Rise and grind: Cal Poly football team gets off to early start in first spring practice
Spring football camp began bright and early Wednesday as Cal Poly filed the first official chapter in its preparations leading up to the 2016 season.
Players wore shorts and helmets on a warm and windy morning at the Upper Sports Complex. The two-hour session provided players an opportunity to shake loose the offseason rust in the first of 15 scheduled practices over the next month.
Eighth-year head coach Tim Walsh said the Mustangs spent the morning installing some new schemes on defense and working to improve their high-powered, triple-option offense. He also pointed to the offensive line and wide receivers as two position groups with potentially intriguing battles moving forward.
“There’s just a lot of things that we’re trying to develop out here,” Walsh said. “… We’ve got to create a personality in the next 15 practices of really how we’re going to practice, how we’re going to play and how we’re going to perform together.”
Fifth-year senior quarterback Dano Graves took most of the reps with the first-team offense during the limited 7-on-7 period. Sophomore Khaleel Jenkins and senior Andrew Barna each made some impressive throws throughout practice as well.
A group needing to replace former standout Chris Brown will add incoming freshmen Michael Austin (Helix High) and Jake Jeffrey (Folsom High) when fall camp begins in August. It likely will take a group effort to replicate the production vacated by Brown’s graduation.
“I’m extremely excited, extremely hungry,” said the 5-foot-10, 185-pound Graves. “I can’t wait to get out there and just do the best I can to get this team moving the right direction and win some games.
“That’s my main goal is to win as many games as possible and get us in the right position to win championships.”
All-American fullback Joe Protheroe was one of several key players limited by injuries Wednesday morning. The junior from Concord is coming off a punishing season in which he carried the ball 169 times for 779 yards and six touchdowns. Walsh said Protheroe is “going to play, but his reps will be limited.”
Walsh added that senior defensive linemen Kelly Shepard, Marcus Paige-Allen and Jason Patterson are each recovering from offseason surgery, and their status for the remainder of the spring is unclear.
The return of senior Josh Letuligasenoa should help provide some stability along the defensive line.
At 6-2 and 267 pounds, Walsh said Letuligasenoa is Cal Poly’s best defensive player and the coaching staff is “expecting huge things from him.”
He started all 12 games as a sophomore in 2014 and earned all-Big Sky Conference honors. Letuligasenoa was academically ineligible as a fourth-year junior last fall, a season in which he was pegged as a preseason FCS All-American.
Players voted Letuligasenoa and Graves as team captains this spring, perhaps speaking to the respect they earned on the practice fields while sitting out in 2015.
“He was a leader for us two years ago,” senior linebacker Joseph Gigantino said of Letuligasenoa. “… Now that he’s back we voted him a captain, that shows that we respect the guy and think he’s a player. He’s gonna come in right away and make plays for us.”
Under new defensive line coach Payam Saadat, the Mustangs plan to shift from a 4-3 defensive front to a 3-4 formation. That means finding replacements for last year’s leading tacklers Tu’uta Inoke and Burton De Koning, while also developing depth behind returning starters Gigantino and R.J. Mazolewski.
Depth in the secondary also will be established in the spring now that starters Karlton Dennis, Fernando Cabico and Kaulin Blair have graduated. Senior B.J. Nard and junior Kevin Griffin return with starting experience, and redshirt freshman Kitu Humphrey and junior Jerek Rosales each have opportunities to establish themselves as the Week 1 starters.
“Spring is kind of a time for the coaches to implement all the adjustments and changes they made in the offseason,” Graves said. “It’s really a good time for a lot of the young guys to get those reps they didn’t necessarily get in the fall.”
This story was originally published April 6, 2016 at 12:09 PM with the headline "Rise and grind: Cal Poly football team gets off to early start in first spring practice."