday morning before taking Saturday off. They will then return to the practice field Sunday afternoon for a practice before “Fan Day” at the Mitchell Center from 5-7pm.
“Our goal right now is to become perfect in our game plan between now and then [Thursday],” Coach Jones continued. “We’ve got a few days to work on that. We just started working on [Texas]-San Antonio, we’ve got a few days to work on that. We’ve got to keep it up in meeting rooms and on the field, and I think right now they are doing that.”
“I feel good about where we are, we just have to keep working,” Jones said. “One thing this football season is going to be about is just playing and practicing the next day and getting better. We can’t always focus on just results, we have to focus on the process. If we do that we will be good.”
Brendt Bedsole Glad To Be Back Coaching Again
The South Alabama football program’s newest on-field coach, Brendt Bedsole, has been waiting for this opportunity for about three seasons. Bedsole joined the program as the director of football operations but he said his true calling was to be on the field.
He last coached in 2008 which was his second year as an assistant coach for Hoover High School. Prior to that he served as a graduate assistant, Student assistant at Auburn, Trinity High, Murray State and Samford.
Bedsole is back coaching, but not the way he envisioned. The unexpected death of former assistant coach Kurt Crain hit the players and staff, including Bedsole, very hard.
When Head coach Joey Jones hired Bedsole for the director of football operations shortly after he was hired to start football at South Alabama, he let Coach Jones know that he was very interested in getting back to coaching when the opportunity arose.
“That was my original hope and I let that be known to coach Jones,” Bedsole said. “That’s where I feel more comfortable. It’s my natural position. It’s what I got into this profession to do, to coach on the field and affect young men’s lives. Not just coach them football but to teach them about other things outside the white lines, things about life and how to be a good daddy and be a good husband. … Not that I couldn’t do that as a football operations director, but you get more of a personal relationship with your players when you coach them on a day-in and day-out situation.”
Bedsole is thankful for his position to be back coaching again. “There’s 124 FBS teams and nine assistant coaches on each team,” he said. “The odds of getting one of these jobs is pretty slim. I’ve sat down before and done the math. There’s only 1,116 such jobs in the United States and I have one of them. That makes it pretty special. And I don’t take it for granted. Coaching isn’t a job, it’s a calling. It’s something I couldn’t get out of my system.”
USA Officially Announce Home-And-Home Series Against Bowling Green
South Alabama Athletics Director Joel Erdmann officially announced a two-year, home-and-home series with Bowling Green State University.
As prevously reported, the Jags will visit the Falcons on September 11, 2021 and then hosting BGSU in Mobile on September 3, 2022.
This marks the second contract between South Alabama and MAC schools. The Jags traveled to Kent State last season and will host Kent on October 19, 2013 before returning to Ohio for a third game on September 6, 2014.
In the 2021 season, the BGSU game will be the second non-conference game of the season following facing Southern Mississippi in Mobile the prior weekend.
Scrimmage Photos
Here is a link to photos from the second scrimmage on Saturday morning.
Jags Improve In Second Scrimmage
Head Coach Joey Jones speaks to his team after the conclusion of the Jaguars first practice of preseason camp.
C.J. Bennett and Brandon Ross lead the Jaguar offense in Saturday morning’s scrimmage for the South Alabama. Ross scored three touchdowns on four carries while Bennett threw for 117 yards and two touchdowns while going 9-of-10 in the scrimmage at Ladd-Peebles Stadium.
Ross’ first rush of the scrimmage was a four yard gain before crossing the goal line from one yard out on his second carry in a red zone possession for the offense. On the second snap after the mid-scrimmage break, Ross took the ball down the sideline for a 55 yard touchdown. Later in the scrimmage he got one more carry for a two yard touchdown. He racked up 62 of the 141 yards of rushing offense on the day to lead all Jaguars.
Ross is returning from a near one-and-a-half year absence following a knee injury in the 2010 season. Ross was the Jaguars’ leading rusher in 2009 and 2010 at the time of his injury.
Bennett led the first team offense on a 97 yard, 11 play drive for its first possession of the scrimmage. He completed six passes for 80 yards of the drive. He opened with a seven yard pass to T.J. Glover, he later found Bryant Lavender for 13-yards on two occasions and also found Tyrome Bivins for 12 yards to get to midfield. Demetre Baker added a two yard run before Bennett hit Jake Howton for 23 yards. Bennett rounded out the drive with a 25 yard strike to Cameron Broadnax for a touchdown.
Bennett only led the offense one other time. That drive spanned 65 yards in seven plays and it was capped off by a 31 yard touchdown pass to Baker.
The first team defense only surrendered two field goals on the day. The final field goal allowed came on a red zone possession at the 15 yard line.
Ben Giles and Anthony Taylor both lead the team with seven tackles each. Taylor added two pass-breakups to his total as well. Jesse Kelley added six tackles. Giles and Kelley both were credited with 1.5 tackles-for-loss. Randon Carnathan and Enrique Williams recorded three tackles each while Davin Hawkins led the reserves with five tackles.
Offensively, Terrance Timmons rushed five times for 29 yards, Ellis Hill had four rushes for 18 yards and Baker added 17 yards on the ground. Broadnax, Glover and Lavender along with Nathan Sassaman all had two catches each as they combined with four different quarterbacks to tally 181 yards through the air.
Michel Chapuseaux made field goals from 37, 42 and 39 yards. Aleem Sunanon convered the final score of the scrimmage with a 32 yard field goal.
“Offensively and defensively, it was good,” Head coach Joey Jones said about the scrimmage. “Overall I’m sure we’re going to see some things on film that we need to correct. But we’re not quite where we need to be on special teams, and our sideline organization needs to get better. It wasn’t terrible, but there are some things that we have got to shore up. That’s why we do this. I think we will come out next week and do it again, and hopefully we will be perfect at it when we come out on Thursday.”
“We are evaluating our players and will see where we are on the depth chart, and make those decisions this weekend,” Jones continued. “Monday we’ll starting putting the game plan in for Texas-San Antonio, we’ll have a few extra days to getting ready for them.”
“I was monitoring a couple of spots, but we still had to do things against our offense,” said defensive coordinator Bill Clark. “We got our first guys a lot of good work, I thought we tackled well and got to the ball. Our goal was to go 100 percent on our assignments today, we’ll have to see the film, but I think we looked pretty sound. It’s basically what we wanted to see. We’ve still got work to do, but it was a good finish to camp.”
“I thought the defense came out and stopped the run pretty well and I thought they got after it,” coach Jones said about the defense.
Senior Safety B.J. Scott felt that Saturday’s scrimmage was better than the first one of the preseason. “We just had that in the back of our heads and we came out here and just got after it,” he said. “I think we all as a whole feel a little bit more comfortable and focused. It’s all mental at this point. We’re pretty much done beating up on each other.”
“Fundamentally we have improved a lot since camp started,” offensive coordinator Robert Matthews said. “We were able to execute a lot of base plays early today, in the second part of the scrimmage we tried to do some different things that we have been working on. Our guys know what to do, now it is just doing it at the speed and the tempo we expect. I think we are getting closer but are not there yet.”
The Jags returned to the practice field on Sunday so the student-athletes can take Monday off for the first day of fall semester classes.
USA Kick-Off Celebration At Eastern Shore Wintzell’s On Thursday
Wintzell’s Oyster House on the Eastern Shore will be hosting the USA Football Kick-off Celebration on Thursday, August 23 beginning at 6:30pm.
Fans can celebrate the kick-off of the Jaguars football season with Coach Joey Jones, The USA Cheerleaders and SouthPaw on Thursday. The gathering will be in the courtyard/fountain area just outside of the Wintzell’s in the Eastern Shore Center. The address is 30500 State Highway 181, Spanish Fort, Alabama.
Fans will have an opportunity to get photographs and autographs.
Go Jags!