Arkansas kicks off spring with new faces
FAYETTEVILLE – Arkansas opened spring drills on Thursday inside the Walker Pavilion after it rained much of the day.
Sam Pittman met with the media afterward and talked about what he liked, particularly with so many new assistant coaches and players.
“I thought it was a good practice to open up,” Pittman said. “We had a lot of new faces, offense and defense. We had a lot of old faces, as well, coaches as well. We walked through the practice after our staff meeting. I thought it was very well organized. I thought the kids transitioned well.
“We started the practice a little bit slow in our fastball starts. But we picked it up after that. I thought we made a lot of plays out there and had a good, solid twohour practice.”
Pittman admitted he’s never had this many new players during spring drills in his career.
“We had 19 of the super seniors come back two years ago I guess,” Pittman said. “But new players, I think it ended up being 22-23 new guys. It was our first day for some of our kids who earned the right to walk on from the walk-on tryouts as well.
“I thought it went really smooth and it was kind of exciting to go around and see, kind of like Christmas, to go around and seeing what kind of present you had out there on the football field. We had an idea about the guys we had in the offseason program but it was nice to see them go out there — the new guys, and I mean guys that haven’t played a whole lot that were here last year, as well. It was nice to see them out there play football.”
Among the new players is two interesting quarterbacks. Former Morrilton great and North Carolina transfer Jacolby Criswell and true freshman Malachi Singleton had their first Arkansas practice.
“Jacolby’s got a really strong arm,” Pittman said. “Very accurate. I think he plays better under the lights. I think he plays better in a team setting than maybe even what he would do in just throwing routes on air. I think he’s a gamer.
“Malachi had some really