WSU Fall Camp Notes Day 8: Special Teams Begins to Take Shape, WR’s Still Rotating Frantically

First off, sorry for not getting this up earlier this morning, we had some technical difficulties that slowed today down. Now onto the notes.

With day 8 in the books we can now talk a little bit about special teams (I know, FINALLY right?).

At any rate let’s talk about the special teams a little bit before anything else. We all know about Andrew Furney’s 14-20 clip and Mike Bowlin’s epic swings in shanks and boomers last season, despite being pretty solid in the overall averages. For more on our expectations of those two going into 2013 CLICK HERE. Junior kicker Wes Concepcion will be ready to kick if anything happens to Furney and to be honest I’m not sure what would happen if Bowlin went down.

The long snapper will likely be Alex Den Bleyker, the experienced junior from Cali who’s been steady in his career so far. RS junior Ryan Saparto will probably back up and freshman walk-on Jerred Sonneborn will probably redshirt and get prepared to take over in a couple year. Yesterday, Den Bleyker and Austin Apodaca did some work on the side with the snap and hold at the beginning of practice.

Moving on to the return game. Last season, when the Cougs did get an opportunity to grab a kick they did a mite decent, placing 6th in the Pac-12 overall for kick returns with a 21.9 average and 7th in punt return average with 6.85 yards per attempt.

Still, Washington State needs more explosive results out of that area, as they were 1 of 5 teams in the conference not to take a kick of any kind to the house. Yesterday five players were “returning” punts (actually more just catching them), in an effort to find the most bang for the buck. Rickey Galvin, Leon Brooks, Jamal Morrow, Brett Bartolone and Robert Lewis all put in time there and out of that group I’m fairly certain I’d like to see either of the freshmen (Morrow, Lewis) take that job.

Day 8 saw yet another receiver shine with some big catches, this time Dominique Williams. It’s been a frantic and dizzying camp as far as trying to keep track of the receivers, but it’s a good problem to have. The coaching staff is adamant that the best 8 will be in the rotation for Auburn in 3 weeks, but that they have also not figured out who the best 8 are at this point. With freshman River Cracraft in the mix, I count 10 players with the opportunity; Cracraft, Kristoff Williams, Dominique Williams, Brett Bartolone, Rickey Galvin, Robert Lewis, Vince Mayle, Isiah Myers, Bobby Ratliff and Gabe Marks.

In that group, who do you think are the odd guys out? Or is it possible that the coaches choose to use 9 or all 10 of those guys? On to day 9!

Go Cougs!