Utah State football: Andersen set to open spring drills

LOGAN — Utah State's Gary Andersen will open his first practice Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. as Aggie head coach to kick off five weeks of spring drills.

Andersen, who was hired to replace former coach Brent Guy, will lead the Aggies through 15 practices. Utah State will hold practices on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of each week leading up to the annual spring game which will be played April 18 at 2 p.m.

Andersen said he hopes to make a fast impression on his new team.

"Our belief is to force-feed them and then start to back off and polish as we go. So those are the few key things initially we gotta be able to do," Andersen said. "But we've gotta look at the whole thing in general terms because the scheme, really, that we're running on the offensive side and on the defensive side is a fairly major departure from what they've done in the past, especially on the defensive side. So there's going to be a lot of learning."

The Aggies return 10 starters on offense, eight on defense and all of their special teams specialists from a team that struggled through most of the season, yet managed to win three Western Athletic Conference games for the first time since joining the league.

"The biggest thing initially, and the main goal for the whole team is we need to have 15 consecutive practices," Andersen said. "We're throwing a lot of offense, a lot of defense and a lot of special teams to them very early."

Utah State is expected to have approximately 85-90 players dressed and ready for action when Andersen blows the whistle for the first time.

E-mail: jeborn@desnews.com