Friday with Willingham

Published 6:48 pm Friday, April 11, 2008

Tyrone Willingham stopped by today for a brief chat with the media, and while nothing incredibly noteworthy came of the press conference, here are a few highlights:

Asked about the new coaches, Brian White, Ed Donatell and Steve Gervais, he said:

“You always bring new personalities. Obviously, if you’ve been on the practice field for five minutes, you can hear Coach White, he comes through loud and clear. And if you get near Coach Donatell, you can hear the real positive nature that he brings and how he talked to our guys and how he guides them through his knowledge of what we’re doing; and if you get near Coach Gervias, you get that sense of calm in a sense that we’re on the right track, we’re doing the right thing. I think to they’re respective groups, they’ve brought that kind of approach, that kind of feel to it. So far, it’s been very positive.”

Willingham mentioned before Thursday’s practice that the Tuesday practice (they were off Wednesday) wasn’t a particularly good one. He said things were better Thursday.

“We were a lot better yesterday. … It was a much more spirited day.”

In case you missed it, I wrote today about receiver D’Andre Goodwin who is expected to be one of the team’s top receivers this year. Goodwin’s name came up again today when Willingham was asked about the receivers:

“The key thing with our receiver corps is we’re getting some solid leadership from D’Andre Goodwin, and that has to be the real guy that sets the pace for that group. For the rest of the group, we’re still learning. There’s so much those guys have to learn that in three or four days you wouldn’t imagine that they would be close to where they need to be. But they seem to be working pretty hard to get there.”

Asked about battles at the two safety positions, Willingham indicated that the positions are still open:

“I think we’ve got a lot of competitions in the secondary, and it won’t just be a free safety competition. I think that competition could overflow into all of the safeties, being that it could be the best two guys could emerge as not just the best free safety, but also the strong safety.”

Willingham was also asked his impressions of the secondary as a whole:

“I’ve been pleased with the overall physical element that we have. A couple of years ago we had C.J. Wallace back there who I thought was a pretty good enforcer. If C.J. had the chance to put his pad on you, it was going to happen. I don’t know if we had that feel last year. Now with Nate [Williams], and with Victor [Aiyewa] you’re starting to see some guys who don’t mind putting a pad to someone. And I might even add [25-year-old walk-on] Tripper [Johnson] in there. It’s early for him, but he’s had a couple of occasions and he hasn’t seemed to back away from it. So, when you have guys who bring that kind of attitude, that’s really contagious. They start to get everybody excited about hitting people, OK, and then our linebackers start hitting, and we’ve got a couple of guys there who hit pretty good – Trenton [Tuiasosopo] and Donald Butler and those guys don’t mind putting a lick on you. And now you’ve got four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 guys – it gets kind of nice. It gets noisy out there.”

And finally I’ll leave you with this video from the movie Caddyshack that has absolutely nothing with UW sports. I’m going to say it’s relevant anyway, though, since the Dalai Lama was at Hec Ed today and will be back there Monday. And besides, how can you watch Bill Murray say “So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice” and not get a smile on your face.