UCLA Fall Camp Day 2 Recap: Coach Sal Alosi, Trainer and DJ

The Bruins held their second practice at San Bernardino today and again the team was out in helmets only.  It was a hotter day which pleased the coach who wanted to put the players a bit out of their comfort zone, though the main reason for is still team building and maintaining focus on football away from the distractions on campus.

You can see some of the tweets and comments from the day in our practice open thread here.

The post-practice video of Mora today comes courtesy of Tracy Pierson at Bruins Report Online.

Mora said that even after just a couple days at camp that he is seeing progress and there is a lot of learning and good things happening on the field.  He pointed out that no one of the young guys was really standing out, which he took to mean that they are all doing well as a group.

On the injury front, Mora said that WR Mossi Johnson had a second degree AC separation yesterday but was "much improved" with better range of motion today and will slowly work back into practice.

Jr OL Simon Goines did some more individual drills today and should work into team drills in the next few days as he develops more confidence.

Soph LB Cameron Judge fell on his shoulder near the end of practice after "tweaking" it a bit yesterday and was going for x-rays, but there was no further report ion the injury.

True FR LB Zach Whitley was cramping for the second day in a row and was limited.

Despite all that, overall, the team is doing better than 2 years ago when the team first held practice at San Bernadino which he attributed in large part to Coach Sal Alosi's education regarding hydration and nutrition and recovery.

Much of the post-practice talk focused on RS Fr WR Eldridge Massington who made a great diving catch that lit up multiple twitter feeds from practice.  Brett Hundley has been very complimentary of Massington lately.  Mora echoed the praise, saying Massington can make special plays and called him  "big and fast and physical"  and complimented him for working as " hard as anyone you'll ever find" but noted that the key for Eldridge now is to develop consistency in his play.  He noted that getting further away from the knee injury and not wearing a brace is a good sign that he's getting back to himself, but said he expects players to need a year to recover from an ACL tear.  Mora added that all the receivers are developing a great relationship with Hundley.

The thing that you see with Brett and all of the receivers really is you do see chemistry and you see trust with Devin Lucien, with Thomas Duarte, with Jordan Payton, and now with Devin Fuller and now a little bit with Eldridge, and we gotta just keep developing that.

The interview ended with some questions on Mora's fiery speech at the end of practice, which he attributed to trying to be heard over the music on the field.  You bet, coach!  But that did lead into some pretty interesting insight into the music that is being blasted during practice.  Not surprisingly, the playlist is very carefully and intentionally thought out, but not by Mora.

Coach Alosi puts time and thought in to every song that goes on that thing because of the rhythm of practice and what you want to get done.

Individual works begins with AC/DC and Black Sabbath which Mora called up tempo but grinding.  It changes over to country during one-on-one work  "That might be for Jerry Neuheisel".  Then the playlist switches over to hip hop towards the end of practice when the team works to get back in a rhythm to finish the day.  Mora says besides setting a tone, the music really helps the team block out the noise and distractions and focus on the task at hand.

Personally, I'm all about the individual drill music, though Mora did end with an epic Mother Love Bone reference from his own workout playlist.  Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns.  Nice.  Listen up for some Led Zeppelin tomorrow (Immigrant Song!  Immigrant Song!)

Jack Wang of InsideUCLA posted a nice slideshow from today's practice.  Check it out here.

The Bruins will hold practice #3 tomorrow at 3pm.