Pretty interesting, explanatory, revealing and even foreboding stuff from WVU’s head coach at his press conference today. I’ll be honest: Though I don’t think he’s that guy, or even close, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t anticipate fireworks or rudeness or questions asked to Dana by Dana, but I didn’t know. We’ve not seen this particular situation before. I kind of wondered what answers he could give to the questions he would be asked, some I feel he can’t rightly answer and some to which I feel there aren’t any answers.

Again, this is not that, but I really hadn’t been as curious since Total Self-Evaluation in 2010 — and, boy, that’s a different story today knowing now what we did not then … namely that Bill was fired a week earlier.

Anyhow …

… I guess sine then I’ve been slow to give people credit for doing what’s common and expected and inevitable. The seat isn’t warm beneath Dana. It has frost on it, in fact. Still, there could be no blinders or stiff-arms to even patronization today. There were questions that needed to be asked and they were and he did what he’s paid handsomely to do. No badges for that, not for us or for him, but I think he filled in some blanks that you and I and others had merely tried to fill with what we thought were answers.

He wasn’t curt or mad or snarky and the only time I thought it might go in a different direction was when David P. Hickman asked about defensive schemes and whether they had to change given the results. Dana stepped back, crossed arms as he listened and loaded up his retort. When Dave was done, out came We’ve tried that.

And then it was back on the smooth road and a nice explanation, even in context of the past game, as to how WVU has tried many things. Kitchen stink, I say.

Apart from that, pretty civil and useful, probably for both sides, and I think you can see reporters and coach know their ways around one another and have a pretty good rapport in spots like this. WVU now disappears behind the curtain for a week, hoping and trying desperately to get better and avoid another day like this.