WSU saves wear and tear at practice
COUGARS
With the number of Washington State players banged up – not injured mind you, though there are quite a few of those, but banged up – the coaching staff decided to go in shorts, T-shirts, shoulder pads and helmets today. In other words, not full pads. There's a desire to save bodies and energy for Saturday, which should be a physical battle from the opening kickoff. For more on Tuesday's practice, and Paul Wulff's conference calls, read on.
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• OK, I'm going to admit I'm going to be a little lazy. As I took some time today to check out some basketball, I didn't get to summarize Wulff's local conference call. If you are interested in what he had to say, you can watch it the highlights here. We don't want to skip it completely, however, so we will touch on a couple key elements. ... Wulff talked extensively about Stanford and its intensity and how his team will have to match it – which will be the subject of our preview story on Saturday. ... He also talked about Andrew Luck's talents, which became part of our Pac-10 notebook that will be in tomorrow's S-R. ... The offensive line is in flux, as you well know, but Wulff was non-committal concerning what will happen. We can tell you that, at Tuesday's practice, John Fullington spent the entire time at left tackle with the ones, with Micah Hannam at right tackle. The twos included, from left to right, Alex Reitnouer (Wulff said there is still a chance his redshirt could be pulled if that was what they needed and Reitnouer agreed to it), Andrew Roxas, Chris Prummer, Elliott Bosch and Skylar Stormo. The Stormo experiment was all about building depth for the tackle position. Wulff talked about Bosch, the walk-on from Spokane's Ferris High, who is the nephew of senior associate athletic director John Johnson. Wulff said he expects Bosch to be in the mix next year for a starting spot – he has worked at center some as well – and is a good example of the importance of a strong walk-on program. By the way, usual left guard Wade Jacobson did work some at left tackle as well with the second group. ... Wulff also was on the Pac-10 call today and talked about a lot of the same subjects. He also talked some about recruiting Marquess Wilson, saying Todd Sturdy was the point man on that and they decided to offer the freshman due to their projections of what he could become. It seems to be panning out. ... Enough of the talk. Let's get back to practice. Alex Hoffman-Ellis rested his sore body today, so the linebacking corps was once again Myron Beck, C.J. Mizell and Sekope Kaufusi. Mike Ledgerwood was back and ran with the twos at the Mike spot. ... Aire Justin was also back and worked on returns. He also ran with the twos at cornerback. ... Talked with Tyson Pencer in the hall today and he said he was feeling better, but it would be a while before he's back. ... And that's all we've got tonight.
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• So that's it for now. We'll be back in the morning. Until then ...
