It’s not as if Marshall Cooper needed to prove his toughness. It’s just there is so much to learn right now that the senior linebacker didn’t want to miss even a few minutes of a recent University of Tennessee at Chattanooga practice, despite one of his fingers being bent in a very unnatural position.
Perhaps no position group on the team is having to learn on the fly as much as Cooper’s in the first spring under head coach Rusty Wright. It doesn’t help that the former Hixson High School player, who led the Mocs in tackles last season with 98, is one of the few current UTC linebackers with extended playing time.
Marshall Cooper is being asked to take on a leadership role for UTC’s linebackers and defense this spring, the team’s first with Rusty Wright as head coach.Things are especially thin alongside Cooper, with sophomore Ty Boeck and freshman Kohl Henke part of a small group competing for the other starting spot at inside linebacker.
“What stands out right now about the linebacking group is the limited numbers we have,” Wright said. “That’s the hardest spot to play in any defense because you have to be tied into the run game, tied to the pass game and react to blocks in front of you a whole lot faster than the guys on the back end.
“We have smart kids in there, though. Marshall Cooper has had a good spring. Ty Boeck has come a long way in a short amount of time, and we’ve moved Kohl Henke to inside linebacker, which will help him in the long run. I’m excited about the freshmen we’re bringing in. Daniel Brent and Justin Sanders are more prototypical of what we’ve had here in the past,” added Wright, a former Mocs player who worked as a UTC assistant from 1996 to 2002 and again from 2013 to 2016.