Tuesday was the day to talk offense with players and coaches, so today was about defense.
The most popular player today was freshman defensive tackle Senio Kelemete, who will start despite missing the first week and a half of fall camp.
Kelemete said he was as surprised as anyone else to find out he was named a starter.
“In my mind, I was thinking about being second or third string, backing up one of the upperclassmen, and when I saw that, I was shocked,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d be starting.”
Another note on Kelemete: he is 295 pounds, not the 260 it shows on the roster.
Defensive coordinator Ed Donatell spent a few minutes talking about Kelemete, Oregon’s spread offense, and a little bit more.
On Oregon’s line:
“This is a very quality line. I haven’t seen all the lines, but I would think this one ranks towards the top. They’ve been together, they’re very quick. They’re a smaller line that what we’ve been seeing I practice, so it’ll be a little bit of a tempo thing when they see this group.”
On handling the spread:
“It’s fundamentals. When you look up and say that we won the game, you’ll say they tackled well. You’ll say this team tackled well, you’ll say this team leveraged well. Those two things will come up, they’re the key ingredients to our intentions of getting the job done.”
On Oregon’s offense:
“These guys are really well coached. This is a good scheme, this is a very good scheme, and I think the numbers prove that and what they’ve done to people the last few years. So, yes, our work is cut out for us, but our guys are up for the challenge. We intend to play very well. The power of team is very, very powerful, and I get a good feeling about these guys.”
Donatell got some laughs when asked about what they’ll do against Oregon.
“We’re playing with one vanilla look the whole game,” he deadpanned, obviously unwilling to give anything away.
Tyrone Willingham also met with the media this afternoon. The injury news of the day is that it looks like Michael Gottlieb, who has been bothered by a hamstring injury, may not make back in time for the Oregon game.
“Michael is probably more in question right now that he was even yesterday,” Willinhgam said. “It may be unfortunate that he may not be able to make it as we get to the end of the week.”
We also found out today that reserve tackle Mark Armelin will be out for a while with a fracture in his right foot. Willingham said that one to two weeks would be a best-case scenario for Armelin’s return.
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