Green Claims 10-6 Win in USF Spring Game

Brian Fisher

Brian Fisher scored on the Green’s first play from scrimmage with a 40-yard fake reverse and then the defense took over in the Green’s 10-6 win over the White in today’s Hops USF Spring Football Game at Raymond James Stadium.

The White opened the game on offense, but redshirt freshman defensive back A.J. Brant intercepted quarterback Evan Kraky on third down and the Green took possession on the White 40 just 40 seconds into the game. Fisher took a handoff from Pat Julmiste, faked the reverse and ran untouched for a 7-0 Green lead at the 14:07 mark.

Neither team would score again until late in the third quarter when the Green made it 10-0 on a 31-yard field goal from Justin Geisler. The three points culminated a 47-yard drive with just 1:25 left in the third quarter.

The White’s lone score came on a rapid fire four-play drive in which Ronnie Banks was four for four passing with strikes of 5, 6, 36 yards to Bruce Gipson before a 14-yard touchdown pass to Allynson Sheffield with 11:50 remaining in the game. Santiago Gramatica missed the extra point and the White’s final chance with under a minute remaining was thwarted when Stephen Nicholas intercepted Banks and returned the ball 36 yards, allowing the Green to expire the clock.

Still, Banks was the top passing quarterback among Julmiste, Kraky and Anthony Severino, finishing 9 of 18 for 93 yards with the one touchdown and one interception.
But it was Fisher who jumped to the top of the stat sheet with 95 yards on 14 carries.

“You’re always going to have some mistakes,” said head coach Jim Leavitt following the game. “I wasn’t so much looking at the mistakes, I was looking at the good plays. The guys running with the ball, the effort I thought was very good, saw a couple pretty good catches, a great run by Brian Fisher at the beginning and he had another nice run at the end, and Stephen Nicholas made a big interception at the end. I see good things. I don’t see all the mistakes. There weren’t that many penalties, really. So I saw good things.”

The game had 12 penalties, including seven on the Green (36 yards) and five on the White (25 yards), while the low scoring output also led to a total of 23 punts. Starting punter Brandon Baker contributed 12 kicks for a42.7 yard average, including a 62-yarder that rolled dead at the three-yard line.

Julmiste’s stats weren’t overly impressive at 4 for 16 for 40 yards with one interception, but Leavitt was far from disappointed.

“I think Pat has done a real good job,” Leavitt said. “He’s a lot better this spring than he was last year. So I see improvement and that’s something that’s very important. He doesn’t get rattled too much. He stays in there and just keeps moving. He’s throwing the ball much better, he’s got more command of the offense, and he’s progressing. Is he there? No, he’s not. But if he keeps working and going at this pace, he will get there. The thing that’s encouraging is he’s such a good guy and he works so hard and it means a lot to him. He moves extremely well in the pocket, and he keeps his ball up well.”

Defensively there were a total of 11 sacks, including eight by the Green (two each from Craig Kobel and Tim Jones), but Leavitt was quick to point out two factors in the large number of sacks on the four quarterbacks.

“We didn’t have the real offensive line together,” he said. “Some of those sacks (on Julmiste) wouldn’t have been sacks because he’s so big and strong, he’d get through some of those arm tackles (QBs were whistled dead on contact). It’s not real fair when you don’t put any continuity to the offensive line together, because they’ll get a few more sacks then they normally probably would. But it looked like there were a lot of sacks and (the front four) looked pretty active.”

In addition to the interceptions by Brant and Nicholas, redshirt freshman Ronnie McCullough picked off a pass for the White defense.