Blue White Illustrated

C O A C H S P E A K omore C.J. Thorpe was viewed as Menet's primary competition for the starting spot. Thorpe wasn't mentioned by Franklin his postgame news confer- ence, but the coach said he had hoped to see more from the entire offensive line on the White team against the starting defensive line. CB McPhearson a standout on defense for White team Franklin lamented in his news confer- ence that the White squad's offensive line didn't fare very well against the starting defensive line. But there was one White player in particular who earned the first shout-out from Franklin during his open- ing statement for his strong performance. "The guy who stood out to me was Zechariah McPhearson," Franklin said. "I thought he made a bunch of plays and played with a bunch of confidence, so it was great to see that." McPhearson's official stat line con- sisted of two tackles and three pass breakups, but he was all over the place for the White defense. When he learned that he would be playing for the White team, McPhearson said he embraced the opportunity to go against McSorley for the first half, rather than dwelling on any feelings of disap- pointment that he wasn't running with the starters. McPhearson emphasized how deep the secondary is on Penn State's roster and acknowledged that he's in a battle for more playing time with guys like Tariq Castro-Fields, Donovan Johnson and Jabari Butler. Against McSorley and then Clifford, McPhearson, a rising redshirt sopho- more, showed that he's in the mix for playing time. That can come at either cornerback position, although on Satur- day, McPhearson started out at the boundary. "We cross-train, so today I started out at the boundary every series," he said. "Then whatever way the ball goes after that, we just go to whichever side. ... I feel like I can play both very, very well." Big recruiting weekend puts demands on coaching staff Big recruiting weekend a demand on coaching stuff Penn State hosted 10 official visitors for Saturday's Blue-White Game in addition to another 160 recruits who were on campus for unofficial visits. With many of them watching Franklin's postgame press conference above the media room from the recruiting lounge, Franklin took a moment to describe the complications that now arise with the new recruiting rule, which allows prospects to take offi- cial visits during the spring. "I think we had 160 recruits here unof- ficially," he said. "We had a number of kids on official visits and we have to show all these kids how important they are to our program. On top of that we have to run our program and develop our own players, so it's a challenge." That challenge, he said, forces the hand of college football programs, prompting them to hire even larger staffs to balance the load that a weekend like this one cre- ates. And now that spring football has concluded, the recruiting work doesn't get any easier. Starting this week, the spring evalua- tion begins for high school prospects. Franklin said most of his coaching staff will be hitting the road on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a select few starting their travels on Monday. Injuries force key players to miss spring game One of the most important aspects of the Blue-White Game for Franklin was that there were no serious injuries to come from it. They weren't as fortunate earlier in the off-season and spring, however. Aside from Stevens and Clifford, here's a list of the players who did not participate for health-related reasons: • WR Juwan Johnson (boot) • LB Jake Cooper (crutches) • DE Shane Simmons (boot) • DE Torrence Brown (knee) • DE Ryan Buchholz (unknown injury) • TE Nick Bowers (unknown injury) • TE Jon Holland (shoulder) • CB John Reid (dressed but didn't play) • Saf. Ayron Monroe (dressed but did- n't play) • DT Robert Windsor (dressed but didn't play) • DT Ellison Jordan (dressed but didn't play) A P R I L 2 1 , 2 0 1 8 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . c O M 8 What did you think of Sean Clif- ford today? I thought he did some good things. He tweaked his hamstring last week, so we didn't know if he was necessar- ily going to be able to play today. Our trainer did a great job. [Clifford] lived in the training room and he was able to get out there and get some work done. I thought overall this spring he did some really good things, but one of his strengths within our offense is obviously his mobility and that was a little bit limited this week. But I thought he did some really good things. He got a lot of reps to be able to grow, to be able to compete for one of those backup roles this fall. Over- all, I think he is doing some really good things. He's a great kid, he's a tremendous competitor, throws the ball extremely well and his mobility has just continued to increase since he stepped on campus. I think he did a really good job laying a foundation this spring, but he's got a lot of things he's going to need to work on going into fall camp. Why did you play Trace McSorley today? In the past, you've kept veterans out of the spring game. First of all, Tommy [Stevens] was limited today, so that's why Trace got a little bit more reps than we had planned on. We also want to be able to evaluate the other offensive play- ers, so having Trace in there helps with that, and our guys [on defense] do a really good job of understanding how to practice and stay away from our quarterback, so we're able to play our quarterbacks typically and keep them as safe as we possibly can from a practice perspective, so that helps with it as well. I think if Tommy was available, Tommy would have got a bunch of reps and if [Sean] Clifford hadn't tweaked his hamstring you would have seen very little of Trace. Can you describe Michal Menet's progress this spring? Menet has had a great off-season.

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