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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCEApril 25, 2012Paul JohnsonCOACH JOHNSON: Okay. Good morning. Well, I think that we had a productive spring practice like a lot of people, and I'm sure you heard this morning that there are a lot of things that you try to accomplish in the spring. Try to set some depth and give guys some experience that haven't played. It's a great opportunity for young guys. For the most part we stayed healthy in the spring up until the last week when we lost some offensive linemen, so that legally curtailed what we could do in the last week of practice in the spring game. But other than that, overall, some guys made progress, and it was a good spring. So it was a good place to start to build a foundation for what will be an exciting opening spring season game against a very tough talented opponent. Q. What was your assessment of what you saw from Tevin Washington this spring? How was that receiver spot looking this spring? Obviously Stephen Hill's going to be some tough shoes to fill there. COACH JOHNSON: Tevin had a good spring. We cut his reps back some because we had some young guys we wanted to get a good look at at quarterback. But when he played in the scrimmages the little bit he did play, I thought he performed well. The receivers are still pretty much an open thing. We've got probably four guys that are competing that are fairly close. Jeff Greene and Darren Waller were two freshmen who played a little bit last year who were big kids. One is 6'6", the other 6'3" that can run and do some things. Chris Jackson is finally getting healthy. He's a guy that hasn't played a lot, but he'll be a senior. Jeremy Moore is in that same boat. He'll be a junior receiver who hadn't played a lot because of injury, and now he's healthy. He had a really good spring. We'll have three scholarship guys come in the fall. Out of those guys, we'll come up with a rotation. Q. Is there a Thomas Hill kind of breakout guy in that group possibly or is it more of a rotation? COACH JOHNSON: There might be. There might be one of the younger guys. Clearly one of the first two I mentioned. Darren Waller has a ton of ability. 6'6", 230, probably runs 4.5 or better. He's just got to mature and be consistent. But he's certainly got ability. Q. I wanted to ask you about your linebacker situation. Obviously Julian Burnett is a tough guy to replace. Can you tell me how it looks under him? COACH JOHNSON: Well Quayshawn Nealy who played a lot last year. Had a great spring. He'll be at one of the spots. Then Daniel Drummond comes back. Daniel played a lot, inside linebacker. We have two red shirt freshmen that we're really excited about. Jabari hunt days is about 6'3", 245, a physical specimen who had a good spring. Anthony Harrell's another young man out of Florida that had a really good spring. So those would be the Top 5 inside linebackers right now going into fall camp. Q. How about nose guard? That seems to be an area you need to fill. COACH JOHNSON: Actually, T.J. Barnes played a lot in there a year ago. He's dropped his weight. He's down to 340, which is positive. We'd like to get him around 330, 335. He had a pretty good spring. Shawn Green who was a young man who was a highly recruited defensive lineman in the state of Georgia a couple years ago finally managed to stay out there the whole spring. He had a pretty good spring. We've got four defensive linemen that we signed that will be coming into class in the fall. One of them is a young man from Australia, Adam Gotsis, who is 310 pounds. We'll give him a look and see what he can do. I think he's athletic and can play in there. We can roll guys, all of our guys that can play in from cross to all those guys that can play there, if necessary. Q. Coach, you said before every spring someone kind of comes out of the blue. I'm curious looking back now who do you feel really made a lot of progress? You mentioned Hill, Morgan Bailey. Is there someone else that made a lot of progress? COACH JOHNSON: Well, I think Deon Hill had a good spring. Robbie Godhigh at the same position had a good spring. Defensively, we talked about Jabari. Getting Fred Holton back was a positive. Morgan Bailey, when he was out there did some good things. Trey Braun was having a great spring on the offensive line until he got hurt. So there are several guys, Vad got better, and so did Synjyn Days. So I think there are a lot of guys who improves over the spring. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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