Williamsport, PA - 2016 Spring Practice Summary: Mike Clark says that the coaching staff is very pleased. The team has had a good off season and have been diligent in their offseason requirements. The guys are very motivated in the weight room. The way we started last year wasn't what anyone wanted. The way we lost to Widener was embarrassing for a lot of us and our guys don't want to go through that again.
You go back and look at some stuff. We could have done better, but we lost to some good teams. Widener, DelVal, Albright, Stevenson were all eligible for a bowl game or close at the end. I don't want to discredit some teams we were close to, but we were in some game and finished 4-6. So our guys wanted to do thing differently than a year ago. Where we are today as compared to where we were a year ago is not even close in a number of ways. I don't know that our talent level is significantly different, but where we are from a strength conditioning, enthusiasm, and cohesiveness standpoint is far better.
Mike confessed that when you do it for a long time and you have pretty good success some things get lost. Most schools would enjoy winning 80% of its game (Except here at Lycoming and that is ok Mike commented), but last year was a real eye opener. The DelVal game reminded our guys that if we played well for a whole game, we could beat a really good team. An example of where we did not do that was our Albright game. They deserve to have won the conference and go on to the playoffs. But we fumbled two times in that game two times in the red zone and one time at the goal line. It was a four point game difference in the fourth quarter. Our team however was just so mentally fragile because we were so young. When things went wrong collectively, we did not handle them well. So we now are a little bit better in that regard. A lot of those early games was de ja vu as we would come out playing well and then kind of implode. The team however did progress and did better the last half of the year.
The offensive line is more experienced this year. Lycoming loses Matt Patterson who was a first team All-American. He had a very good career with us but his last year was outstanding. We are excited because Hughes and Miller will be four year starters for us. Brad Stubbs is a really talented guy and others. We will be deeper on offense. We have some guys who are relearning their positions. If they have not been in the two deep, some young guys are starting to show us that they "maybe" can become a good players. The problem is that the way we are allowed to practice now, you really can't tell if you can block anybody or tackle anybody...
In closing, we have a lot of people on the same page right now!
