Football
Kick Scrimmage Report
By Brandon CastelOn the one rare day when kickers and punters are expected to steal the headline, it was a return man who made the most noise at Ohio State’s semi-annual kick scrimmage.
As the skies darkened and thunder rolled through the clouds at Ohio Stadium, it was Lamaar Thomas who provided the lighting by returning the opening kickoff 95 yards for a near touchdown.
“He is really fast. I had an angle on him and I think I might have clipped his cleat but that was about it,” said kicker Aaron Pettrey , who booted the opening ball for the Gray team.
“Lamaar is a great returner and he’s going to be a great receiver for us this year too. He’s just unbelievably fast. If you don’t take a good angle on him, you’re not going to even tough him. That’s what I learned on that kickoff.”
Fortunately for Pettrey and his Gray teammates, Devon Torrence was well aware of Flash’s game-breaking ability, and the junior cornerback made sure not to underestimate Thomas when picking his angle from the other side of the field.
“I thought he was gone,” Pettrey said of Thomas. “If he has open field, no one’s going to touch him.”
Yet somehow Torrence did, which is a testament to his own athletic ability as much as anything else.
“Devon is another guy with blinding speed on our team and he took a good angle,” Pettrey said. “Luckily he caught him and it didn’t cost us any points.”
Had Thomas managed to slip by Torrence, the sophomore burner had nothing but green ahead of him on his way to the end zone. A score there would have been enough (in the end) to give Scarlet the victory. Instead, it was Pettrey who blasted a 48-yard field goal through steady rain to give the Gray team a 27-24 victory over the Scarlet.
“Right now I’m hitting it really well and hopefully it continues,” Pettrey said. “Jake (McQuaide) and Jon Thoma are snapping and holding really well. They’re not giving me anything to worry about. If I miss it, it’s on me, plain and simple. There hasn’t been one bad snap all of camp so far.”
Slated to take over the fulltime kicking duties in 2009 after sharing them with Ryan Pretorius a year ago, Pettrey was by far the most impressive kicker during Wednesday’s kick scrimmage. The senior unofficially went 10-of-12 for the day, with his two misses coming from 45 and 56 yards. He made five kicks of 40 or more yards, including the game-winner and a long of 53 yards, and had a 58-yarder called back because of a whistle on the defense before the kick.
Each of OSU’s other two kickers – Ben Buchanan and Devin Barclay – were 4-of-7 on the afternoon. Buchanan, who is also competing at the punter spot, had one kick blocked and missed 24 and 43 yards. His four made kicks were from 34, 39, 44 and 49 yards.
“It was a busy day, from kick offs to field goals to punts. Probably not my best day, but not my worst day either,” he said. “I had some kicks that I’m going to look at in film and want back and some kicks I was pretty proud of today. It was kind of a mixture and something I can look to improve on.”
As a punter, which is where he was ultimately competing, Buchanan was inconsistent but better than his competition, senior Jon Thoma. The redshirt freshman averaged 42.6 yards on seven attempts with three kicks of more than 50 yards. That might sound solid, but his numbers should have looked even better if not for shanked punts of 30 and 31 yards. On the other side of the competition, Thoma averaged a hair under 41 yards per attempts with a high of 48 yards.
“I didn’t have a great day today but we’ve been having great practices, so hopefully that will come through,” Thoma said. “It was one of those days where you warm up and everything goes right, you expect it to go right (during the scrimmage) and you go out there and swing hard and just don’t make perfect contact with the ball.”
Back to receive the majority of the punts for the Scarlet team was Ray Small. The senior averaged 7.6 yards on five returns (thanks to a fumble) with runs of 15 and 14 yards on his final two returns of the day.
The two most exciting punting plays of the day came via the fake. On the first, safety Kurt Coleman took an end-around and threw a perfect strike to rookie Corey Brown for a 20-yard gain and on the second, Buchanan connected with safety Jermale Hines for nine yards.
“That’s what the kick scrimmage is, it’s a lot of fun,” Buchanan said. “I had a pass to Jermale Hines today which was a lot of fun. He ran a great pattern and that’s what the kick scrimmage is. We put that in literally 10 minutes before you guys were here today.”
Some might say that about all Jim Tressel’s plays.
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