Kicking is another facet of UMass football that Minutemen fans hope has turned the corner in 2016. We would have won at least four more games in our FBS era with better kicking. Look at last year. UMass had top-25 Temple on the ropes and ended up losing. That would have been a huge win for the program. Let's hope those days are behind us.
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Matty Vautour has a report on changes to the Minutemen offensive line. Tyshon Henderson has left the program and Lucas Kotler will have foot surgery, which will sideline Kotler for the season.
I think the 2016 line will be:
Elijah Wilkinson LT 6-5 329
Mike Yerardi LG 6-4 306
Fabian Hoeller C 6-3 295
Michael Boland RG 6-6 318
Jack Driscoll RT 6-5 294
Also available are Derek Dumais, Joe Parsons, Dan DiNicola and Jake Largay.
Whipple mentioned Driscoll as a starter during the Town Meeting last week. He also said freshman Raquan Thomas (6-5 392) was so big they haven't been able to find knee braces large enough to fit him. Whipple said they would like Thomas to lose about 25 pounds, which would bring him down to a svelte 360 or so.
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| Raquan Thomas #57 |
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The Florida Gators name Jack Del Rio as starting QB for the UMass game.
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A Daily Herald writer predicts the UMass-BYU game as Cougars 48 UMass 9.
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Whipple, when asked how summer training camp was going responded, with 100+ players on camp, there was always a brush fire somewhere. I think if you compared the behavior of the football players to 100+ random UMass male students, I believe the football players would compare favorably.
However, it's truly amazin' how creative some people manage to be in screwing up. South Carolina punter Sean Kelly was arrested for "malicious destruction of a tree".
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OT, but Dennis Eckersley should come with sub-titles.
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