Tulane’s Fritz hopes to add 12th game to replace Southeastern, talks team progress after scrimmage

Even as the Southland Conference announced Thursday it would not play football this season, Tulane continued to prepare for the 2020 season.

Battling the heat, Tulane went through their eight day of training camp by conducting its first scrimmage.

With the news of the Southland Conference postponing fall football until the spring, Tulane’s season opening game with Southeastern Louisiana is lost.

Green Wave coach Willie Fritz is adamant about trying to find a way to replace the canceled contest.

“We want to play 12 games,” Fritz said. “That’s what we’d like to do. Troy Dannen handles all that for us. If we can find somebody, we’ll jump out and try to find them. Our intentions are if we’re going to play, let’s play a full schedule. It’s a disappointment. We’ve just got to adjust. There’s one constant right now, it’s change.”

In-state schools Louisiana Tech, UL-Lafayette and ULM are among the programs currently with less than 12 games scheduled and open dates for the opening week of September. The Ragin’ Cajuns had been set to host McNeese on Sept. 5.

On the field at Yulman Stadium, Tulane had an officials crew at practice.

“Sometimes it means more when the officials throw the flag,” Fritz said. “It was good to have the officials out there. We did a lot of kicking game, a lot of competitive kicking game. Guys were getting away with things that they didn’t get away with today. The yellow flag came out. It was getting a little more game-like.”

Tulane did a lot of 7-on-7 work as well and finished up with 48 plays of offense vs. defense.

“I thought we got a lot of good work in with it,” Fritz said.

What was the biggest takeaway from the scrimmage?

“The biggest thing I thought was just the kicking game,” Fritz said. “A lot of people don’t run reps in the kicking game to completion. Now, we weren’t tackling the returner but it’s the first time where we had good on good, we’re using our techniques in our kickoff return, our techniques on kickoff coverage and simulating a real live kickoff. Same with punt return. We’re going to get a lot out of that watching film.”

Despite the oppressive conditions, the Green Wave team is conditioning well.

“Our guys are getting in better shape,” Fritz said. “They are fighting through this heat and humidity. Our expectations are that we’re going to play fast and furious the whole time so it doesn’t matter to us what the temperature is. We’re doing a good job of giving them breaks, hydrating them.”

One group of young players that have been impressive is the freshmen group of offensive linemen. Overall Fritz feels his offensive line is the most improved area on the team.

“We have three groups we are working with and can work with,” Fritz said. “They’re all not AAC starting offensive linemen right now but they can operate, get bodies on bodies and they’re not getting whipped quickly off the line-of-scrimmage like sometimes happens with freshmen. I think we hit on all our freshmen. We signed five offensive linemen. I think all five of them are going to be excellent players.”

Fritz reserved lavish praise for one sophomore lineman.

“Sincere Haynesworth, I think is a big-time player,” Fritz said. “We moved him to center full-time. I think he can start for anybody in the country, I really mean that.”

Fritz remains confident that his team may be able to play in 2020 but understands things can change.

“I’m just following our docs, in particular, Dr. (Greg) Stewart,” Fritz said. “We’ve done a great job of testing. We’re testing all our guys again tomorrow. The health and safety of our student-athletes is at the forefront but we also feel like this is very doable. If it’s not, if someone said we can’t do it, we won’t do it.”