* Sorry for the delay, had a bunch of stuff to take care of after Hurricane Irene stranded me in New Jersey – which is like being stranded in New Jersey, as you can imagine – but there wasn’t much to discuss anyway.
* Players were in shorts and shells and it was more of a mental practice than a physical one, and they’ll similarly go light tomorrow in preparation for Houston.
* Spoke to both Dalton Hilliard and Dietrich Riley about the starting safety flip-flop, and they both responded about how you would expect. Both have been told they’ll play a similar amount of reps, and with the pass-happy Cougars, I wouldn’t be shocked to see both on the field at the same time in some lineups.
* Most interesting news was probably the revelation that Neuheisel would make the kicker position a game-time decision. Kip Smith was looked sharper in sharper in recent days, Neuheisel said, but he’s still undecided. A reporter asked if the question marks at the spot would cause hesitation on Neuheisel’s part in the red zone, but he deflected the answer, saying it was more a “gut-feeling” deal. We’ll see about that. Maybe this will make Neuheisel take a few more chances on offense.
* During a recent sit-down interview – season preview comes out tomorrow, by the way – Neuheisel mentioned how far the receiving corps has come since his first fall camp by pointing out that two then-freshmen, Nelson Rosario and Taylor Embree, made important plays in his first game against Tennessee. With both still around and the competition pushing them harder than in the past, Embree is fired up for Saturday.
“The level of competition that we’ve had at this camp is unbelievable,” Embree said. “All over the board. We’ve always had the talent, we’ve seen flashes of it throughout my career, but it’s never been consistent. In practice, even when we have a bad practice, we see a lot of good things. Usually in the past, we have a bad practice on offense, we’re not even getting the ball off the ground. Balls fumbled, drops. But now, the foundation we’ve formed this camp is nothing we’ve seen before.”