Bears Celebrate 'Dog's Birthday At Wednesday Practice
“It’s a great day to be a Bear.”
Those are the words spoken to every single Cal Bears football player every day by Bud “Dog” Turner. Associated with the program for 50 years now, Dog serves as the security and operations expert during practices and games. And today (November 6) happens to be Dog’s birthday.
“Evidently he is 342,” head coach Justin Wilcox joked after practice.
“Dog’s the best,” he continued. “You guys need to have Dog over here. Talk about some stories. You need to get him on camera. You talk about getting some quotes, I mean, Dog is your guy. We love Dog. He’s been here a long time and he’s out here every single day.”
Dog watched his first Cal football game in 1947, when the Bears beat Navy, 14-7 at California Memorial Stadium.
Celebrating Dog transferred to the practice field.
“Energy was really good,” Wilcox said of today’s practice. “I thought we looked quick.”
Wilcox confirmed backup QB Devon Modster has been medically cleared to play but said they would not announce who the starting quarterback will be until Friday.
“We have a plan,” he said coyly.
Wilcox spoke about Washington State’s ability to create deceptive defensive plays with movement.
“The pre-snap movement and the post-snap movementt, they utilize that defensively and they’ve done that for a while,” Wilcox said.
“You’ve got to be really good in identification and you’ve got to be really good at moving your feet and getting on people. And they create a lot of negative plays and they take the ball away really well.”
Besides the unique defense, Wazzu also runs its own version of the spread or air raid offense.
“Nobody does it as well as they do so it’s a hard thing to replicate in practice, but we do the best we can,” Wilcox said. “It’s a little bit like when you play an option team, they have an answer for everything.”
Defensive Coordinator Tim DeRuyter praised Wazzu Head Coach Mike Leach’s ability to develop quarterbacks — and riff about zombie apocalypses.
“When he’s not riffing on zombies, he does a really good job at developing quarterbacks,” DeRuyter said. “Because it doesn’t matter who’s in there, they seem like they’re all-Americans.”
When asked if he had any of his own thoughts on zombies, DeRuyter deferred.
“You know I probably haven’t thought about zombies as much as Coach Leach has.”
That’s probably a good thing. Either way, DeRuyter said the defensive unit is ready to move on from the 35 points given up to Utah.
“Our guys know how we want to attack these guys and we’re going to compete like heck on Saturday.”