Friday was a fun day for the Blog. In the morning I hiked
Pack Monadnock in southern NH. The first two images in the set are a view from the summit east and the only patch of
Trillium grandiflorum we saw on the hike.
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The Spring Game is my first set of images on Flickr. So far I'm finding Flickr not as intuitive as Picasa. The
link is here. See if it works and you can view it.
I arrived about 6:30 in Amherst. Some UMass fans and families were tailgating inside the stadium. a hefty crowd of students were drinking in the usual tailgate areas outside. The students stayed outside.
To me, it looked like the number of family and friends inside the stadium about tripled from last year. UMass did not announce the attendance.
Special thanks to the
UMass Marching Band who sent a pep squad to the game and added a lot to the ambiance .
No body got hurt.
The UMass team split into two squads. Seeing the Minutemen do not dress 150 players for the game, that means some players were moved out of position to make up the squads. If anyone has any other information, add it to the comments.
As I've said before, you can't take a lot out of the Spring games. Everyone is playing at 4/5 speed and trying not to get anyone hurt.
Anthony Nelson,
Christopher Green,
Dan Sheeran,
Tom Brandt Courtney Jackson and
Jeffery Lingenfelter, all sat out the game (if they were wearing the correct jerseys).
The most entertaining play of the game was the very first play when the white squad tried a flea flicker back to
Octavious Hawkins.
Tyler Holmes came flying in and leveled Hawkins, who did a vertical 180 spin. He came up laughing.
Probably the most impressive thing I saw was the pass receiving. Unlike one recent year, the receivers caught about everything that was catchable.
Jesse Julmiste looked fast and shifty.
Woody Carter IV, playing WR had a couple of good catches.
Tom Gilson had four catches and
Julian Colarusso had three.
Johathan Hernandez had a TD catch.
Not much to report on quarterbacks. Hawkins and
Kyle Havens had almost identical stats. Third String QB
Jesse Hunt looked as if he belonged.
John Griffin, the Northeastern transfer looked fast.
Sean Unterkoefler was playing FB.
Jamar Smith also looked fast. It seems we will have a speed backfield this year. Unless we move someone from another position, we do not have a 240 pd fullback.
With the defense broken up into two squads, it was harder to spot defensive standouts. Red shirt freshmen
Christian Birt and
Ryan Carter were around the ball a lot.
All in all, I thought the offense looked promising. Even with all the turnovers last year, we were #2 in the CAA in total offense. This year shows promise if we hold on to the ball.
