‘Little things’ the focus as Dayton wraps up spring football
Dayton football players walked away from spring practice Sunday with renewed confidence that last season’s 4-7 finish won’t be repeated. The Flyers remember the good feelings of consecutive victories to end the season and how they came close in some of their losses.
“The difference between a 4-7 season and an 8-3 season — some PFL games were really one score — is really the small things,” senior safety Ca’ron Coleman said after Sunday’s annual spring game. “It really wasn’t anything major that cost us a couple games, but it’s just little things.”
And little things are what the Flyers were able to spend more time on this spring. Last spring they were learning the basics that come with a new head coach. This spring second-year head coach Trevor Andrews and his staff zeroed in on the details and nuances of their schemes. And Andrews liked most of what he saw Sunday.
“Everybody got a lot of reps, and we got a lot of good film to look at,” he said. “And to me, that’s the idea of the thing is that you have stuff to teach off of moving forward.”
The defense shined most of the afternoon and kept the offense out of the end zone until rising sophomore quarterback Drew Van Vleet threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to classmate Gavin Lochow on the final play of the third quarter. Van Vleet led other drives across midfield that stalled and resulted in punts or missed field goals.
“It was definitely frustrating,” Van Vleet said. “We want to find the end zone. But we still had some good plays.”
Van Vleet started four of the last five games last season and completed 63% of his passes for 598 yards. Andrews said coming out of spring practice that he expects Van Vleet to start the season opener on Aug. 31 at Welcome Stadium against Saint Francis.
Andrews likes Van Vleet’s maturity and his ability to make all the necessary throws to move the offense. But he also expects growing pains from a quarterback short on experience.
“He’s got to build his self confidence — that’s always the thing, right?” Andrews said. “Once you’re confident at any position your play elevates a great deal.”
Van Vleet said his confidence has grown since he arrived on campus nine months ago.
“Everyone’s just embraced me, picked me up,” he said. “There’s a big difference between that kid nine months ago and who I am right now.”
Van Vleet will get help in the leadership department from newly elected captains Coleman and offensive lineman Dylan DeMaison, who was first team all-Pioneer Football League last year. Both will be seniors.
Coleman, from Piqua, was last year’s team MVP and third on the team in tackles.
“I really love these guys and grateful they voted for me as captain,” Coleman said. “And I just want to give back to them.”
DeMaison was a senior captain in high school at Cincinnati La Salle. He made it a goal to become one of UD’s captains.
“That was something that I really wanted to work on going into the season was my leadership skills,” he said. “There’s a great tradition for this program, and just to be able to put my name with Jake Chisholm, Jack Cook, Adam Trautman, all those guys that I played with or they played right before I got here, it’s just a great feeling.”
Andrews liked a lot of what he saw. A long run on the first drive by sophomore running back Luke Hansen got his attention. On defense, which is trying to fill some holes and build depth, he liked the pass rush that resulted in several sacks, several of them touches on quarterbacks Van Vleet and Dylan Davidson in the green no-tackle jerseys.
“We know basically who we are and what we are,” Andrews said of the defense. “We just wanted to really work on building some quality depth, and we’ve got some competitions going on in some key spots on the defensive line and the secondary where we feel like we’ve got some good players that just need experience.”