Greetings Fellow Johnnie Fans,
The 2008 season is fast upon us and I decided to start my Holiday weekend with a trip to St. Paul. I stopped at Casper & Runyon’s Nook(Hamline and Randolph, across the street from Cretin-Derham Hall High School) for a couple of delicious Hamm’s on tap to go along with the best burgers in Minnesota.
Around 1pm I headed for St. Thomas where the Tommies were hosting the Wisconsin-Eau Claire Blugolds for a preseason scrimmage. This was the first public look at the new regime that Coach Glenn Caruso is ushering in after taking over for Don Roney during the offseason. There was much reported about Caruso’s recruiting coups and how he was reinvigorating a stale football program. I wanted to get a firsthand look at the “New and Improved” Tommies as well as get a peek at UWEC whom SJU has had many a great battle in recent years.
First of all, I was pleasantly surprised at the crowd filling O’Shaughnessy Stadium. I would estimate it at 200-300 and that may be a bit pessimistic. The day was picture perfect and my gut says that just gave people more reason to play hooky from the office on Friday afternoon.
Each team ran about 10-15 plays then either kicked a field goal or brought out the punt team for some live special teams work. The Tommies are running primarily a Pro Set/Spread Offense and look to have some nice speed at the skill positions. It seems Caruso may have tendencies to bring out the trick plays. The Tommies ran several variations of the reverse as well as a delayed throwback style play. These types of plays would be designed to take advantage of a defense that is showing lots of overaggressiveness.
Both teams seemed undersized compared with recent years and as can be expected at the first live action of the season neither team was crisp. There was an officiating crew who called lots of penalties negating many of the effective offensive plays during the afternoon. I was impressed by blue chip recruit Greg Morse (QB, St. Paul Como Park) who clearly was the most athletic player on the entire field. I’m not sure if he will start the season as the Tommies starting quarterback, but he should be.
The Tommies played lots of zone and Cover 2 on defense allowing two long touchdown passes during the 1st half of the scrimmage. The secondary looked very weak and that will not bode well in the pass happy MIAC. This could also be a sign of a real potent passing attack from the 2008 Blugolds. Most of their offense was run from the Shotgun formation and the Tommie defensive line rarely pressured the quarterback.
I took a quick look at the upcoming schedules for both teams. UWEC opens with Bethel……from Tennessee and then hosts recent Johnnie nemesis UW-Whitewater. UST hosts Caruso’s old team, Macalester, next Saturday at home followed by the Tommies bye week on the 13th of September. Based on a very limited look at these two squads I would pick them to finish in the middle of the pack in their respective conferences.
