For the second consecutive day, USF ended its practice about 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. Luckily, I was able to catch Leavitt Friday because he was doing a TV interview with a local station and today he and Greg Gregory lingered around as Delbert Alvarado kicked after practice.

Anyway, here’s today’s report with updates of the missing players at the bottom in ODDS AND ENDS:

Despite three intense weeks of training, it’s still hard to figure out what type of team USF will field in Saturday’s opener.

“I’ll tell you next week,” offensive coordinator Greg Gregory said. “You don’t know until the game. You don’t have any clue where you’re really at. I really believe that.”

Gregory, however, did see improvement from the start of camp until Saturday’s conclusion.

“I think assignment-wise we’re getting fairly sharp which is a big thing. I think we got more physical,” he said. “We’ve fought through a few injuries that have taken a toll right now a little bit, but I think hopefully those guys will all be healthy by Monday.

“But we’re improved. It’s a slow process. The whole key is to make sure we improve all the way through the season so you don’t hit any lulls where you don’t improve week to week.”

USF has already begun gameplanning for Tennessee-Martin.

“There are some things we know we’re going to do against every opponent we play. We kind of have a saying around here: ‘It’s about us.’ And that means how well do we execute,” Gregory said. “You always worry and respect every opponent but you really focus on what you can do. So there’s probably 75 percent of our offense we run against everybody we play and then there’s that 25 percent that’s tweaked for a certain opponent based on what they do defensively.”

The bottom line, however, is execution.

“We’ve got to be able to do what we can do,” Gregory said. “And if we can’t it doesn’t matter about all the other fluff and that type stuff. We better be able to do our base stuff well or we’re in for a long season.”

BY COMPARISON: Here is Leavitt’s take on how productive training camp went:

“I don’t know. We’ll find out at the end of the season. At the end of the season, if we win I guess it was productive. If you don’t win, I guess it wasn’t productive.”

ODDS AND ENDS: Receivers coach Mike Canales missed practice for the second consecutive day after attending his grandmother’s funeral in California. … QB B.J. Daniels and both McCaskills—DT Keith and C Kevin—missed practice to attend a funeral in Tallahassee. … LB Quavon Taylor, one of five freshmen awaiting NCAA clearance, was not at practice because he was ill, Leavitt said. … Former Bulls K Bill Gramatica stayed after practice to work with Delbert Alvarado.