MONTGOMERY— The Gold Team rallied to defeat the Black Team 19-12 as Alabama State wrapped up its 2011 spring football practice Saturday afternoon at Hornet Stadium.
The teams used a modified scoring system that awarded each individual team points for takeaways (three), 20+ yard gains (two), drives inside the opponent’s 25-yard line (two) and three-and-out stops (two) while deducting points for negative yardage plays (minus two).
The teams were split into two separate teams of offense and defense competing against each other, which differed from the previous scrimmages of strictly offense going against defense.
Gold team QB Demetric Price completed five-of-12 passes for 52 yards with two interceptions and rushed 10 times for 38 yards and one touchdown, the game-winner on a one-yard score. QB Greg Jenkins led the Black team, completing eight-of-15 passes for 64 yards.
“These guys were really excited about it,” head football coach Reggie Barlow said of the new format. “The last couple of years we’ve done it offense and defense. We finally got to a spot where we have pretty good depth and could divide the teams up. It created some excitement.
“Naturally, it waters down (your team) a little bit because you divide your players up, but I thought they enjoyed it. They competed. In evaluating these guys, we’ve done it for 14 days and today was the 15th day. We’ll look at it, make the corrections from what they did, and build on that,” Barlow said.
The Black team was sparked by four takeaways, two of them on interceptions by cornerback Marcus Berg. The Black team scored its lone touchdown on a 19-yard run by Montavious Paulk.
The Gold team made two takeaways and rallied for the win on Price’s one-yard dive into the end zone on the scrimmage’s final play.
“There has been a lot of improvement in all three phases by some guys,” Barlow said in of his team’s progress and performance this spring. “Naturally, we still have a long way to go. There are some guys that we still are expecting some really big things out of. All in all, we wanted to come out of the scrimmage healthy. We wanted to come out with a better foundation in all three phases and I think we’ve done that.”
