Price, Hester get tested
This is a different Sheldon Price.
Fifteen pounds bigger though it looks like more, the UCLA sophomore cornerback's slight 163-pound frame up to 178 now, and 185 by the start of the season, he hopes.
He's a bit wiser now, too, after becoming the butt of jokes and the brunt of punishment opposite all-Pac-10 teammate Alterraun Verner.
Then there's the facial hair?
"It's part of the gettin' big experience," Price said. "Putting on a moustache, pounds, whatever I can do."
Thrust into duty when then-redshirt freshman Aaron Hester was lost in Week 1 to a broken right fibula and then-sophomore Courtney Viney was suspended one game after Week 2, Price started 11 games as a freshman.
Now he will likely team with Hester at the two open cornerback spots.
Despite youth all over the team, the pairing of a sophomore and a redshirt sophomore - with Viney the elder statesman at all of 21 - could be the most inexperienced unit.
And one of them will have to somehow replace Verner.
"It's going to be hard to ever replace Alterraun Verner; he was a special guy," Bullough said. "But they have to. The good thing is they got a chance to see how he studied the game, see how he prepared, see how he approached the game. They're young, but they have to grow up."
In three days of spring ball, they've been thrown into the fire.
With Viney and sophomore Andrew Abbott pushing the pair for playing time, and a trio of cornerback recruits coming, Hester and Price know this spring could make-or-break them.
"They're throwing a lot at me in practice, and that's what I need, to be battle-tested going into that first game," Hester said. "Our receivers are good, they're just as good as anyone we're going to play against next year. If I do OK against them, then I'll be solid."
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