On a warm spring night under the lights, the Arizona Wildcats went full pads in a scrimmage to display what they have put together so far.
With a new defensive coordinator on staff with Johnny Nansen coming over from UCLA to replace Don Brown, the Wildcats will have a new defensive scheme once again that they have been learning all spring.
“Oh yeah, I think now that we’re at the end of week three and we’ve got it down pretty good,” defensive back Treydan Stukes said. “Like our base calls. We know them like the back of our hand now. And now it's just a matter of the checks and two different formations and alignments, all that stuff.”
During these spring practices, the Wildcats have used the time to work on their fundamentals and tighten them up so they are able to do the little things at a high level come Saturdays during the season.
“I think we made it important to focus on our fundamentals, like just basic stuff like backpedal brakes, because you don’t have any opponents on Saturday,” Stukes said. “So now’s the time to focus on your individual techniques so you can apply them when you’re in the season.”
The secondary as a whole has looked like they have had a lot of confidence during spring practices, breaking up passes and playing aggressively against receivers like 5-star recruit Tetairoa McMillan.
“Oh, it’s collective, we all believe in each other,” Stukes said about the defensive backs’ spring practice. “We’ve got a lot of veteran guys in the room leading us with C-Y (Chrisitan Young), C-Ro (Christian Roland-Wallace) and Jacks (Jaxen Turner) these are all the old guys that we know can play. We’ve seen them play; we can make plays. Together, I would say they’re leading us but we all believe in one another.”
Offensively, head coach Jedd Fisch wants to make sure that he is getting everything out of 2021 Pac-12 Offensive Freshman of the year Jayden de Laura who is coming in to play quarterback for the Wildcats in a whole new system from Washington State.
“I think the biggest mistake we would make is to try to limit him and make him play in a phone booth and not allow those plays to be encouraged as a staff,” Fisch said on de Laura’s best plays coming unstructured out of the pocket. “The key is for us to be able to make sure we manage that as well. That he knows kind of when to say when, when to give up on a play, when to necessarily understand what part of the field you’re in when you’re taking off…”
The biggest advantage for the Wildcats in spring practice is having top guys like McMillan go up against top defensive players everyday such as corner Roland-Wallace which is a huge advantage for a guy who is most likely going to be relied heavily on to be the top receiver on the team in his true freshman season.
“Yeah, I think we had that conversation this morning in the staff room,” Fisch said. “I mean, I always make the joke that these guys should be getting ready for their prom right and instead he’s going against arguably one of the better corners in the Pac-12 every day. Whether he goes against him or Stukes they’re all good players and he gets a chance to compete against each one of them every day.”
With only one week left of spring practice before the spring game, the Wildcats will pick up the intensity so they can tighten things up before they make an even bigger leap come summer.
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