Tulane's Sumrall Talks about the Wave's Open Week
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With an open week after Tulane's 31-14 victory over Tulsa this past weekend, that gives the Green Wave a chance to rest and recuperate a little bit. ON SI Tulane Publisher, Doug Joubert asked TU Coach Jon Sumrall what the plans are for his team's days off.
"That's a good question, Doug," Sumrall said. "You know, it's kind of a mini-bye because it's not a 14-day bye. It's a 12-day, because we play (our next game on a) Thursday. So, what we'll do, they're off Sunday. Monday just liftings and meetings and a little bit of a walkthrough. No real practice, per se."
"We'll practice Tuesday, Wednesday for about an hour roughly with the big guys. We might let the youngsters play a little bit more. And then Thursday, Friday, give them a little bit of a break, get their legs back underneath them hopefully. And then Saturday is like a Monday for us in regards to the game week. So, we'll get back on Saturday....We'll start the official game week (preparation then)."
The Wave Walking Wounded List Just Kept Growing.
Sumrall thinks this break has come at what may be just the right time for his team.
"I have to be very transparent, we've got a very beat up football team," Sumrall briefed us. "I don't know if you saw the injury report before the (Tulsa) game, but it was long. I had to list a bunch of guys as questionable because the rules say if they've missed any practice time this week, you have to list them as questionable. Well, I had like 20 dudes miss practice. We're beat up. I mean, we're beat. Our team has been through a gauntlet schedule-wise, and they're just very fatigued. So, we've got to be smart about getting the work we need to get better, but we have to have healthy, available bodies to go play on game day."
Linebacker Agu Hurt and May Be Out a While
NOLA.com's Guerry Smith asked coach Sumrall about Sophomore linebacker Dickson Agu. The redshirt sophomore linebacker suffered a non-contact injury against Tulsa.
"Yeah, it looks pretty substantial," Sumrall said. "I'm not at liberty yet to give you detailed information, but it it looks pretty serious. It doesn't look good."
The Green Wave will be back on the field on Thursday, October 9th at Yulman Stadium to entertain East Carolina in a prime time game. Both the Wave and the Pirates are 1-0 in American Conference play, trailing Navy, who already has three league games under their belt, taking all three contests.
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.