Illini Continue Training Camp Practices
August 1, 2022 | Football
News
The Fighting Illini were back on the Memorial Stadium turf on Monday for the third day of training camp.
Associate head coach and outside linebackers coach Kevin Kane and assistant head coach and wide receivers coach George McDonald are happy with the progress their position rooms have made thus far, while the players continue to bring energy and intensity to the field.
With three days of practice in the summer heat behind us, Illinois still has progress to be made with opening kickoff inching closer.
Randolph feels good after suffering an injury in the spring
After missing a large chunk of spring practices with an injury, sophomore defensive lineman Keith Randolph Jr. is back and better than ever.
"I'm so excited to get back out there with my brothers," Randolph said. "Just being back out there makes me feel alive again. You know, when I was out in the spring, it made me love the game so much more. You know, and I already loved it a ton, and I love it so much more to see my boys out there grinding. I'm just happy I can be back out there."
An All-Big Ten Honorable Mention in 2021, Randolph heads into the season with lofty expectations after recording 42 tackles, four sacks, one interception, and one forced fumble last year.
With one year in defensive coordinator Ryan Walters' defense under his belt, Randolph says he expects both himself and the defense to continue to improve and grow this season.
"Now I know what the coaches are expecting," Randolph said. "Now I know what my position coach is expecting. Now I know what I'm expecting out of myself, and now I know what my teammates expect out of me and what I expect out of my teammates."
The defensive line returns a few familiar faces, including sophomore Jer'Zhan Newton and seniors Calvin Avery and Jamal Woods.
Despite being listed as a sophomore, Randolph enters his fourth season at Illinois, which has pushed him to become more of a leader in the locker room. With the Illini defense ready to dominate once again, Randolph knows his role and wants to better those around him.
"I'm about to go into my fourth year, and it's getting more comfortable around the coaching staff and my teammates as well," Randolph said. "We've had transfers come in, people leave, incoming freshmen. Just getting, you know, making our team more so a family."
The freshmen continue to impress both position coaches
Despite not playing in any competitive college games yet, the coaching staff has been impressed with the early impressions that the freshmen have made on both sides of the ball.
McDonald says that while all the newcomers are doing a good job, it's harder to judge his receivers since some of them enrolled in the spring and others did not arrive on campus until this summer.
Shawn Miller and Eian Pugh joined the team in the spring, though other freshmen have not had as much time to make a solid impression on their new coaches. Regardless, McDonald likes where the group is headed through three days of camp.
"They've done a nice job, just progressing every day and getting better," McDonald said. "It's been fun to watch that group, you know, for the first time all together come along."
Kane has a young outside linebacker group and admits that though his guys are making some mistakes, they're still working hard and "making plays."
"They're gonna be good," Kane said. "They might be messing up, but they're making plays. So, that's always a good sign. So a lot of those young guys are doing some stuff right now where they're not quite understand what's going on yet, but they're around football, having fun, and just playing football. I think a lot of our young guys are doing that."
The offense continues to adjust to a new playing style
It's no secret that new offensive coordinator Barry Lunney Jr. will feature a run-heavy offense in his system. Sophomore Tip Reiman is excited about his role as a tight end, especially given Lunney's familiarity with the position.
Lunney spent 2013-2019 as the tight ends coach at Arkansas, and Reiman says his new OC has "a good eye for everything."
With the starting quarterback yet to be determined, McDonald and the wide receiver room have been sticking to business as normal.
"The chemistry is with the ball and not the player, so that's the thing that we talk about," McDonald said. "We're trying to build trust that whoever throws us the ball that we're going to come down with it. And that's something that we've been talking about."
With the ground game a key asset to the offense, receivers will need to adapt to being solid blockers.
"Blocking is a non-negotiable. We're always going to run the ball," McDonald said. "We got great alignment. We got great backs. I think what we're trying to do is be a little bit more balanced, but we all know in the Big Ten you got to be able to run the ball, and to win championships you got to run the ball, so you know we're committed to the run.
"It takes 11 guys to run the ball and then when we throw the ball, we got to make sure we're as dynamic as our running backs, so I think we're feeding off the running backs."
Pihlstrom is adapting to center
Though senior Alex Pihlstrom is in his sixth season in Champaign, he is still learning and adapting to a new position.
After first walking onto the team as a tight end, Pihlstrom moved to the offensive line in 2020 and has made seven starts across the last two years. With Doug Kramer heading to the NFL, Pihlstrom will slide over to center, a position he has little experience with.
Pihlstrom has spent the offseason working with his dad to get more comfortable with the ball in his hands, and he spends off periods in practice continuing to learn and improve.
"We spent this whole May just snapping together," Pihlstrom said. "He would make me go 50 to 100. He'd make me run back and forth to a tree just being comfortable with the ball, setting it down, making sure I have my feet right every single time, so I think just being comfortable with the ball every single time."
The new transfer wide receivers are turning heads
McDonald has welcomed two transfer receivers to his group, who he hopes will bring much-needed veteran experience and leadership to the Illini.
Senior Jonah Morris heads to Champaign after spending the 2021 season at Northern Colorado. Morris played five games and finished the year with 143 receiving yards and one touchdown, and he has also spent time at Indiana and Akron.
"(He's a) Big, physical receiver," McDonald said. "He runs well. He's big. He attacks the ball in the air, so it's been fun watching his development over the last couple days."
Another fresh face is senior Kody Case, who played for South Dakota from 2017-2021. Across those four seasons, Case made 32 appearances and registered 1,157 receiving yards and nine touchdowns.
That experience will be pivotal to the Illini receiving corps, which features several underclassmen.
"Kody is good. He has really good short-area quickness, very competitive," McDonald said. "He's faster than what I thought now that I see him live. Tough player. He made a couple of nice blocks today.
"Adding those guys, I think improves the room just because now you got more guys who've actually played in college football at whatever level, but they just bring a little different intensity and a little different urgency for the whole group to develop and grow."
