BATON ROUGE, La. -- When Travin Dural says he needs to improve at making contested catches, don't bother mentioning that he made one of the catches of last year in the SEC under exactly those circumstances.
Remember that play? LSU trailing Florida 24-20 late in the fourth quarter? Dural comes down with a one-handed touchdown grab in the back corner of the end zone, despite Gators corner Brian Poole hanging on him enough to draw a penalty flag for pass interference?
Not good enough, Dural says.
"That's one game," Dural said. "We played 13 of them."
OK, maybe he has a point. Last season was a stellar starting debut for Dural -- he made 37 catches for 758 yards and seven touchdowns, averaging 20.5 yards per catch -- but there were times that he and LSU's other receivers didn't do the Tigers' young quarterbacks any favors. Maybe they dropped a pass at a key juncture or struggled to get off the line of scrimmage when a physical cornerback tried to disrupt their pass route.
As for Dural, he believes there were too many occasions where he failed to battle through a defender to make a catch.
"[My biggest area of improvement] would be make those contested catches," Dural said. "When we needed big catches in big games, I wasn't there for my team. So that would be the thing."
Dural's personal goal dovetails nicely with what he said was the LSU offense's theme for spring practice: playing a more physical brand of football.
It was especially necessary among the players at Dural's position, but last Saturday's spring game offered a couple of examples of how things might be moving in the right direction. Sophomore Malachi Dupre faced tight coverage when he made a diving 35-yard touchdown catch in the first quarter. And wiry sophomore D.J. Chark fought through two defenders to reel in a 45-yard bomb from Brandon Harris, extending a drive in a third-and-12 situation.
Dural also got into the act, outbattling Russell Gage in the end zone to make an 8-yard touchdown catch in the fourth quarter.
"Today was the best job we've done at making multiple contested catches," offensive coordinator Cam Cameron said, "where we have to extend and obviously our quarterbacks are just taught, ‘Get it to our guy away from their guy and give our guy a chance.' Guys came through today. It was nice."
Granted, it was just a spring game. Cornerbacks from the first two SEC opponents LSU will face this fall -- Mississippi State and Auburn -- will offer considerably more resistance than the green scholarship corners and walk-ons that Dural and Co. dominated last weekend. But it obviously felt good to see growth in an area of his game that he worked to improved.
"It's something that we worked on every day," said Dural, who finished the game with four catches for 127 yards and two touchdowns. "We have a drill where there's someone hitting you catching balls, or a distraction drill, to make sure when we need it in the game, we have it."
Dural credited new receivers coach Tony Ball with helping him improve his positional technique, as well. The junior wideout said Ball "probably gets on me the hardest. He's on me every day. I could make the littlest mistake and he's on me as if the world just ended. But as a player, you need that. I like it because he's pushing me to reach my full potential."
That was Ball's modus operandi under Mark Richt at Georgia, with his heavy focus on fundamentals helping a blue-chipper like A.J. Green into a more dominant performer and allowing two- or three-star prospects develop into productive SEC players.
Ball has a depth chart loaded with talented receivers, although the freshman- and sophomore-heavy group struggled last season because of its lack of playing experience. Perhaps that transitional season is paying off for the receivers now, however.
"At the end of the season, we weren't as consistent as we are now. We weren't getting open as often as we needed to. We weren't making the contested catches," Dural said. "As you can see, now we're doing that and we're making it look easy."
