AMHERST — Mark Whipple admitted he probably misjudged what his team needed after UMass’ loss to Georgia Southern.
The veteran football coach contemplated dressing the squad in full pads heading into its game at Florida International, but he also didn’t want to mess too much with what had been several weeks of great practices. By all accounts from those around the Minutemen, they have been practicing well every day this season, the results just haven’t translated to Saturdays.
Last week, UMass practiced in full pads all week and the energy fueled its fast start against Charlotte. Whipple said his practice plans change weekly based on what he thinks the Minutemen need to be successful in their next game.
“We treat every week different in what we feel like we need to do best to get them prepared,” Whipple said. “It’s just a gut feeling of what we need to do. Each team is a little bit different, and I probably didn’t read this team the right way after the second loss.”
Whipple wouldn’t say if this year’s team was his best at practice, but credited his scout team for its work during the week. He said the group is arguably the best he’s had since his return five years ago and they’ve helped elevate the level of work done each day.
Senior running back Marquis Young also wouldn’t commit to this year’s Minutemen being the best practice team he’s been a part of, but said the team is more focused and more committed this year during practices.
“We’ve had a lot of good practices here over the years,” Young said. “The effort is better (this year) and people believe more and we’re just trying to keep that momentum the best way we can for us to win the game.”
Whipple and his staff have stressed effort and energy from the first day of summer practice, hoping the constant repetition would build good habits for game days. It certainly worked last week when UMass started the game buzzing around the field defensively while shutting down the Charlotte offense.
“Since camp, we’ve preached running to the ball, we get graded on effort every single play,” sophomore linebacker Chinedu Ogbonna said. “It’s just second nature now.”
The seniors have set the tone at practice as well, leading by example with their work ethic on every single repetition they receive during the week. Young said transferring that mindset to the younger players has been the main goal for the upperclassmen, especially with how many younger players have played meaningful snaps this year for the Minutemen.
“We’ve been focusing on finishing,” Young said. “The seniors have been trying to set the standard, leading by example and believing in coach’s plan and just doing our job. Every day we come out here and we try to be better than the last day we had.”
The weather has made this week a challenging one for UMass (2-3) with practices being shifted around to deal with the rain. The Minutemen didn’t do as much speed work early in the week while practicing on wet conditions at McGuirk Alumni Stadium and practice was shifted indoors to the Champions Center on Wednesday.
The changes haven’t slowed down the Minutemen’s preparations, however, for Saturday’s 2 p.m. tilt against Ohio (1-2) on the road. Sophomore linebacker Cole McCubrey said last week’s win laid out a blueprint for UMass in terms of how hard it must work during the week to find success on Saturdays.
“It starts in practice,” McCubrey said. “We had an awesome week of practice, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday last week, and we just saw that it carried over, so we’re doing the same this week and we’re just going to try to play our game and go out there and get the win.”
Josh Walfish can be reached at jwalfish@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshWalfishDHG. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.