GVSU Spring Football Classic

[tip79]

I have not attended this for years. Where is it held now?

[Redwing]

I have not attended this for years. Where is it held now?

Kelly... starts at noon.

[champgymusa]

We were supposed to scrimmage another team, but it fell through for some reason. Then we tried to get another team but I understand it is difficult to find someone who wants to scrimmage against us. So our guys will beat up on each other on Saturday.

Not completely accurate. You can only scrimmage before a certain number of practices and the timing did not work to benefit either team. Saturday will be a the last practice of the spring.

[KleShreen]

Not completely accurate. You can only scrimmage before a certain number of practices and the timing did not work to benefit either team. Saturday will be a the last practice of the spring.

They actually gonna do a "game" or is it just gonna be the specialized practice where they're practicing certain situations?

[KleShreen]

They actually gonna do a "game" or is it just gonna be the specialized practice where they're practicing certain situations?

Well, answered my own question. I went to the first hour or so of the spring game. Here's some random observations:

Avery Moore wasn't participating. He had a wrap on his leg, I assume recovering from whatever injury he had at the end of the season. So the first team QB was Alex Thole, second team QB was Vincenzo Meschi, and third team QB was Christian Johnson. Thole and Meschi we already know. Johnson was really fast as a runner, but also seemed to bail out of the pocket too early on pass plays to run. I'm sure that will improve, though, since he's just a freshman. Aidan Lucerno was dressed but I didn't see him participate, at least not during the first set of O/D matchups they had. I might have just missed him though.

First team RB was Usma-Harper, Second team RB was Eichenberger, Third team RB was split between Jones/Moreno/Jolman. All guys we've seen.

First team WR were Darrell Johnson and Kellen Reed, and then the last spot was kind of rotating, I assume that will be filled by Nott during the fall, but he's playing baseball in the spring. Two guys I was impressed with from the WR group that we haven't seen were Sean Byrd and Bwana Miller. Byrd had two different Moss'd catches over DB's.

Didn't really notice a clear first team TE rep guy. I saw Aleks Popovic get a couple catches, but wasn't really paying attention to the position.

The OL was fine as usual. Gabe Brown and Jaylin Caldwell were both there but not practicing, and Kyler Blake-Jones and Jeff Burton and Evan Valentine were playing, so I assume that's your starting five right there. Filling in for Brown/Caldwell were Josh Sander and James Kent.

Niles King was there, playing, and he looked great as usual. Jimmy Downs and Anthony Cardamone both saw a lot of time as the middle linebacker and both had some good plays. It's tough to judge the defense much because there wasn't really any hitting. The OL/DL were kind of doing initial contact and then not doing terribly too much after that. It was mostly just pursuit stuff and essentially two hand touch. A lot of it was judging the openings and pursuit angles. So not much to speak of there.

I think it ended up being almost 2 hours long, so I missed the second half because I went over and watched the baseball game that started at 1, but what they did was split the field in half and then had two sets of O/D going against each other at once. One side of the field was 1s vs 1s and the other side 2s vs 2s, and then they'd swap everyone out and do 3s vs 3s, 4s vs 4s, at least that's what it looked like to me based on personnel. I watched probably three series of each of the groups.

[DawgUp]

Anything with the new offense catch your attention? I'm sure everything was close to the vest but are you guys opening it up like Central Mizzou?

[KleShreen]

I thought they played it close to the vest yesterday. We will not be Central Missouri as we don't have a Zach Zebrowski, but GV has definitely greatly expanded the offensive playbook this year.

One thing that seemed obvious from the plays yesterday was it looks like all of the QB's are expected to run, and there's more actual designed QB runs than we're used to seeing.