University of North Carolina Athletics
Monday Practice Notes
August 11, 2008 | Football
Aug. 11, 2008
By Lauren Brownlow
Practice was relatively quiet this morning - until the music came on right before running and stretching, which always seems to pump the team up. The second song seemed to particularly inspire the team - Kris Kross' "Jump." Marvin Austin was leading some of the dancing as the team got into its lines, despite the fact that Austin was only three years old when the song came out in 1992. No one at practice would have been older than six when that song came out (Chase Rice is the oldest, born on September 21, 1985)...
Looking at No. 90 during drills that pitted the offensive line against the defensive line, it is certainly possible to mistake Quentin Coples's 6-6, 245-pound muscular frame for the 6-4, 295-pound Kentwan Balmer. Despite the 50-pound weight difference, Coples's upper body appears just as thick as that of the current 49er. And when he went up against Zack Pianalto, the resemblance was even stronger as he pushed the sophomore backwards easily several yards...
It's amazing to see how much opposing units seem to get along. The secondary and wide receivers sit across from each other during stretching and joke back and forth. The offensive linemen and defensive linemen pat each other on the butt after each contentious repetition. Yet these groups scrap and claw in the heat against one another each day in camp, some in fairly close and physical battles. Despite some NFL training camps getting out of hand recently with teammate-on-teammate violence, Carolina's remains congenial. "One thing that all the coaches say (is), `Have your poise. Keep your cool. Play smart. Still play strong and tough, but play smart.' We have so much respect for each other that it never really gets that far," center Aaron Stahl said. "We just want to get better. We just try to service them, they service us. We know what we need to work on and there's only one way to get better at something and that's doing it."...
Stahl also mentioned that several of his younger offensive line teammates are playing very well. "Mike Dykes has really had a great camp, phenomenal. He's night and day. Same with Big Kevin (Bryant) - he's really coming along well, moving fast. He's 360 pounds and he's moving quick. Morgan Randall, he's always been pretty good. Sam Ellis, he's a walk-on, he's being playing pretty well too. So we're just starting to get a lot of depth, which is great." That depth part is certainly true - only one of the four linemen mentioned by Stahl was even on second team, and that was Bryant.
Lauren Brownlow is the managing editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
