WVU will practice for the 10th time tomorrow, and maybe it’s because we’re at a distance throughout the process, but we just hadn’t seen or heard much news … until Saturday. This depth chart that was issued at the start of the spring hadn’t changed much, save the Jacky Marcellus shift from inside receiver to running back and Yodny Cajuste’s ascension at left tackle, where he looked really good Saturday.

Then came the news, news you sort of anticipated: Daikiel Shorts from inside receiver to wide receiver. Dana Holgorsen and Lonnie Galloway were intent on figuring out the outside positions in the spring, and so just past the halfway point, bang, Shorts moves to the Z.

He looked good, and Ricky Rumph, replacing Daryl Worley, had a tough day, surrendering three touchdowns to Shorts and getting blocked out of the play by Shorts on a long touchdown run to Rumph’s side. (Khairi Sharif looked solid, by the way…). But the story was not Shorts, but Shelton Gibson. His time is now, or else, it seems, and if Dana and Lonnie didn’t like what they saw at Z and shifted Shorts, that ought to sound alarms at the X. That’s where they’re looking now, and that seems obvious.

And Gibson had a tough day. He dropped a handful of passes in drills and scrimmage action, and though he caught a 30-yard touchdown to start the scrimmage, he also dropped one later, too. Afterward, Gibson said what a lot of others were thinking: He’s so far known for the passes he hasn’t caught.

The 6-foot-1, 190-pound Gibson was curiously ineligible as a freshman that year and then dropped a critical pass in the first half of last year’s opener against Alabama.

“Every time I catch a ball,” Gibson said, “I think about that pass I dropped. Every single time.”

Trailing the nation’s top-ranked team 20-17 in the third quarter, the Mountaineers drove to the Crimson Tide 30-yard line. On third-and-15, quarterback Clint Trickett saw Gibson run a route on the left side that created space just past the first-down marker. The ball was there when the defender wasn’t, and the Mountaineers had a certain first down.

Gibson dropped the pass and Josh Lambert missed a 47-yard field goal attempt. Alabama was in the end zone six plays later and would win 33-23.

“I think it’s going to stick with me the rest of my life,” Gibson said. “People are still talking about it. But it’s a good thing — it has its good and it has its bad. That was a big game and a big play. You need to make those plays. Every time I drop a ball out there, I have to think, ‘It’s a big game and a big play.’ I use it for drive.”

And that’s all for me today, and tomorrow. I’m on assignment for a takeout piece and out of pocket until Wednesday morning — and then I start a brief vacation Thursday.