By and large, the Washington State football coaches don't worry about the normal practice scuffles that inevitably occur.

Over the course of a season, 100 adrenaline-fueled football players compete and are bound to get on each other's nerves, occasionally, and the skirmishes are typically over in seconds.

But on Saturday, three major fights broke out between the scout team offense and the regular defense with more animus and far more players than usual getting involved.

Gabe Marks and Sulaiman Hameed began the first brouhaha, with their teammates quickly converging on the pair. The conflicts were large enough and long enough to detract from practice as coaches spent more time than they'd like pulling frustrated players away from each other.

Still, defensive line coach Joe Salave'a is glad his team still has some fighting spirit.

"Yeah, you never want to lose reps," Salave'a said. "That's what you can't have. But part of that, I'd rather have guys flying around and have that competitive spirit than not and we'll make (the reps) up tomorrow as we get going."

We have more from Wednesday's practice after the jump.

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I'll start off by pointing out something we got wrong in yesterday's report. Freshman defensive lineman Hercules Mata'afa was in fact at practice, albeit wearing a jersey with no number so we were unable to identify him.

We're sure, however, that we didn't see Cole Madison, Gerard Wicks, Tracy Clark and Rickey Galvin at Wednesday's practice.

Isaac Dotson, Mack Hopkins, Nate DeRider, and Nick Begg were limited on Wednesday, as was Calvin Green, although the freshman receiver saw ample time practicing with the scout team.

River Cracraft was back with the receivers on Wednesday, running with the twos behind Tyler Baker. Riley Sorenson is back as the starting center.

Robert Lewis is starting at Galvin's receiver spot with John Thompson backing him up.

Darius Lemora had two more pretty interceptions off Connor Ennis during the scout team period, including a diving pick on a downfield pass that looked to be too high above the safety's head to reach but he leapt up and snagged it.

The best day on defense likely belonged to Kevin Griffin, a cornerback who saw extensive action against USC and has played with the ones in practice this week. He had a couple pass breakups on the day and made a great play to charge Zaire Andre on a quick pass, dropping the receiver five-yards behind the line of scrimmage.

He also intercepted a pass by Ennis, as did Hameed.

Griffin did give up one big play, however. Gabe Marks drew Griffin and Taylor Taliulu (who ran with the ones at strong safety) on a deep pass. The two defenders converged on Marks but were unable to track the football. Marks appeared to fake as if he was jumping up for the ball, prompting the defenders to follow suit, before dropping to the ground and snagging the football right before it hit the turf.

Quarterback Luke Falk had another good day running the first team offense and again excelled in the red zone drill, completing a "touchdown" pass to his receiver more often than not.

The coaches lightened the mood at the end of practice by having defensive and offensive players switch roles in the red zone drill. But since that took place on the opposite side of the field we are unable to tell you what the matchups were and who won.

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