Just like the UConn Huskies football team and the rest of the students at the school, I took a bit of a spring break myself.
I can definitely say without a shadow of a doubt that mine was no where near exciting as theirs might have been or probably wise. But nonetheless, we are both back and ready to get to work.
The last media interaction with the UConn football team came 10 days ago when they held practice at 6 a.m. New head coach Bob Diaco got their blood flowing early on with the “rodeo drill.”
“The Rodeo is one of four or five drills that we rotate through our full-padded practices that ramp up, in a controlled setting, the principles of football, block destruction, tackling, blocking, running, ball security in a controlled setting,” Diaco said. “All things that need to be present and worked on every day no matter what has happened. …” Pad level, blocking, foot action, hand violence and speed, ball security, shed, wrap up, foot acceleration. Those are things that need to be worked on every day.”
I’ll be honest I wasn’t up there to see it but it was the talk of the locker room after practice.
Oh it was awesome,” linebacker Marquise Vann said. “It’s definitely a change of pace.”
That drill is really fun,” safety Andrew Adams said. “It brings intensity to practice. Everybody gets fired up. It gets everybody going, gets a blood-rush toward the beginning of practice.”
There’s just 11 practices left until the spring game on April 12th. Obviously there’s a lot of work to do offensively and defensively before then.
Diaco did say that he saw improvement from everyone from the first practice to the third practice. Now with the fourth practice on Monday afternoon, I’d expect there to be some rust.
But with Diaco as the head coach, I’m sure that rust will be cleaned up right away.
Kivon Taylor Suspended
During his press conference on the 14th, Diaco announced that QB Kivon Taylor has been suspended indefinitely by the university.
“Mr. Taylor was suspended by the university and the athletic department and the team based on the violation of athletic department, university, team policy,” Diaco said. “It’s indefinite. There are some factors that will get evaluated by the athletic department and sports performance team that will then re-engage Mr. Taylor.”
I’ll have more later tonight or early tomorrow morning on practice number four.
Follow Ian on Twitter @soxanddawgs. And be sure to like us on Facebook as well.
thanks to John Silver of the Journal Inquirer for the video. Desmond Conner of the Hartford Courant also has video up on his Instagram page.
