TUCSON, Ariz. -- Talk about spring cleaning. Maybe spring attitude adjusting.
New Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez clearly was at it this week as his Wildcats returned from spring break. And there was dust to be found on the team's commitment and enthusiasm as it participated in pads for the first time on Wednesday, a day that marked the completion of the first one-third of spring drills.
Rodriguez, now just four months on the job after replacing Mike Stoops, said practice "wasn’t good." He added: "That’s the start, first day in pads. We’ll see if we get better in two days."
Arizona returns to practice Friday in preparation for Saturday’s scrimmage at Glendale Community College at noon. No, make that supposed scrimmage. Rodriguez said that if practice doesn’t improve Friday, there might just be another practice on Saturday.
"I know we are scrimmaging, but I have the right to change that up," he said. "I'd like to be able to scrimmage and let the fans watch and have some fun. If we don't do well on Friday, then Saturday won't be as entertaining as I'd like it to be."
Then again, Rodriguez warned there’d be days like these after saying at a press conference before spring practice started that there was a lot of work to be done. By the tone of Wednesday's remarks, there may be more than first thought.
"The first day in pads, you'd think you'd be excited," he said of his team. "(I don't know) if it was a spring-break kind of hangover that they hadn't practiced in two weeks (or) the coach is putting too much stuff in. Are they thinking too much? It wasn't the weather. The weather was terrific.
"We'll get it fixed. It starts with the coaching staff in having things ready to have the type of practice I think a championship team has to have."
Rodriguez pointed out that not everyone struggled, because "we’ve got some pretty good kids and some pretty good players, but I want all the guys, all the time, with the same sense of urgency that the best guys do. There are different levels in the sense of urgency. I know our fan base has it. I believe our coaches have it, although we have to show it. We have to have a sense of urgency to have a championship culture."
He just didn’t feel it was there Wednesday. He added: "More than anything, (when the guys are in) pads, you find out the guys who really love football and the guys who just kind of like it."
Rodriguez then acknowledged that the team has a "long way to get ready to play football at a high level, from a conditioning standpoint."
With that in mind, Rodriguez and his staff are trying to avoid information overload by keeping it simple. By the scrimmage, he said, they will be halfway through the playbook, both offensively and defensively. He said they might go a little further this spring but won’t try to do too much in the early months.
"We’ve really limited with what we’re going to do this spring," he said. "Our guys have so much to learn, so much to think about from a different scheme standpoint, that we’re just going to go slow with it."
So -- assuming Friday's practice goes better than Wednesday’s -- the scrimmage will be a nice sneak peak of Arizona football under Rodriguez.
"They will know as much about them as I do, probably, because it will be our first scrimmage," Rodriguez said of the fans in attendance Saturday. "I think it will be fun for the players to kind of go in a different venue, and hopefully there will be a nice crowd.
"From a coach’s standpoint, it’s just another day for us to teach and evaluate."
