The Daily Illini spoke with offensive linemen Martin O’Donnell and Ryan McDonald on Saturday after practice at the Home Depot Center. O’Donnell was understandably proud and short-winded after a race, but the two spoke about running competitions, rooming together on the road and breaking down film.

Daily Illini: What has been your best experience in California so far?

Martin O’Donnell: The me-versus-Akim (Millington) sprint-off. Akim’s been talking mess all year about beating me in it.

Ryan McDonald: Akim claims he runs a 4.96 40-yard dash. I think it might be closer to a 4.6 20-yard dash. The race was a culmination, really, we had been waiting for it and looking for it since the end of the season.

MO: It’s been building up for a while. We were going to do it before we left Champaign, but we were doing a lot of conditioning and stuff, so our legs were feeling bad enough as it is. It’s been put off for a little while, so this would have been the last day to give it a shot. We decided to move it to a 20 yard instead of a 40-yard just to get the race going.

DI: How close was the race?

MO: It was a tie. Akim came off the line faster than I did; I’m not a quick starter, as far as sprinting goes, so I had to hawk him down, and it wound up in a tie.

DI: Ryan, if you were in the race, who would win?

RM: It’s been decided that (Millington and Martin) were the bottom-feeders in the sprinting realms of the offensive line, so I really hope I would beat them.

DI: Who is the fastest offensive lineman?

RM: X (Xavier Fulton) is. I really don’t even know if he counts as an offensive lineman. He’s one of the most athletic linemen we have, there’s no debating that.

DI: How was the Lowry’s Beef Bowl for the two of you?

RM: We were kind of surprised there was a time limit to how long we could eat. We took our time, and they ended up kicking us out of it.

DI: If you had known that there was a time limit, would you have eaten more?

MO: I don’t think so. I didn’t want to explode from eating, but I wasn’t feeling all right as is. But we ended up ordering pizza – two pizzas – later on that night anyway.

DI: What’s the roommate situation for the linemen?

MO: It’s me and Mac (McDonald), but all of the linemen room together some how.

DI: What is it like for the two of you as roommates?

RM: He’s a veteran, the leader of this offensive line. Martin does everything right, he does bring me along with some issues.

MO: We’ll watch film together in hotel rooms and compare notes on the defense and look for things that might cause us trouble. The center (McDonald) runs the offense and he makes the decisions on all of the calls, and I can’t see the right side of the line.

DI: Does Martin ever question the calls that Ryan makes on the field?

MO: Absolutely, I do. I correct him, it happened today.

RM: I don’t know if it’s dyslexia or who knows what but Martin will be like, “Ryan it’s 31, not whatever you were thinking.”

DI: When you are breaking down things on the defensive line, what do you look for?

MO: There are really only so many things that you can do with defensive film. There are a lot of things, but it is a finite amount. The biggest thing is the looking and seeing how they play different kinds of blocks. We try to see how they play double teams, how they play cut (blocks), what their go-to pass rush moves are and things like that. That’s the biggest thing that we look for.

RM: Besides that, we want to be able to anticipate what they’re doing, based on alignments. The safeties, line backers, whatever, we want to gather as much information to help anticipate what our blockers will have to do based on their rush … I was upset because I wanted to see a clear winner in the sprint-off

MO: I see myself as a clear winner by shutting Akim up. He was talking a lot the entire season telling me to forfeit, I think I proved myself and made him shut up finally.