"I liked the intensity," head coach John Bunting remarked afterwards, standing in the west end zone. "I thought it was real physical. I thought the kids were really into it, [but we] have a long ways to go. We had way too many penalties -- particularly pre-snap penalties on the offense. We can't have them. We'll never win a ball game that way. They got after it. They played hard. I'm excited about this football team. I really am.
"I really think the defense came back a lot today, and that's exciting in itself because they didn't feel good about themselves [after the scrimmage on Saturday]. There are ebbs and flows in the season, there are ebbs and flows in games, and hopefully they'll learn a little bit from this experience tonight."
The bright spot of the defense was Dexter Reid, according to Bunting. Also garnering compliments were Isaac Mooring and Malcolm Stewart, who may have had his best day of camp.
While he liked what he saw, there are still questions that remain unanswered, but there were no immediate indications of any changes in the two-deep chart released on Thursday afternoon.
"I'll have to watch the tape," Bunting said. "Some guys stepped up. The runners were good, and we worked a lot on the kicking game, but it's hard to tell because it's not full speed. We have a lot of things to answer there. We played a lot of back-up guys on the special teams to see how they could help us. You are going to have injuries, so you have to make sure guys are ready to go... but I have no idea if we answered any personnel questions tonight until I look at the tape."
Speaking of injuries, there were more tonight. Even before the scrimmage started, Madison Hedgecock became ill and had to miss the action. Then Skip Seagraves went down the first play with a shoulder and head injury, the sixth concussion of the camp according to Bunting. Tommy Davis and Jacque Lewis both sustained bruised ribs.