UAPB stays focused
Weather may have disrupted operations last week for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff football team, but not the Golden Lions’ focus. According to Coach Doc Gamble, starting the 2021 spring season on the right track remains a primary objective.
Weather may have disrupted operations last week for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff football team, but not the Golden Lions’ focus.
Gamble, According starting to Coach the 2021 Doc spring season on the right track remains a primary objective, and with the team’s opener less than a week away, he’s happy with what he’s seen thus far since the Golden Lions began workouts on Jan. 29.
“Everything’s been fine up until that bad weather hit us,” said Gamble, whose team will play the first of a six-game schedule Saturday against Texas Southern at Simmons Bank Field in Pine Bluff. “We’ve been able to get 13 practices in, and it’s been 13 good ones. Now, it’s about managing everything and trying to get to game day.
“All the guys have been doing well. We’ve had couple guys with some little knick-knack, typical training camp injuries, a few aches and pains. But other than that, we’ve been pretty happy with everything and are looking forward to playing some football.”
Golden Gamble Lions noted as a that whole the reported to camp in better shape than he figured they’d be in, which is a win considering they’d been off for a while and had to do a lot of working out on their own.
In fact, the first-year coach believes his team actually came back in better condition three weeks ago than they were when they held Coronavirus practices pandemic during the guidelines fall. limited team interaction in the summer, forcing Gamble and his staff to slow down the pace of workouts while essentially restoring and reintroducing previously learned concepts.
“One thing I have realized is that our guys love football,” Gamble said. “When they first got back to us [in the fall], it was two and a half or three weeks before we could do anything officially with them. And they were showing up on their own doing organized workouts. It was nothing that the coaches had put in place for them, they were doing things own their own.
“It was basically a player-led team at that time, and in a way, it still is. When it’s player led, it helps things tremendously.”
But it's been full-speed ahead since UAPB recon-vened last month, and its attention is squarely on the Tigers, who oddly enough, were the last team the Gold-en Lions defeated when they were allowed to play football.
The Southwestern Athletic Conference postponed fall sports, such as football, until the spring because of safety concerns related to covid-19. UAPB’s last game before the conference rendered that decision in July was a 45-13 blowout of Texas Southern at home on Nov. 23, 2019. That victory gave the Golden Lions their first winning season since 2012. A number of UAPB’s players who saw action in that game will be on the field Saturday, including six who were named preseason All-SWAC.
One player that won’t be in the fold is graduated running back Taeyler Porter, who rushed for more than 1,200 yards during that 2019 season. He ran for 197 yards and two touchdowns against Texas Southern in 2019. Gamble said his team is going to use a committee approach to account for his loss, but he’s got experience on the offensive line and at wide receiver, not to mention returning quarterback Skyler Perry, that should help ease that transition.
Defensively, there are a few holes that UAPB is going to have to fill to go along with a solid nucleus of returnees led by defensive lineman Xavier Mitchell and defensive back Shawn Steele.
That’s not to say that Gamble doesn’t have his concerns ahead of the Golden Lions’ first game.
“It’s still some things that you kind of worry about,” he said. “You basically kind of see how it’s going to shape up against another opponent. I told the guys that we’ve got guys that we can go play with out of that first unit on both sides of the ball.
“But it’s really about that next guy in. You play with your starters, but you win with the next guy in.”