Pete Carroll continued the Jake Locker love-fest today during the weekly Pac-10 conference call.
Here are the highlights of what he said today:
“I think this guy is one of the best guys to come into the conference for a long time. He’s an extraordinary talent. I’ve been wowed by his competitiveness, his aggressiveness to go along with his physical attributes … He’s a battler. I think more than anything it’s his competitiveness that I like and how tough he is. I’ve been just wowed by the guy the last few days we’ve been looking at him. We’ve been hearing about him, and now got to see him and he’s the real deal. He’ll be considered one of the best guys in this conference, he already is that, and when he has a couple years of experience he’s going to be phenomenal.”
Here is some of what Carroll had to say Monday. Also, if you missed it, here’s today’s other story, which looks at Washington’s close loss to USC last season. I kind of wish I had waited a day to write this, because the topic came up with UW center Juan Garcia, and he had some pretty funny comments about it.
On the final play of that game, the Huskies had just gotten a first down on the 15, but were not able to get a play off when the officials started the clock after resetting the chains. Some people, including Washington players, thought officials started the clock too quickly.
“I’ve just got to watch out what I say,” said Garcia, who was pretty upset last year after the game. “We’ve got to move on from there, ok? You guys will have a field day with me if give you guys something. Obviously I was little emotional after that, but I never went back and looked at it. Something like that you have to move on right away. It was a pretty tough loss though.”
Garcia said he has been quicker to get down over the ball this season, which has led to some funny encounters with officials.
He said he’s been over the ball when an official asks him to stand up.
The conversations have gone something like this.
Official tells Garcia to stand up until the chains are set.
Garcia: “No, no man, you don’t understand.”
Official: “No, you’ve got to stand up.”
Garcia: “No, I’m not touching the ball, but I ain’t standing up.”
Four players were in gold jerseys this afternoon when we went to practice, which is odd because I thought the policy in the past has been to award no gold jerseys in the week after a loss. Anyway, the guys in gold were WR Anthony Russo, WR Cody Ellis, FB Paul Homer and LB Dan Howell.
E.J. Savannah, who said he had a minor reoccurrence of the stingers that have long plagued him, was in a red (no contact) jersey, as was fellow linebacker Matt Houston, who was injured while playing on special teams against UCLA.
A few links for college football fans.
First I’m sure you’ve all seen Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy’s blowup Saturday, but just in case, make sure you watch it.
Well another little coach blowup has been overshadowed by this, but might have been funnier, we just weren’t lucky enough to see this one. It turns out that Navy coach Paul Johnson doesn’t care much about his fans’ opinions. Find details in Pat Forde’s column at espn.com.
Also in that same article is an interesting note on the Oregon Duck mascot vs. Houston Cougar mascot fight. It turns out the guy in the Cougar costume, the one taking a beating from a giant yellow and green duck, is a walk-on receiver at Houston.
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