By Thomas Corhern
Cookeville Herald-Citizen Sports

COOKEVILLE — As Tennessee Tech completed its first spring scrimmage of the year on Saturday at Tucker Stadium, the Golden Eagles saw a lot of good things ... and some not-so-good things.

On the bright side, it’s just the first scrimmage of the spring.

“The good things were there were no turnovers at all,” said Tech head coach Watson Brown. “We had some nice big plays by the offense. The skill guys made a lot of plays. The good thing on defense, there wasn’t one penalty. The (number one) defense gave up one big play. The (number one) offense and (number one) defense went up against each other and they took it down the field, but the defense made them work for everything they had.”

Then there were the penalties against the offense.

“The number of penalties were just unbelievable,” Brown said. “We have no chance here (to recover from those). You look out here at some of the skill guys we have out here and we killed ourselves all day. We have no chance whatsoever. Our one guys made them up all day long, but they were also going up against the twos in a lot of that time. You don’t get to do that on Saturdays. There were too many 1st-and-15s, 2nd-and-15s, 3rd-and-25s. We’re not going to make those up around here.”

But the biggest performance of note had to be quarterback/receiver Brock McCoin. The redshirt freshman product from Livingston Academy ran for two touchdowns — scoring on 24- and 34-yard runs — as well as throwing a 35-yard scoring pass to former Monterey standout Bryson Welch.

Radir Annoor also scored for the Golden Eagles, rushing into the end zone on a 13-yard run.

With Tech unveiling its new QW position to the fans in the stands, McCoin and Darian Stone had some big plays utilizing the new skill set.

“I really thought the biggest names that stood out to me (Saturday) were Brock and Darian,” Brown said. “They were just making plays all over the place — throwing a touchdown pass, running the ball. Darian, on a 3rd and 20, made a deep ball catch for a first down. Our stuff worked pretty well with rolling them in and out. It was a little rusty and I hope to see it a little smoother as we go here, but I thought it was a really good thing.

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