Tulsa Football To Begin Spring Drills

NewsOn6.com

TULSA, OK -- The Tulsa football team will begin spring drills on Tuesday, March 24, following the school's spring break.

The 15-day spring session will conclude with the Annual Spring Game on Saturday, April 18. The Spring Game will be played at H.A. Chapman Stadium at 6:00 p.m.

Prior to the spring game, the annual Football Lettermen's Flag Football Game will take place at 5:00 p.m. There is no charge for the Spring Game, but non-perishable and canned food donations for the Food Bank of Northeastern Oklahoma will be accepted at the stadium gates.

All other TU practices will be closed to the general public.

Team representatives say the Hurricane will use spring drills to improve on its mental and physical conditioning while getting mentally tougher and disciplined.

"The number one thing in spring ball will be that we want to get mentally tougher, and improve on our mental and physical conditioning," said Tulsa Head Coach Todd Graham.

"This will be our third spring and naturally our guys are at a different level in their training process, but we want to become a more physical football team. We did that last year in establishing the run game offensively, and stopping the run on defense. Our number one goal last year was the same thing - we wanted to get more physical as a football team and be able to run the ball and establish the run game, and we did that to rank fifth in the nation in rushing the ball. We have to get better at that, continue to get more physical as a football team, and continue to improve our discipline. We were one of the fewest penalized teams in the league last year," added Graham

"We'll have a big emphasis on our mental toughness, our discipline and taking it to the next level. We have really challenged our guys to sell-out to the program in a Tulsa way. We're not interested in how anybody else does it; we're concerned about how we do it. We have very unique systems in place designed for our players. No one else in the country really runs what we run on offense, and the same on defense," said Graham

"We talk a lot about finishing. Our number one goal is to be Conference Champions, and to do that we feel we have to be mentally tougher as a team," said Graham. "There were too many missed blocks and too many missed tackles, and we think a lot of that has to do with our mental and physical conditioning. We have to become a more physical football team, and that all starts mentally."

For the first three weeks of spring drills, Tulsa's daily practices will take place on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The final week, April 13-18, Tulsa will practice on Tuesday and Thursday, before closing out spring drills with the Spring Game on Saturday.