UConn football coach Randy Edsall gave his usual Thursday update to the local media, and as usual was a little vague when it comes to injuries:
– DT Rob Lunn, DT Kendall Reyes and DT Alex Polito have all sprained ankles recently. Polito late against Baylor, while Lunn and Reyes went down against Louisville.
Edsall said it looks “pretty good” for them to play Saturday against North Carolina.
“We’ll make final determinations after practice today (Thursday),” Edsall said.
The coach did hint, however, that one of that trio might be left out of the rotation.
“I feel pretty good about those guys,” Edsall said. “One of them we’ll just wait and see on.”
It’s a wild guess, but I’d expect Reyes to miss the game.
When asked if there were any other injuries this week the coach said “No.”
I’ll take that as a maybe.
– Because he spent much of his Tuesday meeting with the media discussing why quarterback Zach Frazer was unavailable to speak for himself, Edsall felt he didn’t spend enough time explaining how good he thought the Tar Heels were.
He corrected that oversight (if it really was one) on Thursday.
“This is an outstanding football team. This team is very, very good. And they’re very, very good in all phases,” Edsall said.
“This team is just a couple plays away from being an undefeated football team,” the coach continiued said. “They have a lot of skill, a lot of athleticism and very good talent.”
– On the Frazer front, Edsall didn’t appear to want to talk about his first-time starter on Thursday.
When asked if FRAZER had performed well this week in practice, Edsall replied:
“Yeah, he’s…I think we’ve had a good week of practice.”
– After practicing outside on Tuesday, the Huskies headed inside to the Shenkman Training Center for Wednesday’s and Thursday’s workouts. The outdoor grass fields were getting a little slick and Edsall was worried about additional injuries.
– They are facing one of the nation’s best kick and punt returners in UNC’s Brandon Tate, but Edsall said his team hasn’t spent any extra time on special teams prep this week.
“We’ve spent the same ammount of time on our punt and kickoff coverage units as we do every week,” Edsall said.
To be fair, the Huskies spend a lot of time on that during practice to begin with. Edsall seems to know how tough it will be to contain Tate.
“He’s very good. The numbers bear that out,” Edsall said. “Guys have a knack for that stuff, and you can see on film that he’s got tremendous knack for returning punts and kickoffs.”
– Edsall was asked if RB Andre Dixon might get a few more carries this week.
“I don’t know. We have a plan that we’ll go in with,” Edsall said. “We’ve got Donald (Brown), we’ve got Jordan (Todman), we’ve got Andre.”
I’ll take that as a maybe.
- Neill
