Louisiana Tech held its annual spring game on Saturday at Joe Aillet Stadium, marking their fifteenth and final practice of the spring — one that hasn’t been short on competition for starting jobs (we’ll get to that in a minute). After running over 140 plays, the Blue team defeated the White team by a score of 26-17.
New quarterback J’Mar Smith has officially been handed the reins, and responded with solid play throughout the afternoon — throwing for over 300 yards, one touchdown, and most importantly no turnovers. Smith, a rising redshirt sophomore, is in line to be the next leader of a Tech offense that’s been used to quality quarterback play since before Skip Holtz even arrived. Smith showed leadership throughout the afternoon, something he has managed to do all spring, despite spending over half of his time in-season with the Louisiana Tech baseball team. Smith’s lone touchdown pass of the afternoon connected with Tulane transfer Teddy Veal. Veal wasted no time in showing Tech fans what he could do, hauling in eight catches for 124 yards and one touchdown. We could be seeing the emergence of the next great Tech wide receiver, something that Tech fans have also grown accustomed to in recent years.
Staying with the wideouts, Marlon Watts had the other touchdown catch when the white team pulled out some trickery and Cee Jay Powell connected with Watts on a 40-yard wide receiver pass for a touchdown. Running back Boston Scott had a nice day as well, highlighted by a 57-yard touchdown for the Blue Team. Scott and Jarred Craft will continue to be the mainstays in the Tech backfield in 2017. One last offensive note: it was really nice to Jaqwis Dancy back on the field with his Bulldog teammates. After a brief bout with cancer, Dancy returned to the practiced field a little over a week ago and was able to be a full participant on Saturday. Although he has a ways to go, he still has the explosiveness that we have all been waiting to see, and it was on full display a couple of times Saturday. While there weren’t a ton of points scored, this young Tech offense figures to continue to learn and progress into a well-oiled machine come this fall.
The defense played really well throughout the spring and it carried over into Saturday. While the defense was fairly vanilla from a play calling perspective, there were no yellow lights for Deldrick Canty and Jaylon Ferguson, who combined for three sacks on the day. Canty and Ferguson will give Tech one of the best pass rushes in Conference USA, which will help the young back seven in a big way — a unit that was more than suspect in 2016. The linebackers, cornerbacks, and safeties were flying around all day, and gave Bulldog fans a lot to look forward to come September 2. Russell Farris had an outstanding spring at linebacker, and is poised for his best year as a Bulldog. At cornerback, Aaron Roberson had a spectacular spring. Coming off a redshirt year in 2016, Roberson has a new found focus with improved technique and is becoming an extremely reliable corner, something that the Tech defense has been missing for the last couple of years. With a few junior college signees and highly touted true freshmen coming in this summer, the competition in the secondary will be sure to heat up. In the spring however, quite a few guys took steps forward in an effort to improve this new-look Bulldog defense.
Tech baseball, spring football recruiting, and much more is heating up! For all the latest rumblings be sure to join us at BleedTechBlue.com.
