South Alabama Football Opens Spring Drills Thursday; Sherrer Out With Knee Injury, Brock Earns Sun Belt Honor

MOBILE, Ala. — The South Alabama football team returns to the practice field Thursday to open spring drills, while the men’s basketball team will be without guard Bryan Sherrer for several weeks after a knee injury.

Football: 15 Spring Practices

Earlier this month, South Alabama signed 22 players to its 2010 recruiting class. The Jaguars, who are in the process of moving toward Football Bowl Subdivision play, begin a 15-practice spring session Thursday that includes four full-contact practices and three scrimmages.

Spring drills conclude March 10 with a 6 p.m. scrimmage at Ladd-Peebles Stadium. Admission and parking for that scrimmage are free. The other 14 sessions will be held at the Jaguars’ on-campus practice facility near the Football Fieldhouse. All spring events are open to the public at no charge.

Head coach Joey Jones said he expects his team to be further along at the start of this spring than it was a year ago.

“I expect the first day to be a really good day, as opposed to waiting three to five days to get things going last spring,” Jones said. “Last year, we were starting from scratch. Nobody knew terminology or each other, but now we’ve started to build a team. We’ve gone through a summer program, a year and an offseason, so our kids know each other and what to expect from us as coaches. We should be able to pick up from where we were at the end of the season and progress from there.”

Spring Schedule

• Thursday, Feb. 18: 7:30 a.m., helmets only
• Friday, Feb. 19: 7 a.m., helmets only
• Saturday, Feb. 20: 9 a.m., pads, no tackling
• Full-pads practices without full contact: Feb. 22, Feb. 24, March 1 and March 8, each around 7 a.m.
• Full-contact practices: Tuesday, Feb. 23 at 7:30 a.m., plus Feb. 25, March 2 and March 4
• Scrimmages: Saturday, Feb. 27 at 9 a.m.; Saturday, March 6 at 11 a.m.; Wednesday, March 10 at 6 p.m. at Ladd-Peebles Stadium
• Tuesday, March 9: 9 a.m., pads only, in preparation for the final scrimmage

Men’s Basketball: Sherrer Sidelined

Bryan Sherrer injured his knee early in South Alabama’s Feb. 11 game against Florida International. Head coach Ronnie Arrow announced Monday that Sherrer tore his lateral meniscus and will miss two to four weeks.

Sherrer has started all 26 games this season and averages just over 10 points per game, third on the team. He ranks eighth nationally in free-throw percentage at 90.8 percent.

The Sun Belt Conference Tournament begins in about two and a half weeks in Hot Springs, Ark. South Alabama lost two other key players for the season in January.

Brock Named Sun Belt Player of the Week

Freshman Martino Brock was named the Sun Belt Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Week on Monday, the first such honor of his college career.

Brock averaged 18.5 points and 12.5 rebounds as South Alabama won both of its games last week, and he recorded two double-doubles. For the season, he ranks second on the team in scoring at 12.3 points per game and in rebounding at 6.9 per game.

Women’s Basketball Standings

The South Alabama women opened Sun Belt play 9-0 but have since had two three-game losing streaks. The Lady Jaguars are 9-6 in conference play, fourth of six teams in the East Division and sixth in the overall league standings.

Arkansas-Little Rock and Middle Tennessee lead their divisions, each at 13-1 in league play. Arkansas-Little Rock is 20-5 overall and Middle Tennessee is 18-5.