Day 6 Tulane Spring Football: Exclusive Scrimmage Coverage and Interviews
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A cool, dewy, cloudless morning greeted everyone at Yeoman today, dusted with moisture all over Benson Field on day number six, the first scrimmage of spring practice.
This is the last practice before spring break. Tulane will be taking about 12 days off before they come back at the end of March.
There was no video allowed, so that's why you're not seeing much behind me right now. They only allowed us to video during the 10-minute stretching exercises, and that was sort of boring, so we didn't video.
From the On SI Tulane Notebook
Another spring practice, another O sighting. Former LSU head football coach Ed Orgeron, shaking hands all over, hanging out with recruits and long-time Greenbackers all over the place. At first glance, about a dozen possible future Greenies were on hand.
Red jerseys on the two quarterbacks who are competing for the starting position, Kadin Semonza and Zeon Chriss-Gremillion. Zeon didn't get any action in today during the scrimmage. Coaches held him out as just a precautionary kind of thing, but he'll be full go when they come back from spring break.
Let's give you a little bit of perspective from the scrimmage that we saw today.
On offense, extremely fast-paced, no huddle. It's almost a frenetic pace that you see out of a Tulane offense.
Running Back Position
It's good to see number zero, Mo Turner, back. Turner showed good acceleration, good cutting, and he was very patient behind his lineman sort of hiding at times and then all of a sudden scooting out into the hole.
Speaking of which, number 12, Jaylin Lucas. He's about 5'9", so he hides behind the offensive lineman, and out of nowhere he just explodes. He has this incredible burst of speed that they showed on a screen play that they threw to him earlier. He just blew through everybody and then was caught from behind probably about 50 yards down the field.
Number 21, D.J. Dugar is a solid running back, really, really strong. He showed good patience again.
And number six, Johnny Daniels, a really good outside speed runner. Had a little bit of trouble trying to find his footing here on the turf at Yellman, but that's going to come with time.
Wide Receiver
LSU transfer Destyn Hill, and he was able to go ahead and get a 65-yard touchdown on the fly deep down the field.
For defense, the Bandit, #15, junior Jordan McAllister, made two huge plays, including a strip sack of quarterback Kaden Semonza during one of them. The D-line was getting extremely good push on the pass rush.
There's no Dickson Agu. Dickson was held out again. During the spring, you've seen him practice, but not a lot of heavy contact for him. He's being held out right now. Hopefully, he'll be able to play a little bit more when they come back from spring break.
The Green Wave Report Interviews
We were able to speak with four Tulane Greenway folks today. Of course, head coach Will Hall. He gives his perspective on how the scrimmage looked. We asked running back Maurice Turner how does it feel to be back on the field and in a leadership position in that running back room. We speak to offensive lineman Reese Baker. He said he's never interviewed before. This is his first one. I think he did really well. And defensive lineman Derrick Shepard, Jr. had told us that he hasn't even been interviewed yet. In fact, we haven't had a defensive lineman interviewed at all. We changed that. You'll find those interviews on our YouTube channel, and the Green Wave Report on the Thursday scrimmage can be found here.
We hope you've enjoyed this special edition of the Green Wave Report, Day 6 of spring football. The team is going to take a break for quite a while. They're not back until the end of March. So, we're not going to be doing any reports on that for quite a while. But we'll still have our regular edition of the Green Wave Report, which comes out Mondays at 4 p.m. We hope to see you then.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.