Junior linebacker Darryl Monroe saved the day for the defense after making a vicious hit on junior running back Teondray Caldwell during the final play of the team scrimmage at practice Saturday afternoon. 

The offense was verge of scoring, and grabbing its second straight win against the defense in the scrimmage portion of practice. Caldwell received the ball and ran up the middle but was put flat on his back by Monroe.

“As a defender that’s what you want to do,” Monroe said. “You want to strike people, you want to put fear in the offense’s heart because if they have that ball and they see you there, they’re going to drop the ball, that’s your advantage mentally, 90 percent of this game is mental.”

Though the defense won today during the team scrimmage portion of practice, Monroe still believes the defense needs improve in all areas in order to be successful.

“It’s never going to be good enough, I don’t care if you’re undefeated,” he said. “There’s always something you can be better at. Every day we need to take a step, but most importantly we just need to find something next practice to work on and just keep building.”

In just his fifth day of practice, WSU redshirt freshman Marcellus Pippins is still running with the second team defense. Pippins said he’s unaware if he’ll move up in the depth chart but is taking each practice one day at a time. 

The redshirt freshman is also being evaluated by the coaches at the punt returning position as well, along with redshirt freshman Sebastian LaRue.

Quarterbacks Connor Halliday and Tyler Bruggman took the majority of the reps this afternoon. During the 7-on-7  drill, Halliday completed 14 out of 20 pass attempts and threw a touchdown to sophomore wide receiver River Cracraft.

“We’ve kind of worked our tails off,” Halliday said. “Individually throwing out there in the winter during those nine weeks, I really harped on those guys to get out there and work on their routes and everybody put in the time.”

The redshirt senior quarterback was 12 of 15 with a touchdown pass to redshirt senior Kristoff Williams in the scrimmage. Redshirt senior defensive lineman Toni Pole recorded a sack on Halliday during that portion of practiceand redshirt freshman defensive lineman Daniel Ekuale stripped the ball from Halliday as the quarterback was getting ready to make a pass. 

“I thought (Halliday) looked good,” Head Coach Mike Leach said. “Solid in team (scrimmage), probably a little better last practice in team, but does a good job running the unit.”

Bruggman was 12 of 18 with a couple of touchdown passes to senior wide receiver Vince Mayle and sophomore wide receiver River Cracraft. The redshirt freshman also threw two interceptions during the 7-on-7 drill. One interception was recorded by junior linebacker Jeremiah Allison and the other one was from sophomore cornerback Daquawn Brown.

“Tyler I thought did pretty good,” Leach said. “I thought he struggled in (7-on-7), and put it together and had a really good team period.”

Bruggman completed 7 of 15 passes with no touchdowns during the team scrimmage portion of practice.