Evergreen photo by Jaquai
Thomasson
of WSU tennis star Savanna Ly-Nguyen
Undefeated freshman becomes WSU tennis star
Savanna Ly-Nguyen
After only
one month, she has proven to be crucial player on tennis team, she feels at
home in Pullman
By TY
EKLUND, Evergreen
January
24, 2019
(Info from News for CougGroup: Brampton is a Canadian city
in Ontario’s Greater Toronto Area.)
Freshman
Savanna Ly-Nguyen (pronounced Lee-win) has been playing tennis since she was
five years old. Growing up in Brampton, Canada, she developed a roaring passion
for tennis over the past 13 years and this hasn’t been extinguished since
coming to Pullman.
She
arrived at WSU over winter break and since her first appearance at the Hawaii
invitational, she remains undefeated.
Tennis
Head Coach Lisa Hart spoke about her freshman player and said she’s added value
to the team.
“She’s
obviously a really great tennis player but she also has a lot of maturity and
poise in the matches,” Hart said. “You know she was down 4-0 in her match
against Michigan State and handled it very calmly and came back and won it in
straight sets.”
The
freshman player has built an impressive tennis ranking, and has shown clear
talent to present for WSU over the coming years.
After
preparing for the upcoming matches in Stanford, Ly-Nguyen described her young
upbringing in tennis came from her uncle who had also played.
“He really
wanted to be a tennis player but he started late.” Ly-Nguyen said.
She said
since she began competing nationally at
10 years old, every single week she saw her ranking go up.
As she
continued to play in Canada her skills and rankings rose among her fellow
players.
Savanna
was among the top five players for three years straight in the Under 18
rankings in Canada before coming to Pullman.
Ly-Nguyen
said she is proud of her accomplishments and the Canadian U18 tournaments were
a good experience for her.
“Getting
fourth and fifth place in the Under 18 Nationals was one of my biggest
achievements,” Ly-Nguyen said. “Because all the top players from Canada were
all coming together, competing against each other was really great for me to
get to the top five.”
Ly-Nguyen’s
last U18 tournament was in 2017. Following those successful tournaments was her
appearance in Vietnam.
There, she
played tennis in a new environment. She said she appreciated the nice weather
and could play full days outside.
She said
she experienced a different tennis culture there but enjoyed visiting part of
her native country.
During
this time in Vietnam, WSU Assistant Coach Trang Huynh contacted Ly-Nguyen and
gave her details on the university and the tennis program.
“She asked
me if I would like to play college tennis and at the time I didn’t know about
WSU,” Ly-Nguyen said. “I was very interested … When I came to visit here I just
loved it. Everyone was super nice.”
Savanna
said Pullman was more peaceful and rural away from the city of her hometown in
Brampton, where it can be too loud.
Since
making her debut at WSU, Savanna made big wins for the team. During her first appearance at the Hawaii invitational,
she won all three of her singles matches.
Ly-Nguyen
would go on to win every one of her singles matches against the University of
Idaho, Eastern Washington and Michigan State. She also holds a win in her only
doubles match against the University of Montana.
This
undefeated nature is a staple point in WSU’s 5-0 record so far this year.
Ly-Nguyen has already become a part of the Cougar family even after only being
with the team for a month.
“So far
the best thing that I’ve experienced here is just the team in general,”
Ly-Nguyen said. “Everyone is being supportive of each other … we’re kind of
like a big family.
:::::::::::::::::
Oregon at WASHINGTON
STATE women’s basketball
7pm Fri.,
Jan. 25
Live Stats
WSUCougars.com
Watch
Pac-12 Networks (Greg Heister & Layshia Clarendon)
Listen
WSU IMG Radio Network
--The
Cougars welcome Oregon to Beasley Thursday for the second of three-straight
top-10 matchups. The two teams met on Jan. 6 in Eugene with the Ducks taking a
98-58 win.
--After
that, starting noon, Sunday, Jan. 27, in Pullman, it will be Oregon State at
WSU.
Both games
on Friel Court at Beasley Coliseum on the WSU campus in Pullman
:::::::::::::::
WSU men’s
basketball looks to pick up second conference win against OSU on Thursday
By SIGMUND
SEROKA, Evergreen
Jan 24,
2019
WSU men’s
basketball will take on Oregon State in Corvallis Thursday, looking to rebound
from a tough home loss to Stanford on Saturday.
The
Cougars (8-10, 1-4) still look for their first victory away from Beasley Coliseum
this season. The team is 0-5 on the road and 0-3 in neutral site games.
Head Coach
Ernie Kent said he is focused on preparing his players for the intensity of
competing in an opponent’s arena.
“This is
the first time this season we have had our entire team with us healthy and
ready to play,” Kent said, “so the main thing this week is to get them on their
game.”
In the
Cougars 78-66 loss to Stanford on Saturday, freshman forward CJ Elleby led the
way as he scored 18 points on 38 percent shooting from the field. He also
grabbed nine rebounds.
Most of
the game against the Cardinal consisted of several runs and scoring droughts
for both teams.
Kent said
the Cougars haven’t been able to score consistently due to poor rebounding and
missing easy buckets.
“When you
turn the ball over,” Kent said, “you don’t box out and you don’t take good
shots, you aren’t going to win the game and score consistently.”
Oregon
State (11-6, 3-2) comes off of an 11-point road loss to Arizona on Saturday.
Leading the way for the Beavers was junior forward Tres Tinkle who collected 25
points, 10 rebounds and four assists.
Oregon
State took the lead in the first two minutes but would spend the rest of the
game trailing Arizona. The Beavers struggled to take care of the ball against
the Wildcats, committing 15 turnovers.
After
competing against the Beavers, WSU will battle Oregon in Eugene on Sunday. The
Ducks (11-7, 2-3) are coming off a close 78-64 road loss to Arizona State
University on Saturday.
The first
half of the game for Oregon went very much like a tug of war match with both
teams trading baskets back and forth. A standout performer in the Ducks defeat
was junior guard Payton Pritchard who racked up 20 points, six rebounds and
three steals.
Kent has a
special connection to the Ducks. He graduated from Oregon in 1977 and spent 13
years as the head coach of the basketball team from 1997-2010.
Kent said
he is looking forward to going back to his alma mater, but he’s focused more on
having his team ready to play.
“Half of
my adult career has been spent in Eugene from my playing days to my coaching
days to living there and having [my] kids raised there,” Kent said, “so … this
is a different kind of feel than any other road trip.”
WSU will
play Oregon State 8 p.m. Thursday at Gill Coliseum and Oregon 5 p.m. Sunday at
Matthew Knight Arena. The Beavers game can also be seen live on Pac-12
Networks.
::::::::::::::::::::::::
See the
following with links here:
https://www.oregonlive.com/sports/2019/01/canzano-vote-of-confidence-or-a-mounting-movement-in-pac-12-world.html
John Canzano:
Vote of confidence? Or a mounting movement in Pac-12 world?
Updated
7:40 AM; Posted Jan 23, 10:35 AM
By John
Canzano | The Oregonian
Arizona
State president Michael Crow recently gave Pac-12 Conference leadership a
well-planted public vote of confidence.
Sorry, I
couldn’t help but shake my head.
Crow is
one of Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott’s closest supporters. The other is
Oregon State president Edward Ray, who is also on record saying he’s also
comfortable with the direction of things. UCLA’s Gene Block is also, mostly
supportive of Scott. Those three are holdovers, the only sitting presidents who
happened to be around when Scott was hired.
Anyone
else find it interesting that nine other conference leaders aren’t as public in
support of Scott?
Let’s face
it, the thing that Scott is most skilled at is promoting and protecting Scott.
It’s how he ended with a salary that is double what SEC commissioner Greg
Sankey is being paid. Also, it’s why the conference headquarters are in
downtown San Francisco, near Scott’s home, at a cost expected to bloat to $1
million a month by the end of the current lease.
Also,
Scott has directed his strongest allies in the Pac-12 CEO Group to help the
rest of his bosses understand how great they have it. One such email exchange
was captured by a records request after Oregon State’s Ray had “replied all” to
the university leaders, and backed Scott.
“Thanks
for your note and sharing with the group," Scott wrote privately to Ray in
an email. "We’ve got some CEOs new to this environment with angry sports
blogger mob, and I’m sure some are more sensitive and reactionary to it. So
your not (being sensitive and reactionary) was very helpful indeed.”
The Pac-12
has been a financial disappointment. It’s failed to adequately support major
revenue-producing programs. College football and men’s basketball, which
represent 97 percent of the revenue generated in major college athletics
departments nationally, have been a tremendous disappointment.
But the
Pac-12 is crushing it in the sports responsible for the other three percent.
In fact,
Crow gave a sermon on why he supports Scott to the Arizona Republic.
He
preached patience. He emphasized strategy. And he pointed out, “Conference
income is a tiny part of everybody’s income. It’s just a piece of everybody’s
income. You have your own advertising, conference income, donor income,
athletic revenue themselves, other sources of income.”
Except,
Crow is flat wrong -- conference income isn’t a “tiny” part of everybody’s
income. It’s a huge revenue stream at every member institution. In fact, the
conference distribution accounted for 39.8 percent of Oregon State’s total
athletic department revenue of in the fiscal year ending in 2017.
The
Beavers raked in $78,959,875 in 2017, per internal documents.
OSU’s
costs that year: $82,730,626
No matter
how well the Beavers perform in women’s basketball and baseball, the bottom
line in Corvallis is still ugly. It’s why Oregon State was subsidized in 2017
by student fees ($2.7 million) and was handed another $4 million in support
from the general fund to bail it out.
Even with
that, it still fell short of break even. OSU’s athletic department is carrying
$40 million in accrued debt. That figure will top $50 million by the end of
2019. And so if you’re on the Board of Trustees at Oregon State, you’d have to
wonder what the Beavers' athletic department might do if the Pac-12 had a
media-rights deal on par with its Power Five Conference peers.
Spoiler:
OSU would be profitable.
Also, it
would be more competitive.
The
presidents and chancellors hold the power here. They’re Scott’s bosses. When he
talks about “being transparent” he’s not talking about the media, the athletic
directors or fans. He’s talking about managing only his bosses.
The Pac-12
hired a high-profile crisis management team to help manage its brand. It’s
considering taking on private equity investors to help bail out the members
with a $500 million cash infusion. And Scott has Crow and Ray doing his public
bidding.
Scott was
the right hire in 2009. The conference needed vision and someone to navigate
expansion and the first lucrative television-rights deal. But the leadership
need has shifted in the decade since that hire. The Pac-12 has a much different
kind of need now. And I suspect a growing majority of Pac-12 leaders know it.
Those 12
votes are the only ones that count.
Years ago,
I covered college basketball as a beat reporter. A team I covered, coached by
the late Jerry Tarkanian, had a player named Tito Maddox who was ruled
ineligible for the first eight games of the 2000 season by the NCAA. Maddox had
accepted cash and benefits from an agent.
The
following game, four of his teammates suited up, but wore “Free Tito"
T-shirts during warm-ups.
The
protest became a big headline.
Everyone
saw them. Everyone talked about them. Everyone noticed them.
Funny, but
today, I’m thinking about the eight players on that roster who didn’t join the
protest.
They made
a strong statement too, didn’t they?
:::::::::::::::
See the
following with links here:
https://www.oregonlive.com/sports/2019/01/canzano-pac-12-conference-wants-you-to-know-the-crisis-management-is-over.html
John Canzano:
Pac-12
Conference wants you to know, the crisis management is over
Updated
12:01 PM; Posted 11:56 AM
The Pac-12
Conference is no longer working with a high-profile PR firm.
By John
Canzano | The Oregonian
I received
an email this morning in response to my latest column about the Pac-12 Conference
from executive Andrew Walker.
He’d like
a correction.
Walker is
the Pac-12′s Vice President of Public Affairs and Head of Communications. He’s
in commissioner Larry Scott’s inner circle. In fact, Scott and Walker worked
together at the Women’s Tennis Association years ago in similar capacities.
So on
Wednesday, I wrote in a column that the Pac-12 commissioner’s base of support
among his presidents/chancellors (Read: bosses) may be eroding.
I pointed
out that the Pac-12 has been a financial disappointment, and that it’s failed
to adequately support its revenue-producing programs. There’s been some healthy
communication between the campus leaders. And that Scott has privately directed
his strongest supporters to help lobby the other voting members of the Pac-12
CEO Group to tell them how great things are.
I also
wrote, “The Pac-12 hired a high-profile crisis management team to help manage
its brand.” And that hyperlink takes the reader to the originally reported
piece from January that read, "The Pac-12 Conference has hired one of the
world’s top public relations and crisis management agencies.”
Walker
would like to correct one point.
He’d like
that sentence to read: "The Pac-12 Conference hired one of the world’s top
public relations and crisis management agencies.”
He likes
past tense -- hired.
Not
present perfect tense -- has hired.
Walker,
said the Pac-12 contracted with FleishmanHillard in July and terminated the
relationship at the end of November. This is new information. It suggests the
conference knew it had a brand problem before it even kicked off this football
season, which derailed during the well-documented Replay-Gate fiasco involving
Woodie Dixon.
In fact, I
think the Pac-12 has known for years that it’s in a slide.
In July
2017, Scott hired Walker, who was living in London, to head up his re-organized
communications team in San Francisco. The hire rankled some staffers at the
conference headquarters because they believed Walker often shuttled between
London and San Francisco. Walker said he lives full-time in San Francisco and
only takes standard vacation time.
“Neither
the conference nor the networks pays a single penny related to London
travel/expenses for any employee,” Walker told me months ago.
In August
2017, the conference hired Mark Shuken to head up the Pac-12 Network.
Staffers
didn’t like that, either. Remember, they’re living two/three workers together,
crammed into high-rent apartments in the Bay Area. Shuken maintains a home with
his wife and children in Southern California, but shuttles to the office in San
Francisco.
The Pac-12
didn’t ask for a single correction on anything reported the four-part series on
the conference in November. So I’m inclined to oblige them on this detail. I
think it’s fair.
Still,
Walker could have saved us both some work if he’d provided this timeline in
January when first asked about the Pac-12′s hire of FleishmanHillard. In
January, my correspondence with Walker ended with a different question -- he
wanted to know who on the Pac-12 staff provided the trove of documents The
Oregonian/OregonLive published.
Couldn’t
help him there.
Those
documents included an internal memo from Walker who wrote of the
FleishmanHillard relationship, “Our primary communications objective is to
protect and enhance the Pac-12 brand...”
Walker
wrote that he hoped to measure the shift in conference sentiment based on “a
third-party benchmarking survey.”
That
measurement would include:
Increasing
third-party voices in media and social representing Pac-12 position on issues.
Reducing
the average length of time issues live in social media.
Positive
headlines/stories in earned media coverage.
FleishmanHillard
doesn’t work cheap. They’re one of the best around. Like the Pac-12, they have
a downtown San Francisco headquarters. There’s rent to pay. For example, the
U.S. Mint contracted with FleishmanHillard in 2000 to help brand the dollar
coin.
They
started by taking exactly four million of them off the Mint’s hands.
A Pac-12
source said on Thursday that the campaign probably came much cheaper to the
conference -- maybe in the $50,000-$75,000 range for a few months work by the
firm.
Walker
declined to provide a figure.
Has
declined?
Or just
declined?
Go with
what works for you.
::::::::::::
Coug Men’s Basketball
On long march to next level
WSU’s Robert Franks has gradually turned
into a solid pro prospect
- By Colton Clark, Lewsiton Trib
- Jan 24, 2019
On
the course plotted by Washington State standout forward Robert Franks, there’s
been little employment of haste.
Like
the expansions of his physical dimensions, Franks’ development as a basketball
player has been a stepwise one; it’s piece-by-piece, a bit painstaking.
That
moderate pace is embraced by the patient senior NBA prospect and the Pac-12’s
reigning Most Improved Player. A product of Vancouver, Wash., Franks has scored
more than 1,000 career points and, as of this morning, leads the conference in
points per game (21.5).
“The
growth is gradual,” said Franks, who’s bloomed into a 6-foot-9, 225-pound,
versatile stretch forward prototype. He was 6-5 at age 18 and is unsure if he’s
done growing. “It’s just an inch or two every year.”
Of
his game, quite frankly, the Cougars need Franks and what coach Ernie Kent has
called his “calming” leadership, along with his stop-and-pop, facilitation,
long-ball and post-up proficiencies. WSU, 8-10 this season, has lost all five
games he’s missed because of injury, but Franks said he’s sound now.
Come
June, he’ll surely find himself filling one NBA troupe’s need as well. Mock
drafts have Franks as an early second-round pick. Yet there’s still time (14
games at least) to bolster his pedigree, as was the plan when Franks retracted
his name from the draft pool a day before the deadline in late May after he
declared following his junior season.
“It
felt like a great opportunity to come back, do some special things and tighten
some things up,” Franks said. “And to show the NBA and some teams what I’ve
worked on this offseason and finish what I started.”
In
a preseason interview, he highlighted a pair of facets in need of further
refinement: rebounding and defending. Franks also mentioned how he’d been given
evaluation from a few NBA teams he worked out for in the spring, including
Oklahoma City and Detroit, which helped him hone in on necessary adjustments.
He’s
nabbing about eight rebounds per game this season, the Pac-12’s No. 6 mark,
after averaging 6.6 boards as a junior.
“It’s
a testament to my growth as a basketball player,” Franks said. “Hard work
really does pay off when you put in the time to perfect your craft.”
But
in order to improve after making the decision to stay put on the Palouse,
Franks set off for Los Angeles in the summer to meet up with a peer who has
“great connections” — and to get connected himself.
“There
were open runs at UCLA and players like (OKC’s) Russ (Russell Westbrook), PG
(OKC’s Paul George) and (Detroit’s) Blake Griffin were there,” Franks said on
the summer occurrence that’s become a commonality for NBA talent. “I had an
opportunity to play on the same team as (George), and seeing the confidence he
gave me, having me shoot, that was just another thing. It was heartwarming to
feel that coming from a future Hall of Famer.”
Other
professionals he associated with included New York’s Courtney Lee, Boston’s
Marcus Smart and Chandler Parsons of Memphis.
Franks
said some commendation from Parsons — a former second-rounder — has stuck with
him.
“He
told me, ‘You’re gonna have a great senior year’ and ‘You’re one heck of a
player,’” Franks said. “That was great to hear from someone who’s been in the
league a while.”
Franks
said he’ll return to the City of Angels after WSU’s season and “start the
pre-draft process all over again.” But he’ll have about a two-week head start
this go around, not to mention an enlarged grasp of NBA work ethic and,
presumably, a wider array of tools.
And
this time, there’s bound to be a good deal of expectations, something that
Franks isn’t necessarily accustomed to. He was a former three-star 247Sports
prospect out of Vancouver’s Evergreen High, where he garnered offers from “lots
of mid-majors,” but only one Power Five institution, he said. During his prep
career, Franks also competed for the Northwest Panthers out of Tacoma, a
quality AAU club that’s sharpened notables including the Clippers’ Avery
Bradley.
Franks
was contacted initially by the Cougars in 2014 by then-assistant coach Curtis
Allen and recruited by Kent going into his first year.
“(Franks)
came to our Elite basketball camp and we saw someone who we thought at the time
maybe wasn’t athletic enough,” Kent said. “Through the recruiting process, we
lost out on a couple of players. … We saw him at a pick-up game at his high
school with older guys and he was completely different.
“You
gotta see guys in their own environment. He dominated that pick-up game for two
hours.”
Cougs
staffers must’ve detected a capacity for exponential growth then. As a
freshman, Franks acknowledged that he was “a little immature” and that between
2015 and now, his play is “night and day. From being limited to spot-up
shooting to the way I put the ball on the ground, get rebounds and assists now;
it’s kinda remarkable.”
Kent
said Franks began to “come of age” in his sophomore season, but “blossomed” as
a junior, when he averaged over 17 points per game and broke the single-game
program record for 3s made (10-of-13) in a January 2018 win over California.
It’s still Franks’ most cherished on-court memory.
But
there’s still room to keep creating and upgrading. The Cougs get Oregon State
at 8 tonight at Gill Coliseum.
“(Franks)
put in the time and did work. Credit to him,” Kent said. “From off the radar to
most improved with an opportunity to grab more accolades.”
:::::::::::::::
Washington
State’s Mason Miller is in a familiar position as another pupil – Cougar tackle
Andre Dillard – rises up NFL Draft boards
UPDATED:
Wed., Jan. 23, 2019, 8:57 p.m.
By Theo
Lawson Spokane S-R
MOBILE,
Ala. – An offensive guard from the University of Nevada was selected with the
33rd overall pick of the 2018 NFL draft.
An
offensive tackle from Washington State could be taken off the board that early
this year – perhaps earlier.
Mason
Miller would like to take full credit for molding Austin Corbett and Andre
Dillard into the blocking machines they’ve become, but truth is he only spent a
brief amount of time with both. Miller’s time with Corbett in Reno lasted one
year. By the time he took WSU’s offensive line job last spring, Dillard was
already entering his senior season.
But you
can bet both players still come up when Miller makes his recruiting pitches
these days.
“I’ve had
two in a row and most people don’t get that in a lifetime, so I’ve kind of been
laughing about it here recently,” Miller said Wednesday. “I guess I’m the
closer, I’m trying to figure it out. It’s a unique deal, it’s obviously pretty
special to get to coach two guys like that and then watch them evolve.”
This time
last year, Miller was preoccupied with filling a few more recruiting holes for
Nevada when Corbett participated in the Senior Bowl, the weeklong showcase for
the country’s top college football players that’s held every January in Mobile,
Alabama.
But
Miller’s schedule opened up this year, so he extended a recruiting trip to
Dallas to watch Dillard play in the 2019 Senior Bowl. After just two days in
Mobile, the WSU left tackle, by a few different accounts, has already become
one of the most-coveted offensive lineman on site.
Understanding
that Miller’s a biased party in this ordeal, the WSU assistant wholly agreed
Dillard not only held his ground against some of the top defensive linemen in
the country, but played as well or better than any of his peers on the
offensive line.
“I’m a
proud papa, so I’m going to tell you, ‘Hell, yeah he did,’ ” said Miller, who
wore an anthracite Cougars hat to Wednesday’s practice, held inside South
Alabama’s indoor practice facility because of severe rainstorms.
Dillard’s
one of 10 offensive linemen on the South team and rotated in and out of
throwing drills Wednesday, occasionally protecting the blind side of Washington
State teammate Gardner Minshew.
“I thought
he did better in the run game than people probably would expect him to do,”
Miller said of Dillard. “He’s so quick and he gets two feet in the ground
really fast. He went up against an SEC defensive lineman and gave him all he
wanted. Which, watching him go up against the (Jonathan) Ledbetter kid
(Georgia), who I think is a really good football player and watching him scoop
an Alabama three-technique, to me I was just like, I’m watching that going,
‘All right, he belongs here.’ And there’s no question he does.”
Dillard’s
attracting much of the same buzz Corbett did this time last year – and for many
of the same reasons, Miller believes.
Corbett
was under Miller’s tutelage during a stellar 2017 season in which the offensive
guard – now primarily a center for the Cleveland Browns – was named a
semifinalist for the Burlsworth Trophy. The OL coach has connected Dillard and
Corbett multiple times over the phone throughout the predraft process.
“No. 1 is,
neither one of them ever talked about it and I think that’s a missed piece,”
Miller said.
“You hear
all these kids today talking about going to the league. Those two never talked
about it almost to the point it annoyed them to talk about it. … When you get
that tunnel vision going, it really enhances your play.”
Dillard
wasn’t unpolished when he came into his senior season and many analysts
projected him as a third- or fourth-round NFL draft pick. But Miller may have
helped him climb a few rounds, refining Dillard’s footwork and spending lots of
time teaching him how to engage defenders with his hands.
“That’s
something I learned before the season with our new (offensive line) coach,”
Dillard told Cover1 Tuesday at the Senior Bowl. “I just for some reason had
never tried that before and I’d just kind of done the whole backpedal, two-hand
punch every single time for two years and kind of added some variety.”
Miller
drilled fresh techniques and new moves this year. The product was an offensive
line that gave up just 13 sacks in 2018 – an average of one per game – and
helped key Minshew’s record-setting passing season.
“We do a
lot of independent hand movements, hand placement, punching techniques,” said
Miller, a former Valdosta State running back who spent a large part of his
coaching career at NCAA Division II and III schools before climbing to the FBS
and Nevada in 2017. “And I tell people, ‘I’ve been doing this for a long time
with those guys. I just happen to have freak shows doing it now.’ ”
Like
Corbett before him, Dillard comes from an Air Raid system that puts its
offensive linemen in notably wider splits – an idea hatched long ago by WSU
coach Mike Leach and Air Raid founder Hal Mumme. While Minshew adjusts to more
traditional NFL concepts this week at the Senior Bowl, such as taking snaps
under center, Dillard will need to show scouts he can play within closer
proximity to his fellow blockers.
That’s
supposedly for an obstacle for Air Raid offensive linemen, but Miller pointed
to a few who’ve made the transition successfully. Former Texas A&M
offensive linemen Luke Joeckel played in a high-volume passing offense and
Corbett, who played in Matt Mumme’s Nevada Air Raid, was one of the first 40
players off the board last season.
“I kind of
think that’s like the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Miller said. “… The guy
learned how to move in a 3-foot space and cover somebody up that was faster
than him, so we’ve just enhanced their ability to move their feet. I think the
biggest challenge is they just step on each other a little bit, but they’ll get
used to it.”
If early
reports from the Senior Bowl are accurate, Dillard already has.
