Razorbacks set for Homecoming weekend

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The Razorback football team practiced inside Walker Pavilion on Thursday afternoon for a little more than one hour as it installed the final components of its game plan for Saturday’s contest with Eastern Michigan. Arkansas is scheduled to take on the Eagles at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 31, at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium. The following is a brief transcript of head coach Bobby Petrino’s post-practice press conference.

"Our players came out and worked real hard at practice, Joe Adams was out there, he practiced yesterday, most of the practice, and we limited the number of reps that he practiced today. I think that he’ll play in the game unless something changes in pre-game, he’ll have the ability to play and it would be on a limited number of reps simply because he hasn’t had the same conditioning as everyone else the last three, four or five weeks, although he has been running with the training staff the last two weeks. We are excited about that and that is a nice addition to our playmakers and I would think somewhere between 20 and 40 plays would be a good number for him depending on how the game is being played out."

When did you get the news about Joe Adams status?"I got it yesterday morning; he had an appointment down in Little Rock. They called right after they left the Doctors’ office and called with favorable news. They said that they thoroughly believe that they know what the cause was and that they have dealt with the issue and that he is cleared for full participation. That’s from the doctors. Then we have to make sure that since he hasn’t practiced in so long see how he does after practice on Wednesday, see how he does after practice on Thursday and what I mean by that is how his legs are, how his conditioning is. His legs look fresh and he looks really fast to be honest with you."

Can a game like this help the team get their legs back?"I hope that it can help them. We kind of cut back on the number of reps that we’ve had in practice and we’ve given the twos more work this week in practice. We’ve shortened up our meeting a little bit, come back from the long grind that we’ve had and tried to refresh. Go into Saturday with a fresh mind, fresh body and play fast. Then we’ll give them Sunday off and come back and work on Monday getting ready for the South Carolina game."

You usually stress balance in the offensive attack, does that change because of their rush defense?"Not really, we want to run the ball, we’ve been trying to do that better. In the games that we have won we’ve been pretty balanced and been able to get close to the run-pass ratio that you want. We plan to go in and execute our offense. It is important that we establish the run game, we get confidence, we come out of the gate running the ball well. There will be a number of runs called, especially early in the game. Just play the situations from there."

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