Before spring practice started, Sonny Dykes and his staff saw one area, in particular, where the team definitely needed to improve. Entering the home stretch with the spring game on Saturday, physical play has been at the forefront of every decision through spring ball. Spring practice can be a grind, but SMU is focused on finishing it out strong and keeping that physical edge to the end. 

"As we addressed the things we needed to improve most in our program, we thought that was number one: a tougher mentally attitude," Dykes said. "That's what we plan on doing on Saturday. We need to grind through it and perform at a high level on Saturday. We don't have any excuses for not performing well. That has to be our mindset. That was our biggest goal coming into spring."

Spring practice, in general, often includes a much more physical load than a fall practice since teams don't have to prepare for games on Saturdays. That's been especially the case this year on The Hilltop despite not having a wealth of depth available. 

"We want to make sure we're smart at the same time and not get anyone injured, but we have to get better and improve," Dykes said. "The only way to do that is to go out and play tough and physical."

The Mustangs, to this point, have been fortunate enough to keep the team relatively healthy. Some players have missed some time, but not with anything that would be considered major. Emphasizing physical play with a short roster can cause some smaller injuries to accumulate. That's happened to an extent to the Mustangs with spring practice winding down.

"We're starting to run out of bodies a little bit," Dykes said. "We're trying to go 60 plays a team with seven o-lineman. It's hard to do. Nothing major, knock on wood, but it's been a lot of little things. We'll try to get some back healthy on Friday and get after it again on Saturday and have a good scrimmage."

After Friday's practice and Saturday's spring game, the players will have plenty of time to get to 100 percent before fall camp opens. However, the focus currently is on finishing the spring on a high note to head into the summer.

"We need to go out and practice and be physical with the right mentality," Dykes said. " In an ideal world, we'd have enough bodies to divide into teams and play (on Saturday). That format isn't going to work for us. We're going to have to do something a little different. We'll try to have a controlled scrimmage and work on situations."