Wednesday marked the last day we will get to talk to the team and it ended up being the longest Rich Rodriguez has stayed with the media after practice all year long. The UA head coach said the team had a couple good practices this week after not having a good one last week on Wednesday. There is a nice buzz around the team and Rodriguez has been in a good mood as his team gets ready to face Cal up in Berkeley this weekend.
Here are today's quick practice notes.
* We'll start with positions and how things are looking. The feeling was that Kwesi Mashack would step right into the role left by Scottie Young Jr. who is expected to miss Saturday's game with a knee injury. Today we were thrown for a loop when Troy Young said he will be getting the start at bandit with Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles moving back to free safety in the interim. I mentioned the possibility of some shifting within that secondary earlier in the week, so that is not a huge shock but Young has been taking a lot of first-team reps lately - even going back to last week - and the staff seems poised to move him into a bigger role. Mashack should still see some time but as I mentioned before there are a number of options for Arizona in the secondary with some experienced players who could slide in. As of now if we take Young at his word he will get the start Saturday against Cal.
* I wanted to get some more clarification on the recruiting side of things so I asked Rodriguez a couple different recruiting questions after asking him about it a little bit on Tuesday. Specifically, I wanted to know if Arizona has a number in mind for how many prospects it wants to sign in the early period that begins two months from Friday. Well, I got an answer and it was a little different than I was expecting. Rodriguez said Arizona is working with 18 scholarships total for the 2018 class meaning there are in essence three spots left for the Wildcats in this class that already has 15 commitments.
A big part of that reason is that UA brought in so many freshmen this year it had to forward count a handful of them taking away available spots for the 2018 class. Guys like Edgar Burrola, Malik Hausman and DJ Hinton were all blueshirt players who received their scholarships after camp started meaning they will count for 2018. In addition to that a transfer such as Thiyo Lukusa has to count toward that initial counter list as well since he is expected to be put on scholarship as well. Those things take away from the available spots for UA in 2018 and now we have the official hard number UA is working with right now.
"How many scholarships we got, 18?" Rodriguez said Wednesday when asked what his hopes were for the early signing period. "Well, we'd like to sign 18 then. I think that's now the de facto signing day. The first Wednesday in February will be one but most of the guys, probably 70 percent of the guys, will sign in December. If they're not ready then they don't need to sign then. There's more of an urgency now in recruiting because of that and hopefully we'll all get it fixed and not have any signing day but until then it's December."
I then asked Rodriguez if the plan is for this to be a smaller class wanting clarification on that number considering I asked about December.
"Yeah, right now it is," he said. "We knew we were going to have a big class last year and we even signed a couple guys going forward with it and I don't think this class will be nearly as big. So we're trying to be a little more selective."
The line is where Arizona is going to primarily focus with recruiting the rest of the way for 2018. Both Rodriguez and DC Marcel Yates agreed that finding guys for up front is the most important element of the recruiting for UA down the stretch.
In addition to the line, Yates said he is looking for more cornerbacks as well.
"We like length, so length is important," Yates said about Arizona focusing on bringing in so many taller defensive backs already in this class. "The difference between a pass breakup and a pick could be a guy's arms. Length could be the different between getting your hands on the ball and a catch. ... When you go on a basketball court and a team has length if affects a lot of things you do on the court. It's the same thing on the football field."
* One of the key elements to this year's team has been keeping things simple. It was a topic both Rodriguez and Yates hit on today in talking about the progress of the team and where things stand with the current personnel. Rodriguez is a coach who would love to do way more than Arizona is doing across the board but he also knows there is a lot of inexperience on the team this year. Yates feels making things simpler has helped the number of mistakes go down as the season has moved along.
"From coach Rod on down he wants us to keep it simple, but still have enough to do what you need to do to win football games," Yates said. "I think as a staff and as a whole – special teams, offense and defense – we've done a good job of having our schemes where our guys understand it and they're out there playing fast and not out there thinking."
For Rodriguez a lot of that same feeling falls on his quarterback. I asked Rodriguez what plays Khalil Tate has executed well this season and this was his response.
"Well they haven't been really complicated," Rodriguez said. "The zone read has been a staple for us for a long time and he's comfortable with that and we've done some other stuff on the perimeter with some lead zone things that he's run well with. But there's a lot more of our offense that we've practiced and frankly we just haven't gotten to in a game as much that we have to keep practicing for and get ready to use."
Here are today's quick practice notes.
* We'll start with positions and how things are looking. The feeling was that Kwesi Mashack would step right into the role left by Scottie Young Jr. who is expected to miss Saturday's game with a knee injury. Today we were thrown for a loop when Troy Young said he will be getting the start at bandit with Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles moving back to free safety in the interim. I mentioned the possibility of some shifting within that secondary earlier in the week, so that is not a huge shock but Young has been taking a lot of first-team reps lately - even going back to last week - and the staff seems poised to move him into a bigger role. Mashack should still see some time but as I mentioned before there are a number of options for Arizona in the secondary with some experienced players who could slide in. As of now if we take Young at his word he will get the start Saturday against Cal.
* I wanted to get some more clarification on the recruiting side of things so I asked Rodriguez a couple different recruiting questions after asking him about it a little bit on Tuesday. Specifically, I wanted to know if Arizona has a number in mind for how many prospects it wants to sign in the early period that begins two months from Friday. Well, I got an answer and it was a little different than I was expecting. Rodriguez said Arizona is working with 18 scholarships total for the 2018 class meaning there are in essence three spots left for the Wildcats in this class that already has 15 commitments.
A big part of that reason is that UA brought in so many freshmen this year it had to forward count a handful of them taking away available spots for the 2018 class. Guys like Edgar Burrola, Malik Hausman and DJ Hinton were all blueshirt players who received their scholarships after camp started meaning they will count for 2018. In addition to that a transfer such as Thiyo Lukusa has to count toward that initial counter list as well since he is expected to be put on scholarship as well. Those things take away from the available spots for UA in 2018 and now we have the official hard number UA is working with right now.
"How many scholarships we got, 18?" Rodriguez said Wednesday when asked what his hopes were for the early signing period. "Well, we'd like to sign 18 then. I think that's now the de facto signing day. The first Wednesday in February will be one but most of the guys, probably 70 percent of the guys, will sign in December. If they're not ready then they don't need to sign then. There's more of an urgency now in recruiting because of that and hopefully we'll all get it fixed and not have any signing day but until then it's December."
I then asked Rodriguez if the plan is for this to be a smaller class wanting clarification on that number considering I asked about December.
"Yeah, right now it is," he said. "We knew we were going to have a big class last year and we even signed a couple guys going forward with it and I don't think this class will be nearly as big. So we're trying to be a little more selective."
The line is where Arizona is going to primarily focus with recruiting the rest of the way for 2018. Both Rodriguez and DC Marcel Yates agreed that finding guys for up front is the most important element of the recruiting for UA down the stretch.
In addition to the line, Yates said he is looking for more cornerbacks as well.
"We like length, so length is important," Yates said about Arizona focusing on bringing in so many taller defensive backs already in this class. "The difference between a pass breakup and a pick could be a guy's arms. Length could be the different between getting your hands on the ball and a catch. ... When you go on a basketball court and a team has length if affects a lot of things you do on the court. It's the same thing on the football field."
* One of the key elements to this year's team has been keeping things simple. It was a topic both Rodriguez and Yates hit on today in talking about the progress of the team and where things stand with the current personnel. Rodriguez is a coach who would love to do way more than Arizona is doing across the board but he also knows there is a lot of inexperience on the team this year. Yates feels making things simpler has helped the number of mistakes go down as the season has moved along.
"From coach Rod on down he wants us to keep it simple, but still have enough to do what you need to do to win football games," Yates said. "I think as a staff and as a whole – special teams, offense and defense – we've done a good job of having our schemes where our guys understand it and they're out there playing fast and not out there thinking."
For Rodriguez a lot of that same feeling falls on his quarterback. I asked Rodriguez what plays Khalil Tate has executed well this season and this was his response.
"Well they haven't been really complicated," Rodriguez said. "The zone read has been a staple for us for a long time and he's comfortable with that and we've done some other stuff on the perimeter with some lead zone things that he's run well with. But there's a lot more of our offense that we've practiced and frankly we just haven't gotten to in a game as much that we have to keep practicing for and get ready to use."
