9/16: Florida Gators week three practice notes

By Adam Silverstein
September 16, 2010

Florida Gators head coach Urban Meyer met with the media after practice on Thursday and divulged a few important notes about the team’s third game Saturday against the Tennessee Volunteers. OGGOA has compiled some of the key details.

HILL WILL PLAY, LIKELY TO START

Early this week OGGOA exclusively reported that junior safety Will Hill, who has missed the last two games due to team discipline, will be traveling with the team to Knoxville, TN, and playing against the Volunteers on Saturday. Co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach Chuck Heater told the media Wednesday that Hill will indeed travel with the team, and Meyer fully confirmed our report during a media availability Thursday, saying that Hill will play this week and will likely do so as a starter. “Hill’s gonna play,” Meyer said. “I’m not sure [if he’ll start]. I think he will.”

MARSH, DUNKLEY SITTING SATURDAY

One week after being cleared to play, redshirt senior defensive tackle Lawrence Marsh will be forced to miss Saturday’s game against Tennessee. However, Marsh is not being held out due to an injury; instead, he will sit because he severely cut his arm during a freak accident in which he leaned on a sink and accidentally broke it. Marsh had approximately 20 stitches and should be able to return against Kentucky. He will still travel with the team as one of its captains.

Freshman wide receiver Chris Dunkley, who has yet to play this season, continues to have hamstring problems and will remain out of action while recovering. It was originally thought he might see the field this week as he was supposedly coming along nicely.

QUOTES

Meyer on taking his team on the road: “We can’t mess up the routine. All great players, all great teams have routines. When they’re disrupted, that’s usually when you get lack of concentration on your job.”

Meyer on how rivalry games stand out: “The intensity is a little different. […] We plan all summer, we talk about them. […] It’s not that I made this rivalry; this was a rivalry years and years ago. It’s the first SEC game, the third game of the year. I was educated about it six years ago.”

Meyer on redshirt junior WR Chris Rainey: “I did speak with him, and he’s very angry and disappointed that the whole thing happened. But you gotta move on.”

Meyer on how Rainey can get back on the team: “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. He’s not on the team.”

Meyer on redshirt freshman WR Andre Debose: “He’s more of an outside guy. When we recruited him, we thought he could be that inside [guy]. […] Debose is a receiver. He is more of an elongated receiver that can go make plays. So he’s going to stay outside. He’s just got to learn at that same speed he’s been playing at. […] He’s got a lot of speed – more speed than I thought.’’

Meyer on if Dunkley might redshirt: “No, no. He’s actually had this since November of his senior year in high school. He went through and banged it again in June. Hamstrings are tough injuries. We thought we had it, because we shut him down for a while, that’s exactly what we did. He was 100 percent the last two weeks. We were getting him ready to play and then he tugged it again.”

Meyer about all of the arrests under his watch: “I try to evaluate everything about our program. I’m real upset about that. After a while, enough’s enough. If there’s something that we can improve on, we’re certainly looking into that. It’s like if our graduation rate stinks, then we’ve got to improve that. If there’s other issues in the program, that’s our job to get it better. People making stupid mistakes – that’s something we’ve gotta correct.”

Meyer on the perception that his program is “dirty” because of the arrests: “I don’t care. We do our best to win games. Dirty program? It’s not a dirty program. We follow the rules and some guys make some mistakes and we gotta correct those mistakes. But we follow the rules and we do it the right way at Florida and we have to do a better job of correcting some of the people making mistakes.”

6 Comments

  1. Gatorbuc15 says:

    Holy $hit! Will Hill is actually gonna play?! Good lord it’s a miracle!
    I was starting to think that he’d never see the field. 🙂

  2. npgator says:

    Those who are calling the Gator program dirty are by and large Gator Haters anyway so take that for what it is worth. Anytime a school has the success that UF has had it creates a lot of jealous hatred towards our school’s athletic success.

  3. cline says:

    I feel bad for Marsh. Dude cannot stay on the field.

  4. dp says:

    This should be exciting…Will Hill, Hines getting more touches running Vols over, Debose more playing time….just sad that a good guy like Rainey decided that THIS was going to be he first mistake.

  5. npgator says:

    If and when any Hurricane busts your chops about the arrests just tell them that their day is coming. If you didn’t see this check it out – made me smile.

    http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/29/1797096/new-book-to-allege-violations.html

  6. Gatorbuc15 says:

    npgator: Nice. 😉

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