A third of BYU’s 2021 2021 football drills are in the books, the same number – five sessions – that the Cougars got last year before the pandemic hit everything.
Head coach Kalani Sitake gave an update on Monday night on how the camp is going with Zoom, and he was perhaps a little more upbeat than usual. Minutes after Sitake finished, the Nacua brothers – Utah’s Samson and Washington’s Puka – announced on Instagram that they were going to BYU.
So there was a reason for that spark in Sitake’s eyes.
“I’m very excited about what I’ve seen from the team now, and we’ll just build on that,” Sitake said. “Last year we were done after practice # 5, so we will now try to make the next ten count and get a good momentum for us to go to the off-season and to the fall camp.”
Getting two Pac-12 receivers in the fold will help; Samson Nacua will be immediately eligible as a graduate transfer, while Puka Nacua will have to postpone a year unless the NCAA soon, as expected, allows one-time transfers.
Asked if BYU still want to add more players before the 2021 season begins on September 4 against Arizona in Las Vegas, Sitake gave his usual answer – the recruitment never really ends.
“I always want to improve and improve our team,” he said. ‘There are a lot of guys who fit into our program, and we’ll keep working on it. As long as the (transfer) portal is a thing, we need to check it and make sure it fits well with what we have here at BYU and we want to commit to what we are dealing with. ‘
Returning to an update on the Cougars, Sitake said some players have been beaten – nothing important – and they are gradually playing more and more real football, as he promised they would do last month.
“We could get a lot of 11-to-11 football, and we keep working on it,” he said. ‘I think we’re going to push it more as we go along, especially working at the end of the shuttlecock. At the moment we are still in the installation phase and trying to get as much in there as possible before we go to look and before we go to work. ‘
Sitake said he is still hopeful the Cougars can have a spring game; From now on, the numbers needed, especially offensive lineouts, are good.
On improvement, the coach said that there is ‘a lot of room for it’ and that it has already happened. He is more concerned about developing depth as the Cougars are very tough this season.
“We want to make sure we have more than 11 forwards in attack and 11 forwards in defense, and that a good amount of special teams work as well, so we have to focus there,” he said. “I see a lot of great development from our players, and you can see that guys who made sacrifices to get their bodies right and made sure they got bigger and stronger.”
Of course, BYU has four quality candidates to be the starting quarterback and replace Zach Wilson, and Sitake said the competition is as close as expected.
The candidates “all have a great sense of confidence,” Sitake said. ‘It’s because they worked hard. Now we have this big competition going on, and you see the best out of them every day.
Their job is to make it really difficult for our coaches, for whom we have to choose, and so far they are doing a good job at it. ”
Sitake said the quarterback competition inspires other position players as they compete for their respective places on the field.
The quarterback with the most player experience, Baylor Romney and Jaren Hall, spoke to reporters last week. On Monday, it was the turn of first-year student Jacob Conover.
To serve as the reconnaissance team QB in the fall ‘was an explosion, I enjoyed every moment,’ Conover said, ‘but now is the time to shine and just go a rock. “
Conover, a former four-star recruit whose mission to Paraguay for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was hampered by the pandemic, calls it a ‘super-healthy competition, though everyone wants to be the guy.’
Conover said it took a while to shake off the mission rust, but he gets there.
“Yes, a ‘missionary body’ is a real thing,” he said, “and it takes about eight months to a year to finally feel 100 percent. I thought I felt good about coming back, but here and there there are small, busy injuries, just normal missions, but now I feel like my body is 100 percent. I have never felt in better shape than now. It was a nice difference to see. ”
Equipment Director Mick Hill retires
BYU announced Monday night that Mick Hill, the school’s longtime director of equipment operations, is retiring after 39 seasons with the football program.
Only nine football programs in the country have scored more wins in Hill’s four-decade series than BYU, which had 334. Hill was 482 games on the sidelines, ‘perhaps more BYU football games than any other person in program history,’ reads the BYU statement. .
“It’s going to be really hard to say goodbye to Mick,” Sitake said. “He was here when I was a player … Just show the type of people who are around our players and how much impact they have on our lives. … We are very grateful for his decades of service. We’re going to miss him. ”