Spring Football Practice Begins Thursday
Head coach Joey Jones working with the field goal unit during South Alabama’s Scrimmage on Saturday, March 3, 2012.
The University of South Alabama football will take advantage of it’s location to open spring practice early. They will be one of the earliest schools to open spring practice in the nation, thanks to the more mild weather we experience in the southern portion of the US.
The Jags are set to hit the practice fields at 6am on Thursday in shorts and helmets for a two-hour workout. If you know the Jags, it’s not the only time they will hit the fields early in the morning either. Their Tuesday and Thursday dates will hit the field around 6am each time. Of the 15 practices they are allowed during the spring period, nine of them will be on Tuesday or Thursday.
They also have practices scheduled on Saturday’s and Sunday’s with one Saturday practice scheduled for 9am and the rest of them scheduled for around 9:45am. The Sunday practices are scheduled for 3pm. As always, these are tentative dates and are subject to change. (See bottom for complete schedule)
The Red-Blue game will be the only practice session that is not held on campus, but rather at Ladd-Peebles Stadium as in years past. The spring game is set to be the Jaguars final practice session of spring drills and will begin at 2pm on April 6.
The week of March 18th is spring break for the University and the team will have a break from practices as well. They are scheduled for a scrimmage on Thursday, March 7 then return to the practice field on Tuesday, March 19 after spring break.
Seven Jaguars will not be able to participate in spring drills when they being on Thursday due to injuries or recovering from injuries from last season. Ucambre Williams and Shaun Artz will not practice. Both are recovering from surgeries. Defensive backs Anthony Harris and Montell Garner, defensive lineman Randon Carnathan, running back Desmond Jones and tight end Jared Palmer will all miss at least part of and possibly all of spring practice.
DaMon Husband has informed head coach Joey Jones that he has decided not to play football. Husband, a 6’1″ 340-pound offensive lineman was a standout player for Williamson High School. He will continue pursuing his degree at the University.
Ceasare Johnson, who missed all of last season with a blood clot, is expected to be ready for the Jaguars first practice on Thursday. Johnson was redshirted in 2011 after transferring Coahoma (Miss.) Community College. As a sophomore, the 6’5″ 275-pound defensive lineman collected 70 tackles, 51 solo, and six sacks. Last spring he was voted the most-improved defensive lineman but developed the blood clots before fall camp began.
The Jags are expected to have 96 players on the spring roster with 55 on offense and 41 on defense. Coach Jones and Coach Matthews will have their largest group of players on the offensive line (16) and wide receiver (15).
Ross Metheny is the returning starter from last season. with C.J. Bennett transferring after last season, the Jags will still have five quarterbacks looking to get work at the position. Brandon Bridge, who had to sit out last season due to transfer rules, is one to watch in the group. Trey Fetner, Grant Powell and Kolt Peavey will also be working to improve and get more time.
In addition to new student-athletes joining the team, they will have new coaches on the field, all on defense. Defensive coordinator Kevin Sherrer takes over for Bill Clark who accepted the head coaching position at Jacksonville State University. Sherrer will coach the defensive backs as well. Travis Pearson will coach the inside linebackers while Freddie Roach will coach the defensive ends and outside linebackers. Coach Brian Turner, the lone coach returning on the defensive side of the ball, will coach the interior defensive linemen.
“On defense, it will be about getting our guys out there working together. We’ve got a great staff, guys who care about each other and the whole staff, but we need to get them to know our players and our players get to know them,” Jones explained. “Obviously we’ll have some changes with a new staff coming in, and we will implement those, but it’s very similar to what we’ve done so they are not wholesale changes at all.”
“The number one thing I was looking for on defense was hiring a great coordinator, and we did that with Kevin Sherrer,” Jones continued. “Then we wanted to hire a couple of energetic guys up front because I felt that Kevin could coach the secondary extremely well. We needed someone to coach the hybrid position, the drop end so to speak, and I expect Freddie to do a great job with that. I think all those guys will bring great energy to the staff.”
Coach Jones is also moving Chase Smith to help coach the offensive linemen with offensive coordinator Robert Matthews.
“Putting in a spread offense took time the first year, and now that our staff has been together a year they know each other and the players know what to expect from the coaches,” Jones continued. “The whole key for us is to just get better, we have to get better on offense to have a chance next fall.’
“I think moving Chase to the offensive line to give Robert help is critical because you have five positions and only one coach even though that is half your offense. Having two offensive line coaches is really going to help us, and it will also allow Robert to move around and watch receivers, running backs and quarterbacks, which will help him from the overall standpoint of coaching the offense.”
Coach Jones summed up the excitement by saying, “We’re looking forward to it, I’m real excited about our staff and the prospects we have for the future.”
Thursday, Feb. 28th, 6 a.m. (helmets)
Saturday, March 2nd, 9 a.m.
Sunday, March 3rd, 3 p.m.
Tuesday, March 5th, 6 a.m.
Thursday, March 7th, 6 a.m. (scrimmage)
Tuesday, March 19th, 6 a.m.
Thursday, March 21st, 6 a.m.
Saturday, March 23rd,9:45 a.m.
Sunday, March 24th, 3 p.m.
Tuesday, March 26th, 6 a.m.
Thursday, March 28th, 6 a.m.
Saturday, March 30th, 2:45 p.m. (scrimmage)
Tuesday, April 2nd, 6 a.m.
Thursday, April 4th, 6 a.m.
Saturday, April 6th, kickoff at 2 p.m., @ Ladd-Peebles Stadium
15 Schools Contacted By Sun Belt Commissioner For Expansion
The Las Cruces Sun-Times reported that 15 schools have been contacted by the Sun belt about potential expansion. Reportedly, the 15 schools received emails from Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson about possible membership.
The schools reportedly contacted are Appalachian State (FCS Southern Conference), Delaware (FCS Colonial Athletic Association), Georgia Southern (FCS Southern Conference), Idaho (FBS WAC), Illinois State (FCS ), Jacksonville State (FCS Ohio Valley Conference), James Madison (FCS Colonial Athletic Association), Lamar (FCS Southland Conference), Liberty (FCS Big South Conference), Missouri State (FCS Missouri Valley Conference), New Mexico State (FBS WAC), Richmond (FCS Colonial Athletic Conference), Sam Houston State (FCS Southland Conference), Towson (FCS Colonial Athletic Association) and Tennessee-Chattanooga (FCS Southern Conference).
The Sun Belt Conference currently is set to lose four schools this summer which will leave the conference with 10 members, but only eight football schools. Two likely members that could join from the FCS ranks are Appalachian State and Georgia Southern. They both have a rich history in FCS play.
Two possible existing FBS members in Idaho and New Mexico State are looking for homes this coming football season since the WAC all but dissolved after the 2012 football season.
This could an interesting set of meetings during the basketball tournament in Hot Springs, Arkansas coming up soon.
South Alabama Athletics Weekend Update
Men’s Basketball
The Jaguar Men’s basketball team defeated North Texas at the Mitchell Center on Saturday night 69-57. Four Jags scored in double figures with Javier Carter earning his third career double-double on Senior night.
The Jags started their conference home schedule with a loss, but ended it against North Texas with seven consecutive wins. This improved the Jags to 16-10 overall and 13-5 in Sun Belt Conference play. UNT fell to 11-19 and 6-13 in Sun Belt play.
Senior Wendell Wright set a new career high in scoring with 10 points and a season best five rebounds and three assists. Sophomore Mychal Ammons led all scorers with 18 points. Augustine Rubit was held to nine points, but came down with 15 rebounds.
The Jags never trailed in the game.
USA continues to hold onto second place in the conference with a 13-5 record, one game ahead of Arkansas State who clinched the western division title with a 12-6 Sun Belt record.
The Jags basketball team travels to Western Kentucky for a Thurday night tip-off set for 7pm. It will be broadcast on ESPN3.
Women’s Basketball
The Lady Jaguars defeated North Texas 65-61 behind Mansa El’s 19 points, six rebounds, three assists and three steals in her final game at the Mitchell Center.
The trio of seniors, Mansa El, Camille Reynolds and Mary Nixon combined for 44 points to lead the way for the victory.
The Lady Jags improve to 15-12 overall and 8-10 in Sun Belt play. They are fifth out of six schools in the Sun Belt’s Eastern division, one-half game behind FAU for a tie for fourth place and in eihth place overall in the conference.
The Lady Jags will travel to Western Kentucky and play the Lady Toppers on Wednesday night with tip-off set for 7pm.
Baseball
The Jags set a new school record Friday night at Eddie Stanky Field by defeating former conference foe University of New Orleans 29-6 after a 13 run eighth inning.
Their Saturday game was rained out, but they were able to get in a double-header on Sunday which the Jags sweeped with more modest scores of 4-1 and 5-2.
The Jaguars baseball team improved their record to 7-0 on the season. They will return to action on Tuesday and Wednesday when they travel to Jacksonville, Alabama to face Jacksonville State University for a two-game mid-week series. First pitch for Tuesday’s game is set for 6:30pm at Rudy Abbot Field.
Softball
The Lady Jags traveled to Jacksonville, Florida for the Jacksonville University Tournament. They went 4-0 before their final game was cancelled due to field conditions.
The Jags earned their seventh run-rule win of the season when they defeated Mount St. Mary’s 12-2 in 5 innings in the early Friday game. They then turned around and faced host school Jacksonville University and came away with a 7-0 win.
On Saturday, the Jags had another two game schedule. Their first was against Seton Hall which they earned their eighth run-rule win of the season with an 8-0 win in 6 innings. Their late game on Saturday was against Delaware which they won in a 1-0 decision.
The Lady Jags will be back in action on Thursday when they travel to Tuscaloosa for a make-up game against the University of Alabama. First pitch is scheduled for 5:00pm.
Track and Field
USA had two all-conference performances in the first day of the Sun Belt Conference Indoor Championships on Sunday. They also had a new school record set on the first day.
Nick Farrell came in first place and earned all-conference honors in the men’s pole vault when he cleared 5.00m. While his teammates William Henley and Connor Smith finished as part of a three-way tie for fifth place by vaulting 4.70m.
Briana Aiken also earned all-conference honors in the women’s long jump when she set a new school record of 6.01m. She finished in third place.
Complete results can be found here on the Jaguar Athletics website.
Day two will begin on Monday at 9am.
Jags Four Game Winning Streak Ends To MTSU
The South Alabama Men’s basketball team had their four game winning streak broken in Murfreesboro, Tennessee Thursday night by the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders 85-50. With the win, MTSU clinched the #1 seed in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament.
The Blue Raiders scored the first 13 points of the game and held the Jags to a mere 28.6 percent shooting for the game. MTSU improved their overall record to 24-4 (16-1 SBC). South Alabama fell to 15-10 on the season (12-5 SBC).
The Jags only managed to shoot 26.1 percent in the first half while committing 14 turnovers before halftime. The Blue Raiders held USA to only one field goal over a 10-minute span and led by as many as 19 points in the first half.
The first 13 points of the game all went to Middle Tennessee before Trey Anderson got the Jags on the board with 14:30 left to play in the first half. MTSU also had a 12-2 run later in the first half to pull out to a 40-21 lead and would take a 41-26 lead into the locker room at halftime.
The second half was more of the first with MTSU putting together a 23-6 run with back-to-back three-pointers to pull out to a 36 point advantage.
Augustine Rubit earned his 15th double-double of the season with 13 points and a game-high 12 rebounds. Mychal Ammons also scored 13 points before fouling out of the game. Anderson scored 11 points off the bench for the Jags, a season-high for him.
MTSU had five players in double-digits for the game.
“We just didn’t play well,” interim head coach Jeff Price said after the game. “You can’t come in and play a team like this, in this environment, and play poorly on both ends of the floor. You have to do one or the other and I thought we did not play well on either end. I’m more disappointed than anything in our defense.”
“We turned the ball over and our turnovers led to their easy baskets,” Price commented. “When you come in here, you have to take care of the ball. We talked so much about throwing the first punch in this game, we know how well they do early in games, and we’re sitting there down 13-0. It’s just a big hole to climb out of here.”
“I didn’t think we stayed in front of the ball well, I didn’t think we were good in our transition defense and we didn’t guard the rim like we have been,” observed Price. “That has not been a normal pattern of our team and we just have to go back to work. We have a big game on Saturday. We have to get this one past us and move on to the next one.”
The Jags will host their final home game of the season on Saturday when they face North Texas for Senior night. Trey Anderson, Wendell Wright, Freddie Goldstein, and Javier Carter will be honored Saturday night.
The Jags final three games will determine their seeding in the Sun Belt Tournament. They continue to hold onto second place in the conference by one game over Arkansas State. The Jags have North Texas, @ Western Kentucky and @ Troy to round out the season.
Tip-off is set for 7:05pm on Saturday against North Texas and the student section is planning a special surprise at halftime.
SBC Presidents And AD’s To Discuss Membership At Tournament
During the Sun Belt Conference Basketball Tournament in Hot Springs, Ark., on March 9, the presidents and athletic directors of the member schools will meet to discuss future conference membership.
With the Conference loosing Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Middle Tennessee and North Texas to Conference USA this summer. Even though the conference will add Georgia State, Texas State and Texas-Arlington this summer, it will still leave the conference with 10 total schools and only eight schools who participate in football.
No prospective schools have been invited at this time, but the meetings will center around possible invitations to Appalachian State, Deleware, Georgia Southern, Idaho, James Madison and New Mexico State among others.
Though the conference has reiterated over the last couple of years that they strive to be a strong regional conference, they will be considering some schools that are outside of it’s current footprint. The schools that are already in the current conference footprint stand a better chance of receiving an invitation.
USA Football Previewed How ‘Alabama Lite’ Could Work
The University of South Alabama received more good press on Wednesday. This time it was the football program being covered by Billy Connelly of SBNation. He posted an article titled “2013 South Alabama football’s 10 things to know: Alabama Lite could work”.
Connelly wrote about the Jaguar’s surprisingly stout defense last season for a first-year FBS trasitionary program and Coach Joey Jones’ decision to hire former Alabama director of player development Kevin Sherrer as the new defensive coordinator and former Alabama linebacker Freddie Roach as an assistant coach.
He covered the experience returning in 2013, the need for more playmakers on offense, more punch at running back, the size of the offensive line, how the Jaguar defense was disruptive but allowed big plays, how exciting the front seven is and how that excitement could continue in 2013, the hole left from Chapuseaux’s graduation and how the Jags could get a couple of wins this season.
Connelly had plenty of statistics so go give it a read here.
Rubit Garners Some National Attention
Augustine Rubit set a new career-high with 34 points with 12 rebounds for his 14th double-double of the season against ULL. Photo by John Adams | usajaguars.com
Augustine Rubit was mentioned by Pat Forde of Yahoo! Sports (sports.yahoo.com) in a section of his post called “Under-The-Radar Love”.
Forde points out that Rubit is the only player to rank among the top 20 nationally in scoring and rebounding. Rubit currently ranks 16th nationally in scoring with an average of 19.5 points per game and 9th in nationally in rebounding with an average of 10.6 rebounds per game.
Rubit is coming off of a career record 34-point game against Louisiana-Lafayette where he also pulled down 12 rebounds for his 14th double-double of the season. He also shot a career high 16 free throws and is averaging almost 10 foul shots per game.
Rubit may be flying under the radar nationally, but he is not so under the radar in the Sun Belt Conference.
He ranks first in the conference in rebounding with an average of 10.7 per game while also ranking second in the conference with an average of 19.6 points per game. Additionally, Rubit ranks first in offensive rebounds with 4.5 per game, third in defensive rebounds with 6.2 per game, fifth in blocked shots with 1.3 per game, sixth in free throw percentage at 77.9%, seventh in minutes played with an average of 33.8 minutes per game and eighth in field goal percentage with 49.4%.
If you want to read Forde’s post, you can find it here.
Jags Add JuCo Receiver To 2013 Class
South Alabama’s 2013 recruiting class is not quite over yet.
Head coach Joey Jones and the school announced 25 players who signed with the Jaguars on February 6th. But some of those were signed in December or January and the scholarships were able to be back-dated to 2012. Leaving five or six scholarships.
Tyrell Vinson, a wide receiver from Merced, California signed with the Jaguars on Monday. He is listed as being 6’1″ 190-pounds and is also listed as having two seasons of eligibility left to play for the Jaguars.
Last season Vinson caught 50 passes for 887 yards and six touchdowns. He also returned kicks for Merced College with an average of about 26 yards per return. He was also listed as being on the Basketball team for his freshman season.
The Jags are not done recruiting the junior college ranks for receivers as they hope to possibly add one more to their signing class this year.
USA Softball’s Moss Named SBC Player Of The Week
South Alabama Softball outfielder Julie Moss was named Sun Belt Player of the Week for her performance at the Mardi Gras Invitational last weekend hosted in Mobile, AL.
This is Moss’s first time being honored as SBC Player of the Week and the first Jaguar to be named PotW since Brittany Fowler in February of last year.
Moss is from Birmingham, Alabama and led the team with a batting average of .538 over the weekend by going 7-of-13 with four RBI, two doubles and her first homerun of the season. The Jags went a perfect 5-0 over the weekend with her help from the plate.
Moss started 20 games last season and has started eight of the Jaguars nine games this season. She has already tied her mark for runs scored from last season with nine, seven of them coming over the weekend in the Mardi Gras Invitational. She also had 11 hits last season and already has nine this season.
Jags Softball Go 5-0 Over Weekend To Sweep Mardi Gras Invitational
The Jaguar Softball team completed a big weekend in the Mardi Gras Invitational hosted by South Alabama over the weekend. They won all five games over the weekend.
They opened on Friday when they hosted Central Arkansas and defeated them 11-2 in six innings in their second run-rule victory of the week. Seven Jaguars had hits in the game with Hannah Campbell retiring 13 straight Central Arkansas batters.
Then they came back for two games on Saturday. The first against Ole Miss which the Jags won 4-2. The Jags would strike first with two runs in the second inning, then again in the fourth inning to take a 4-0 lead into the top of the fifth. The Rebels would manage to get onto the board with two runs of their own in the top of the fifth, but would not be able to get any more runs across the plate.
Blair Johnson would double to right center to drive in the Jaguars first two runs. Then Julie Moss would hit a solo home run over the center field wall for the first run in the fourth inning, then freshman Sephanie Pilkington would also hit a solo home run for their fourth run of the game.
The Lady Jaguars then turned around and played Lamar later in the day to an 8-0 win in five innings for their third run-rule victory of the season.
Jessica Dobson and Kaleigh Floore would combine to hold the Cardinals scoreless with only two hits and no walks. While the Jags would score in each of the five innings of play in the game.
On Sunday, The Jags would defeat Central Arkansas again in a 7-4 game. THey would score four runs in the fifth inning to break a 2-2 tie and take a 6-2 lead. Britany Campbell would score the final run of the game for the Jags on an inside-the-park home run for a 7-3 lead.
In the final game of the tournament, the Jaguars would defeat Jackson State 10-2 in five innings for their fourth run-rule game of the season.
Jessica Dobson would pitch four innings of hitless ball while her teammates would build up a 3-0 lead. JSU would finally get on the board with two runs in the fifth. Two runners would get on base with walks and would then be advanced a base by a sacrifice bunt. Both scored on a single to center.
The Jags would answer with seven runs in the bottom of the fifth to trigger the run-rule.
The Jags finished a perfect 5-0 on the weekend and improved their record to 8-1 early this season. It’s the best start for the program since it’s inception in 2007.
Hannah Campbell was named the tournament MVP with a tournament record of 1-0 and ERA of 2.03 while striking out eight batters and only allowing eight hits in 10.1 innings pitched.