Utah State football: Aggies now prepping for Utes

LOGAN — The fall camp is over and new Utah State coach Gary Andersen is now immersed in reaching a goal he never thought he'd be chasing for the past few years — finding a way to beat the University of Utah.

"We are excited to get to an opponent. The team is getting tired of going against each other," Andersen said after the Aggies wrapped up camp last week. "There's good competition between the offense and the defense. They've done a good job of working together to make each other better."

Of course, that opponent the Aggies will face is Utah and Andersen knows the team as well as any coach in the country after having served as the Utes' defensive coordinator for the previous four seasons.

It's also a reason Utah State has been more closely guarded when it comes to allowing spectators at practices. Fans hoping to get a glimpse of what Andersen and his staff are practicing have been kept in the dark, so to speak, by a series of recent closed practices and a couple of scrimmages that most observers felt were a little on the vanilla side.

"We're seeing improvement in all phases of the game," Andersen said. "We're making progress and getting better, but we still have a lot of things to work on."

Saturday, the Aggies held a controlled-situation scrimmage and didn't tip their hand much on offense while a quick-whistle setup for the first teamers prevented possible injuries.

Second and third team players, however, got some live hitting in.

"It was just some basic situations from an offensive and defensive standpoint. We were able to come out here and execute," Andersen said. "We gave the three's, the four's and the five's 25-30 extra reps and we were able to get that done. We put the offense and defense in some situations and we were able to stay healthy. We were as generic as we could be for the offense and defense."

Things in Logan will get even more intense and more guarded as the Aggies put in the final week of practice and preparation for the season opener in Salt Lake City against Andersen's former team, the Utes.

"Overall, I'm pleased with my first training camp as the Aggie football head coach and excited to get the season under way," Andersen said.

CAPTAINS NAMED: After a team vote on Monday, Utah State named its captains for the season. On offense, junior quarterback Diondre Borel, sophomore running back Robert Turbin and senior center Brennan McFadden were chosen. The defensive captains are senior safety James Brindley, senior cornerback Kejon Murphy and senior linebacker Paul Igboli.