The Practice Notes

As he watched his team go through their second practice in preparation for the 2009 season, Texas State head coach Brad Wright noticed that one of his veteran players has been unusually quiet this fall.

“Alex Luna is normally one of our most vocal players, but the past couple of days he has been unusually quiet,” Wright said. “He told me, ‘Coach I am going (concentrate) on doing rather than talking about things this year,’ and as a coach, that makes you feel good.”

Luna is slated to start on Texas State’s offensive line for the third straight year after starting every game each of the last two seasons. Most of his time has been spent at left tackle and he enters this season as one of three offensive linemen on Texas State’s roster to earn preseason All-Southland Conference honors. Both he and fellow senior tackle Calvin Gore were All-SLC Second-Team choices by SLC coaches in a preseason poll, while sophomore guard D.J. Hall was named a preseason All-SLC First-Team choice by the coaches.

As Texas State continued working on its offensive and defensive schemes Monday, Wright also was happy to see some improvement over his team’s first workout.

“We looked better today,” said Brad Wright. “Usually the nervousness and excitement shows up in the first day. Today, we settled down a little bit and performed a little better. We had a bunch of guys running around doing a good job.”

The Bobcats will don pads for the first time Tuesday morning as they continue preparing for the Sept. 5 season-opening game against Angelo State inside Bobcat Stadium at 8:00 a.m.