The Sports Inquirer

Release from Kennesaw State Athletics:

Redshirt freshman defensive back Marcus Thurman sparked a defense that highlighted the Kennesaw State football team’s first scrimmage of the spring Saturday afternoon at The Perch.

In a scrimmage that began with the defense making plays early, the afternoon concluded with an offensive highlight as redshirt senior running back Ryan Godhigh caught a pass in the flat from redshirt freshman Jaquez Parks, broke a couple tackles and outraced the defense 60 yards for a touchdown.

While there were highlights on both sides of the ball, head coach Brian Bohannon said he saw some good and bad.

“We’re going to take this 118-play scrimmage, we’re going to go back and grade it,” Bohannon said. “We’re going to evaluate each kid, we’re going to evaluate our personnel, we’re going to have each kid evaluate himself and we’re going to learn from this and the plan next week is to go correct the mistakes we made today and when we come out next Saturday to be a better football team than we were this Saturday.”

Thurman made the first big play of the day, stepping in front of a pass thrown in the flat, picking it off and racing approximately 30 yards for a touchdown.

“Marcus Thurman had a couple nice breaks on the ball. He intercepted a pass and scored a touchdown, and had a nice break on another ball, but the throw was low,” Bohannon said. “I saw Taylor Henkle come up and make a great tackle. I saw Derrick Farrow, one of our JC guys, come up and make a great tackle. So those are some things you notice on defense.”

Henkle said he was encouraged by the performance of the defense.

“I thought the defense overall came out and did the little things right. I think we were focused and if we had stayed focused a little more they (offense) probably wouldn’t have score at all on us,” Henkle said. “Overall, it was a good day on defense.”

Parks said he saw positives in the offense and likes the direction the unit is heading.

“I think everything is just going to get better. We’ve improved a lot since the very first day and I think we are just going to continue to get better,” Parks said.

SCRIMMAGE HIGHLIGHTS
* Redshirt freshman defensive lineman Benjamin Otiwu was active up front, making several tackles near the line of scrimmage.
* Redshirt junior quarterback Trey White engineered the offense’s first scoring drive, leading the team down the field and capping the series with a short run. White had the big play on the drive as he broke through the line for a rush of more than 30 yards.
* Redshirt freshman quarterback Jake McKenzie also produced an offensive highlight as he connected with wide receiver Gordon Gray on a scoring pass of more than 20 yards.
* In addition to hitting Godhigh on a big pass play, Jaquez Parks scored on a quarterback sneak from a yard out.
* Redshirt freshman Jae Bowen also found the end zone as he got around the end and raced approximately 45 yards for a touchdown.