“The room has talent in it, but at the end of the day, the big question mark is who is it going to be and what is it going to look like? … We’re under the radar. There’s a lot of question marks. We know that. Our players know that. They’re very motivated, I’ll be honest with you. Because I think there’s people out there that say, ‘Well, what are they going to be?’ So we just have to go out there and earn it.”
He issued that message in particular to Yant, who earned a scholarship with a strong spring. The 6-foot-2, 245-pound freshman redshirted in 2020 and began his career as a walk-on because he was at risk of not qualifying until the last minute out of high school, which scared other suitors off.
Now, though, Yant is squarely in the mix for playing time.
“I challenged him,” Held said. “OK, you earned a scholarship. Now is not the time to take a deep breath and say, ‘I made it.’ You better be working even harder because you still haven’t earned any playing time.”
Ervin, a midyear enrollee, made a favorable first impression on Held and the coaching staff. Held said he freshman from Georgia is up to about 215 pounds on his 6-1 frame and has the tools to be a factor right away.
“You can’t speed up time, right? So everything we do, you’ve got to be able to get the signal, line up, what’s the pre-snap, what do I do post-snap? There’s that part of it that you just can’t speed up, so the more reps he gets, the better,” Held said.
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