March 4, 2012

Tulsa, Oklahoma -

THE SPECIAL TEAMS The spring season is important for Tulsa's special team units since the Hurricane will be looking to replace placekicker/punter Kevin Fitzpatrick, deep snapper Bo Abbott and holder Clay Sears.

"Working with special teams this spring is a big deal because we're trying to find our deep snapper. We've been very blessed to have Bo Abbott for the last three years, so that's an open job going into spring practice," said Blankenship. "The position of holder on PATs and field goals is also open."

"We've signed a kicker, but we're looking to give an opportunity to Chad Levin and Cole Way to see how they battle out," added Blankenship.

Levin is a red-shirt freshman walk-on who connected on 8-of-9 field goals and 78-of-80 PATs as a prep senior at Arkansas' Bentonville High School in 2010. Way handled Tulsa's punting chores for the first seven games, before giving way to the senior Fitzpatrick for the final six contests.

"We'll do a lot of work with our return game and specifically the punt team. We probably won't do as much work on the coverage teams in spring practice as we will in fall camp, but we'll work hard on punting and returns. With Cole in the mix all spring, we think that's an area we have to improve on," said Blankenship.

	TULSA SPECIALISTS DEPTH CHART

	KO		28	Cole Way (6-8, 205, So-1L)
	FG/PAT	        42	Chad Levin (5-9, 166, Fr-RS)
	P		28	Cole Way (6-8, 205, So-1L)
	DS		85	Greg Brown (6-3, 252, So-1L)
			47	Blake Abbott (6-0, 223, Fr-TR)
	HO		30	Luke Snider (5-10, 178, So-1L)
			28	Cole Way (6-8, 205, So-1L)
			6	Derek Patterson (6-0, 184, Fr-RS)
	KOR	        22	Trey Watts (5-11, 190, Jr-2L)
			20	Marco Nelson (6-0, 192, Jr-2L)
	PR		15	J.D. Ratliff (5-9, 170, Sr-1L)
			22	Trey Watts (5-11, 190, Jr-2L)
			20	Marco Nelson (6-0, 192, Jr-2L)

As TulsaHurricane.com continues its pre-spring look at the Golden Hurricane football team, there will be a video interview with Coach Blankenship about the defensive side of the ball on Monday.