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SMU football notes...on standout freshman WR Jeremy Johnson and Cole Loftin's knee injury
Posted at 1:09 PM on Tue., Aug. 17, 2010
Kate Hairopoulos / Reporter

Here's a sampling of news and notes from Tuesday morning's fairly sweltering practice:

*Freshman wide receiver Jeremy Johnson, of Tyler John Tyler, is wearing No. 17. Any SMU fan knows that was Emmanuel Sanders' number. Since Sanders owns all of the school's receiving records, the kid's got something to live up to. So far, so good. He's been impressive in camp.
"He's been one of the quickest freshmen I've had learn the system," Coach June Jones said of the high school quarterback. "He's never played receiver, but he's a football player."

*WR Cole Loftin suffered a knee injury Saturday that could cost him serious time, if not the season.

*Jones won't commit to a pecking order at running back until closer to the Sept. 5 season-opener at Texas Tech. Zach Line returns to do the key blocking and power work in short-yardage situations. As for a breakaway guy, it's still a battle between freshmen Darryl Fields and Kevin Pope and senior Chris Butler.

*Jones, as usual, breaks the season down into manageable chunks. For the first four games - at Tech, against UAB, against Washington State, against TCU - Jones has told the team it can be no worse than 1-3 if it wants to win the C-USA West title.
"I'd like to be 4-0, but we can be no worse than 1-3 if we want to win the championship," Jones said. "We have a realistic chance [of doing better], but we're going to have to do everything right. We're playing teams better than us in that stretch... If you act like you've been there before, we'll be very competitive the first four games."

sucks about loftin...any news?

poor loftin. he just cant seem to stay healthy

the thing about loftin that kills me is that i think he should be one of our four starting receivers.

Nacho wrote:the thing about loftin that kills me is that i think he should be one of our four starting receivers.

except for when he's hurt

Wonder which team we beat in the 1-3 expectation to start the season that June has told the team?

Uh, what?

PonySnob wrote:Wonder which team we beat in the 1-3 expectation to start the season that June has told the team?

dont know, but that other thread about WSU got me thinking. Seems like every year every team loses a game to a team they thought was a sure 'w'. For a few teams, last year that game was us. I remember when Skip Holtz first got to ECU, they sucked the year prior and we were sure we'd beat them. Was that the year we played them in front of about 2500 at Ford?

Anyway, I hope WSU is not such a game.

I would expect nothing less than 2-2 after the first four...

Guess JJ is saying worst case scenario, we need to win at least 1 to stay in the hunt. If we lose to UAB or WSU at home, however, I don't know that we need to be in the conversation for C-USA championship this year.

I do not see a CUSA championship if we lose to UAB. We would have to sweep the rest of our conference games I should think.

he probably means that the only conference game is against UAB-so we need to win that one

The PonyGrad wrote:I do not see a CUSA championship if we lose to UAB. We would have to sweep the rest of our conference games I should think.

Agreed, out of the first four, UAB is truly the only must win. Sure it would be nice to whup up on Washington State at home, but that really means nothing.

Start 1-3 with a win over UAB and you roll into the heart of conference play in pretty good shape, lose to UAB, a lower tier conference game at home, and that is a major bummer, regardless of what you do in the other three.

Like June said, it would be great to be 4-0, but give me that W against UAB and the rest, if any, is gravy, but not essential.

Would anyone be happy with a 3-1 start if you knew that the one loss was to UAB at home?

Yes, that would indicate the the UAB loss would have been a fluke and we would have a good chance of actually winning the rest of our games.

Beat UAB, for sure!