Naples News: Collier County products feeling Bull-ish

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NaplesNews

USF Football Media Day: Collier County products feeling Bull-ish

Chris Girandola, Special to the Daily News

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

TAMPA — Two years ago, when South Florida opened the season at Penn State, former Immokalee High quarterback Louis Gachette was a bit taken aback.

“Man, I was just looking up at the crowd, over 90,000 of them and was just in awe,” said Gachette, who talked about his experience on Tuesday during the USF Bulls media day at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. “It was overwhelming, to say the least. It seemed like the crowd was a wave that was going to come over top of us.”

A lot has changed since then.

For one, Gachette, who was used primarily as a scout quarterback in his freshman season, is now a defensive back. The Collier County product has catapulted up the depth chart in two years, excelling last year at free safety before making the switch to strong safety midway through the season.

While Gachette admits to liking the free safety spot more, idolizing NFL players like Sean Taylor, Rodney Harrison, and Brian Dawkins, the 6-foot-3, 205-pound junior is excited about contributing as much as possible this year, wherever he’s placed on the field.

“I’m excited because the speed of the game is a lot slower for me now,” said Gachette. “They’re trying to utilize me more in different areas in case some guys go down. I’ve taken advantage of learning both the strong and free spots by watching a lot of film and now I recognize what’s going to happen when linebackers go to certain spots and call different things.”

His size and speed give the Bulls coaching staff a lot of versatility in personnel decisions.

“Louis is going to play a lot of football for us this year,” said Bulls coach Jim Leavitt. “He’s a key guy. He can play both free and strong and the nickel, if we need him to. And on special teams. He has the ability to play different spots and we’re going to make use of his talents.”

Another area where Gachette has changed since his freshman season is his maturity.

“I spent the whole summer up here (Tampa) and I worked hard in the weight room and worked hard on my conditioning,” said Gachette. “My mom wanted me to come home a lot during the summer but I had to tell her that I had to stay here and take care of my responsibilities. And the maturity part wasn’t just about recognizing my responsibilities for the football team. It was about becoming a man and balancing everything in my life, from school to the team to everything else off the field.”

When Gachette looks forward to the second game of the season at Auburn, he approaches it with different perspective than his freshman visit to Penn State.

“There’s a sense of calm there now,” said Gachette. “All of the older guys have talked to the younger guys and told them what to expect throughout their freshman year. When we face Auburn, we know what it’s like because we’ve been there, done that. We’ll be able to help them handle it. Another thing we’ve stressed is how our program has reached a level where we expect a bowl game now and we expect to compete for a championship.”

As much as Gachette has experienced change over two years, a fellow Collier County product has had to deal with it even more so in one.

Former Barron Collier running back Mo Plancher is coming off a devastating ACL injury to his right knee that occurred in the first game of the 2006 season.

Plancher’s promising start, in which he secured the starting tailback role last fall in his redshirt freshman year, was cut short early when he tore his ligament on his fourth carry of the Bulls’ opening drive.

“It was difficult to deal with but I had to put all my effort into getting back as strong and as quickly as I could,” said Plancher.

Plancher sat out spring practice and, despite suffering a minor setback during the summer during his conditioning work, the 5-foot-9, 190-pound running back said he felt strong after the first day of fall work on Monday.

“It feels good and I’m excited about competing against the rest of the guys to get back to where I was,” said Plancher.

If Plancher’s knee holds up, then the biggest concern for him will be working his way back up the depth chart, considering the plethora of talent in the backfield this year.

Ben Williams, who took over for Plancher last year, rushed for 436 yards last season and scored two touchdowns in the PapaJohns.com Bowl win over East Carolina. Freshman Mike Ford, the Class 5A Player of the Year as a Sarasota High senior in 2004 before attending acclaimed Hargrave Military Academy last year, is expected to shine in fall practice after transferring from Alabama, just as much as redshirt freshman Aston Samuels is after drawing rave reviews in the spring game.

“We have some guys involved now,” said Leavitt. “We’re excited about Ben coming back and he’s done a great job. Mike Ford, we’ll see what he does. He’s now a great running back but he might become that even more as he works through the season. Aston Samuels has great speed. And we have Mo back.”

Running backs coach Carl Franks, who joked about having “a whole football team of running backs to choose from,” said that Plancher’s ability to cut and make it through the first day of practice was important for his return.

“Mo looks good and he’s done well in working hard to get back,” said Franks. “Being out a while actually allowed him to work on his upper body, which will allow him to sustain hits more this year. There’s a lot of competition but Mo has shown a lot of the other things that are important besides the obvious stuff like protecting the ball, running it, and catching it like blitz protection and understanding how a defense is going to adjust. It’ll be important, though, for him to make it through two-a-days so we’ll see.”

In addition to the aforementioned backs, Plancher will also have to compete against another Southwest Florida product, freshman back Tyson Butler, who both Leavitt and Franks praised and said has the potential to be one of the newcomers to gain some playing time.

Despite the increased competition, Plancher appreciates the opportunity to play collegiate football more than ever.

“Coach Franks gave me lots of quotes and stories that helped me get through the emotional and physical setback last year,” said Plancher, who was most affected by the story of Brian Piccolo, the Chicago Bear who passed away from cancer in 1970. “Piccolo’s story was amazing and it really touched me. It helped me understand how blessed I am to be playing this game and I’m going to do everything I can to appreciate it on a daily basis.”

Link

The Naples News has really done a lot of good USF stories starting back around the first media days...some in-depth stuff on USF and he area's local guys.