Call last Saturday’s second scrimmage of Eastern Washington University’s spring football practice a draw. Head coach Beau Baldwin certainly did after watching the 87 play scrimmage at Roos Field.
The offense rolled up 386 yards of offense, including a 33-of-54 passing performance for 355 yards.
“I wasn’t so much worried about who’s going to win this scrimmage,” Baldwin said. “I just wanted to see them responding back and forth.”
But the defense made big plays as well, intercepting a pair of passes and finishing with three forced fumbles and six sacks in the live scrimmage.
“I thought there was a lot of that response,” Baldwin said. “We could be driving down the field and the defense would get a pick, or the offense would turn it over, but then on the next series get a couple first downs.”
In fact, the only quick whistle on the day came after defensive lineman Kaleb Levao intercepted a pass and was headed to the end zone for a touchdown. Normally, Baldwin and his staff reserve quick whistles for his quarterbacks in order to avoid potential injuries.
Sophomore quarterback Gage Gubrud was impressive early and worked with the No. 1 offense, completing 11 of his first 12 passes and rushing for 41 yards on four carries to lead the offense to scoring drives of 60, 65 and 26 yards. He finished the day 14-of-19 for 166 yards and a touchdown. Despite a pair of sacks, Gubrud still finished as the scrimmage’s leading rusher with 19 yards on six carries.
Senior Jordan West directed the offense on a nine-play, 72-yard scoring drive, and later in the scrimmage, sophomore Reilly Hennessey got the offense in the end zone on a 27-yard drive. With both throwing touchdown passes, West finished 10-of-17 for 117 yards and Hennessey was 7-of-12 for 56 yards.
Sophomore Simba Webster had touchdown catches of 51 yards from Gubrud and 2 yards from Hennessey, and finished with nine catches for 141 yards. Webster was the second-leading receiver as sophomore Zach Eagle grabbed 10 balls for 105 yards.
With 48 yards in losses on six sacks, the Eastern running game was held to 31 yards on 33 carries. Sophomore running back Ashanti Kindle had five carries for 17 yards.
Defensively, junior Jake Hoffman out of Spokane’ s North Central High School had an interception, and another NC grad, junior defensive end Marcus Saugen, finished with eight tackles and assisted on two sacks. Junior defensive lineman Albert Havili, who was injured and missed the entire 2015 season, had 1 1/2 sacks, six total tackles and a quarterback hurry.
Sophomore defensive back Josh Lewis had a scrimmage-high nine tackles, while sophomore linebacker Alek Kacmarcik had eight.
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