By Patrick Klein
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Last year, the Arizona football team began its annual spring practice in relative anonymity because the basketball team was marching toward the Final Four.
This year, with the lack of sporting news on the local scene, head coach Dick Tomey held a press conference to kick off the spring session.
For a player's coach like Tomey, the spring practices are a special time.
"Now we get a chance to coach without the pressures of a game and we get to watch the players develop," he said. "It's a very exciting time, starting to bring the team together."
ù ù ù
Tomey will have to bring the team together without a couple key members, who will miss all or part of spring practice. Junior tailback Gary Taylor's availability is uncertain after a car accident left him with about 60 stitches in his head.
"He might be out there," Tomey said. "He might be strictly non-contact, it all depends."
Senior outside linebacker Thomas Demps will miss all of spring practice after he sustained a broken arm when he fell off a horse.
ù ù ù
One of the more interesting stories in spring practice is the return of Bryan Hand. Hand, a 6-foot-4, 295-pound offensive lineman, was granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA as a medical hardship case. He broke the fibula and tibia in his left leg last year in spring practice and then re-injured it against New Mexico State Sept. 10, knocking him out for the season.
He also lost a year of eligibility in 1993 when the NCAA ruled he did not have the necessary transferrable credit hours to move to Arizona from Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Hand's return will mean another body to compete for the offensive line, which lost all of its starters to graduation last year.
"Bryan will start out at left guard," Tomey said. "His progress will depend on how much his injury has healed."
ù ù ù
The battle to replace graduated 1994 Lou Groza Collegiate Placekicker Award winner Steve McLaughlin will not be decided this spring. It will have to wait until the fall, which is when Blue Chip All-America kicker Mark McDonald of Loyola High School
(Santa Monica, Calif.) arrives on campus.
For now, senior Jon Prasuhn, who was the backup placekicker last season, will hold kicking duties.
"Prasuhn can take a step toward winning the job, but the job won't be won in the spring," Tomey said. "Mark McDonald has to be in the equation."
ù ù ù
Spring practice marks the beginning of putting last season's admitted disappointments to rest. But Tomey feels that any work of rallying the troops to come out strong this year was done back in December in a near-empty stadium in Anaheim.
"The way the game occurred made it a devastating loss," Tomey said of the 16-13 loss to Utah in last year's Freedom Bowl that dropped UA to No. 20 in the final 1994 polls. "We lost to the number eight team in the country, they're not exactly chopped liver. But the Utah game was devastating.
"I think for the guys right then, those that were returning, that loss really helped spur them on, to realize that they have a lot of work to do. These guys aren't oblivious to what is being said, that we lost a lot of good players and that we won't be as good this year. It certainly helps motivate them."