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As the University at Buffalo football team prepares to wrap up spring practices, buffalobulls.com had a chance to catch up with head coach Jim Hofher and ask him about the progress the Bulls are making.

Buffalo will conclude its 15 NCAA mandates practices with the annual Blue-White scrimmage on Saturday, April 16 at Walter Kunz Stadium (UB's old turf stadium on the North Campus) at 1:30 pm. The scrimmage will be preceded by the official rededication of the stadium in Walter Kunz' name at 1 pm and all events are free and open to the public.

Q: How would you categorize practices to date?

A: Excellent. They have been physical, they have been competitive in the game situations we have practiced

Jim Hofher

and all units (offense, defense, special teams) have had successes. That being said, all units certainly have plenty of room for improvement, but the effort to improve has been excellent."

Q: Spring practices begin to answer questions that emerge after the fall schedule is completed. What questions did you have entering spring practice and how many have been answered thus far?

A: Certainly who is the quarterback is a major question. Who is the free safety? Where's the depth on offense and on defense? How is the leadership and how is the conditioning and the physical development? I would say we'll come out of the spring with some answers, but we still have work to do. The quarterback decision will likely not be resolved until somewhere in (summer) training camp. In some ways its not fair to expect that we would have one this spring because the two guys getting the most work, this is by far the most extensive work they have ever gotten in our program. In the case of Tony (junior Tony Paoli) it's because he is a newcomer and in Stu's (junior Stewart Sampsel) case it's because he has been a backup. They have made improvements in many areas.

In terms of depth, we feel like we have excellent depth and talent at tailback in three returning players who are all juniors (Steven King, Chris McDuffie and Jared Patterson). We have depth at tight end - with

Chris McDuffie

Chad Upshaw, Trevor Scott and Greg Vrantsis all returning - and we continue to work on depth at the offensive line and we feel good about it. We have six seniors at the defensive line alone, that's a lot of playable depth. We have eight seniors overall in the defensive front for six positions. We have a real good situation with guys that have been around and they certainly contributed to us knowing how to practice.

In the secondary we have to replace a starting free safety (J.J. Gibson), but I'm not sure we have an answer to that yet. We have had to figure out how to play with some young defensive backs in the past and I suspect that won't be any different this year.

I think our conditioning and physical development is excellent and I've seen that in the off-season with guys lifting and running. We still have about 17 weeks more of physical development before we start training camp. I think our leadership has been really seriously taken by our seniors. It's the largest number we've had and the most that have played significantly. These guys have been around the block a few times and it has been evident this spring.

Q: Is there any one thing that is different about spring ball this year?

A: The venue is different. Not having to travel to Orchard Park for night practices and to be able to practice on campus at Walter Kunz Stadium, is the biggest change. That has been a big positive for us.

We've always gotten lots of scrimmage work in the spring, this year perhaps a little bit more because of the good numbers we have on the field to work with.

Q: Talk about the Blue-White scrimmage and what you will be able to gain from that?

A: The Blue-White scrimmage is really our third of three scheduled scrimmages during the spring. It's conducted as a scrimmage with a script of different situations. We have found that to keep our offensive and defensive units together, as opposed to splitting them up into two teams, is the best way for us to have meaningful work. We do figure out a way to come up with a defensive scoring system so that we have competition between the two units.

It's our 15th and final practice and it needs to be as valuable to us as what the others have been.