Louisiana College Football Ends Camp with Intersquad scrimmage

With fall camp officially in the books at the conclusion of Saturday’s intersquad scrimmage, the
Louisiana College football team adjusts their schedule to include the start of the fall semester in
the classroom. The change means practice moves from the relative cool of the early morning to
the heat of the afternoon sun, something that head coach Justin Charles and his staff are taking
into consideration, at least for the first few days of this week.

“The first day of practice that comes after the first day of school is traditionally the worst
practice of the year,” Charles said. “So we’re going to practice for the first day and slow down a
little and focusing on our execution. I think that will help the freshman with their mindset. The
upperclassmen have been through all this before so they understand the process. We’ll get
back to a normal practice routine by the middle of the week and prepare for our scrimmage
with Hendrix.”

As the Wildcats transition into a more normalized in season practice schedule, they will
approach the preparation for their final tune up against Hendrix College, Friday in Arkansas, like
they would a game in mid-October.

After dissecting the film from Saturday’s game, Charles was pleased with what he saw from the
team.

“I thought we had a lot more positive things to look at, things that we did well, than negatives,”
Charles said. We took care of the ball in certain situations, the downfield blocking by our
receivers was good, and the defensive backs communicating and playing their coverages. We
need to improve on the vision of our running backs hitting the holes and things like that, but all
in all we’re excited about those live reps and that we came out healthy.”

Coming out of the scrimmage healthy was the thing that co-defensive coordinator Drew
Maddox was most happy about for his unit. He added that they, “flew to the football well with
only a few coverage busts.”

“I feel good about where we are as a whole,” Maddox continued. “Our ones and twos can really
go and get after it. We’ve just got to play together as a team. We’ve got nine returning starters
so we’ve just got to have a good mentality and not take days off and keep that fire that we’ve
got and stack good practices on top of each other going forward.”

The experience and depth of the defensive front was evident as the scrimmage progressed,
especially on the defensive line. A front loaded with juniors and seniors with years of
competition in the physical American Southwest Conference against, in some cases, freshman
offensive linemen only two weeks into their collegiate careers can create problems for even the
most talented offenses.

With the pressure from a relentless defensive front in their faces throughout the night,
offensive coordinator Ben McLaughlin got a good look at how both quarterbacks, D’Ondre
Joseph and Wayne Griffin, handled that kind of pressure.

“Both quarterbacks did some good things,” McLaughlin said. “Dre’s had a great camp and just
made some mistakes that I haven’t seen him make all camp, I expect him bounce back from
that and have the best week of practice. Wayne did a really good job as well. Four of his drives
ended up being three or four first downs so he moved the ball pretty well and made some good
progression reads, but he made some freshman mistakes too. Both those guys had good days,
we’ve just got to get some consistency at that position.”

McLaughlin went on to say that he was pleased with the performance of all the running backs,
and the play of the starting offensive line, who only saw three total drives together all night.
The Wildcats will treat this week with game week style preparation for Friday night’s
scrimmage against Hendrix College in Mineral Springs, AR. Their final dress rehearsal before the
season begins on September 2 against Wayland Baptist. Season tickets are still available, visit
lcwildcats.net/tickets for details and follow Louisiana College football on Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram.