Kyle Tucker

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Category: Virginia Tech - ACC

■ 20 December 2008 | 3:37 PM

As if the Hokies weren't young enough ...

What an eventful day. Didn’t really expect much news to break at today’s bowl media day. Planned to gather lots of bits and pieces for feature stories over the next two weeks ...

Then Frank Beamer dropped some bombs ... some of which were already rumored on the Internet. But now they’re confirmed. Crazy. A fifth-year senior, who has already graduated, is academically ineligible. I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of that.

And while I wouldn’t be shocked to see DE Jason Worilds once again play through his left shoulder pain – despite a surgery scheduled for Jan. 6 – the team talked today very much like a group that doesn’t expect to have LB Brett Warren, who is still suffering from a left knee injury that originated in the Miami game and got worse in the ACC title game.

That means a pair of redshirt freshmen – guard Jaymes Brooks and linebacker Barquell Rivers – could make their first career starts in the Orange Bowl. No pressure, youngsters!

Well, that’s the news. And here are some quick reactions. More later. I’ve gotta hit the road back to Tennessee ...

HEAD COACH FRANK BEAMER

OPENING REMARKS: “Nick Marshman has already graduated from school here, but he didn’t pass six hours this semester, so he’s ineligible for the bowl. Jahre Cheeseman can graduate in the spring, and he’s going to go ahead and go in that direction and not play in the bowl game. (Ryan) Shuman hurt his foot, but he’s practicing in blue. He’ll be OK for the bowl game. Jason Worilds and Brett Warren are questionable for the bowl game. Worilds is a shoulder and Warren’s knee he hurt in the championship game. We’ll see how that goes. And Orion Martin is excused from practice today to get married. Felt like we probably ought to do that. We actually changed practice times yesterday. We were going to practice at 9 in the morning and we changed it to 4:45. When we did that, he said he didn’t know if he could make it to the rehearsal dinner last night or not. We said, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to choose between practice or rehearsal.’ But, nah, we let him out. He took little brother (LB Cam Martin) with him. Cam, I think is in the wedding. Cody Grimm said he’d been invited to the wedding and felt like he ought to be excused. But we didn’t excuse Cody. (Orion) will be back to practice tomorrow. He’s marrying a sweet little girl.”

ON THE BOWL PREPARATION TO THIS POINT: “I think we’ve been having very, very good practices. I think our tempo has been good. We’ve had some middle drills, which we tackle to the ground and full-scale work. We plan to scrimmage for two quarters tomorrow. I just think our preparation has been good. Now we’ve just got to carry over and keep on going.”

ON WHEN HE FOUND OUT ABOUT MARSHMAN AND WHAT THE PLAN IS WITHOUT HIM: “Yesterday is when we found out for sure. And what we’re going to do is take (Sergio) Render and move him over to left guard. And (freshman) Jaymes Brooks will start at right guard. Brooks has been coming along. We’ll see if he’s ready for this, but I think he’s got the makings of being a really good player. Whether he’ll be a really good player against Cincinnati, we’ll see. Render, he’s OK with it either way. And I think, take the young guy and leave him where he’s been.”

ON THE MARSHMAN LOSS HURTING IN MULTIPLE SPOTS: “That’s upset the starters there, and you’ve affected two positions. That’s the other thing. Render’s playing a new position and then you’ve got a new starter. But it is what it is. Marshman knew he needed to pass six hours. I mean, he’s already graduated. It’s one of those things, but he knew he needed to pass six hours and didn’t get it done.”

ON THE PRACTICE STATUS OF BRETT WARREN: “He or Jason (Worilds), neither one, have practiced since we’ve been back.”

ON WHY CHEESEMAN IS LEAVING THE PROGRAM: “I think he just felt like, at this point in time in his life, he just wanted to go ahead and get graduated and go, get on with his life. As far as I know he’s not (trying to transfer elsewhere). He’ll probably have some eligibility, but what I’m trying to do right now is make sure he graduates. And he wants to, too. He’s been on a little bit of a roller coaster here (in terms of playing time).”

ON R-FRESHMAN BARQUELL RIVERS BEING THE GUY TO REPLACE WARREN IF HE CAN’T GO: “I think he’s had 28 snaps this year. Or 38, I forget which. I think he’s going to be a good player. I like his toughness. He’s been on our kickoff coverage team, has done very well there. He’s going to be a good player. Just lack of experience is the key. He’s kind of like Brooks. We think he’s going to be good. Now whether he can be good in this Cincinnati game, we’ll see. But I mean, he’s a tough guy and he can run. I like Barquell Rivers. I think he’s going to be a really good player.”

ON NEKOS BROWN BEING MUCH MORE EXPERIENCED AT END IF HE HAS TO REPLACE WORILDS: “He’s played well. You get into a little bit of a depth situation. But again, it is what it is.”

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR BRYAN STINESPRING

ON MARSHMAN NOT BEING ELIGIBLE: “Well, it was a setback. You’ve got a fifth-year senior, played a lot of ball, a lot of experience in there, been in a lot of big ballgames. You can’t slide that away and pretend that’s not there. You’ve lost a guy who played in a lot of big ball games, taken a lot of snaps. But we’ve been full-speed ahead. We moved Sergio to left guard and moved Jaymes Brooks up. James hasn’t played a whole lot. The number of snaps he’s taken pales in comparison to the number of snaps Nick’s taken. But we’re not really concerning ourselves right now with the snaps he’s not taken. We’re concerning ourselves with the snaps he’s going to take. Those are the ones that are important. We’ve spent a lot of time in individuals, splitting up a little bit, letting myself take the tackles and tight ends and working a lot of run-game fundamentals and allowing Coach Newsome and Coach Lowe to take the centers and the guards and spend a little bit more time just kind of breaking up the unit a little more and isolate our interior three working together a little bit. James has done a terrific job. We’ve got a lot of confidence in James. I’m sure James is going to have a little bit of jitters out there. This is his first game starting. There is no lead-in to this one. His lead-in is a little scrimmage tomorrow and some practices down at the Orange Bowl. That’s his lead-in. And he’s getting ready to face a very experienced, very difficult, physical defensive line. But our confidence in James is high. We know he’s going to play as well as he can.”

ON THE DECISION TO MOVE RENDER: “Sergio just being the more-experienced guy. You’re going to put James already into a starting position. That’s one move. ... So let’s keep him as comfortable and as acclimated to the same position, the same stance, same footwork, and keep him as comfortable (as possible). The most-experienced guy in this deal is Sergio Render. And just to move him over to the other side, we felt like he can better handle that part of it. And he’s done a nice job. We actually sat down ... we wanted their input. They just felt like this is the best way to go, and as a staff we felt like it was the best way. That, in and of itself, was probably the primary reason, who was comfortable doing what. Somebody was going to have to move and so this is the way we felt like we’d have the least amount of learning curve involved.”

ON HOW MUCH DIFFERENT IT IS AT LEFT GUARD THAN RIGHT: “Well, normally when you’re on the right side, you’re in what’s called a right-hand stance. It’s primarily for getting your inside hand in position for protection, getting your inside hand in position to run-block. When you’re on the other side, you’re in a different stance. Everything’s about comfort. You bat right-handed, then all the sudden you jump over and bat left-handed. It looks easy, looks good, but it’s a little more to it than that. But we’re going into a one-game situation, where we’re not even adjusting stances or anything like that. We’re just moving a guy over. So really, from that standpoint, it’s not going to be that much of a learning curve. The biggest difference is just who you’ve been accustomed to working with, how you communicate with the guy beside you. That’s a difference. But Ed and Sergio, they communicate well together. Now, we’ve got two freshmen over there (on the right side) and they may not communicate.”

ON WHETHER THE STAFF CONSIDER SOMETHING THEY’VE WORKED WITH IN THE PAST, SLIDING CENTER RYAN SHUMAN TO LEFT GUARD AND HAVING HIS ABLE BACK-UP, BEAU WARREN, PLAY CENTER: “It is a consideration. That’s Plan B. Yesterday, we primarily did move Shuman over to the guard spot. In fact, all his reps yesterday were at the guard spot with Beau taking all the snaps at center. (Warren) probably started practice at 290, by the end of the day he was probably around 225. But that is the Plan B phase of it. That is part of it. Who knows? Something could occur during the course of the game and we may need to be in position to have our best available five on the field.”

ON WHETHER THE STAFF HAD ANY IDEA THAT MARSHMAN MIGHT NOT BE AVAILABLE BEFORE FRIDAY: “More or less, it kind of landed on our desk yesterday. We knew he needed to do some things during exam week. But you’re talking about a guy that’s already graduated. Very few things surprise you anymore. But every now and then, there’s a shock value. To say I was shocked when I got the news, that’s probably an accurate statement. We did not feel that things weren’t going to be OK. Especially when you’re talking about a guy that’s graduated and never been to the point of an issue with eligibility.”

ON WHETHER HE TALKED TO MARSHMAN: “Yeah. Our conversations have really just been ... if you know Nick, you know he’s one of the most caring, sensitive guys in the world. And I think he just wanted to apologize and the situation he’s put the team in ... that’s really been the conversation.”

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