Hey, we’re all the way back, no? Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which wants to tip a glass to West Virginia baseball today. True, nothing has really happened. The program hasn’t been to a NCAA regional in 18 years and didn’t get too close this year. The 2015 season ended with a whimper, a two-game stumble through the Big 12 tournament it rallied to qualify for and two losses that saw a combined one run. WVU was 21-12 after sweeping a three-game series against Butler that opened Monongalia County Ballpark, but went 6-15 from that point forward and finished 27-27.

But baseball has changed here, and you can’t argue against that. People, be they patrons, players, coaches, opponents, administrators or recruits, take the thing more seriously now. Attendance is up. The new stadium is a major chip that, in time, will generate appreciable results. The best is still ahead for the program, one that had just four seniors on the roster and two all-freshman team picks.

Whatever. Here’s where you begin to understand WVU has something going: The manager is mentioned in rumors about jobs at other schools. That never happens here. Of course, you ought not take this too seriously. It started, albeit way, way, way off the radar, earlier this month. I soon found myself talking about it with people, which was more fun than serious. Clemson, as I type, has a manager and isn’t looking for one, and if you sniff around you come to understand Randy Mazey is not a leading candidate. I’m also unsure Mazey would or would want to go anywhere right now. He and his family are invested here, so there’s a weighty anchor. Basically, I just want to underline one point: We’re so far from being in the middle of this story. I mean, so far that it’s not actually a story right now.

But still, that guy’s name is on a list! It doesn’t mean anything, but, come on. A WVU manager is on a list! That’s one way you and we came to know WVU had something with John Beilein and Rich Rodriguez and Nikki Izzo-Brown and even Jill Kramer.

Now, if you are worried, I would try to talk you out of that. Clemson has won eight of 10 to move to 32-26. Thursday’s ACC tournament win against No. 3 Louisville helped the Tigers find footing on the bubble. So it might not open. If it does, it’s a big-time gig that will draw big-time interest, and Mazey, despite a profile he’s elevated here with more than just wins and losses, doesn’t seem to stand on the shelf Clemson might pick from one day. Maybe I’m wrong, but again, we’re not on that stoop right now.

Then again — and here’s the familiar part — the story might not end this year. Clemson’s hall of fame manager is contracted through the 2016 season, and the A.D. won’t extend that deal. He didn’t last season and it wouldn’t make sense for him to do it after this season. When the A.D. did agree to bring the coach back last season, he did so with four conditions, the likes of which I’ve either never seen or never seen disclosed and discussed in a like manner. So the manager doesn’t seem long for life there and a list exists. Who knows what happens, but for a change, people care.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words,

SheikYbuti said:

I suppose whenever Ka’Raun eludes a pursuing defender with his patented Shamrock Shake, he can yell back as he approaches the end zone, “Did you want fries with that?!?”

Yes.

Av8eer said:

I heard he Ka’raun past defenders like they’re in quicksand

Also yes.

I love you, Doug! said:

I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still/
Ka’raun-raun-raun-raun Ka’raun-ran-ran

Still yes.

Clarence Oveur said:

Yeah, my heart stood still

Yeah, leave off that dill

Aaaaaand when he ran a post/
Ka’raun-raun-raun-raun, Ka’raun-raun-raun

More yes.

Mr Burns said:

To date, Mr White has zero catches for zero yards. Let’s go slow here.

Released the hounds.

Karl said:

Working four years at McDonald’s gets you a 5-cent raise? That’s disgusting.

Agreed, and so are a bunch of other things about McDonald’s.

Mack said:

Kaitlyn or Britt is a question that could divide a nation.

Vatican?

Mr Burns said:

Anyone who reduces the number of time outs deserves a Nobel prize. The last three minutes of games takes thirty minutes to play.

Burns jumps back on the same page.

Jason B said:

You may think I am crazy, but here are some rule changes that I have considered on long winter nights trying to stay awake watching the game after 9pm starts.

1. Have a 2 second run off for fouls in the last minute. Why is it considered a good thing to break the rules to try to have a chance to win?
2. Call fouls like soccer, where ‘advantage’ is taken into consideration. If the basket is made, no foul – just move on. It would take away the three point play, but it would also take away some of the ticky-tack fouls that are called 9 miles from the basket which have no impact on the play or flow of the game.
3. Eliminate media timeouts! Who really pays any attention to the commercials anyway?

Interesting. I like No. 1 in principle, but applying it would be unpopular, because teams miss so many foul shots and lose games at the line that fouling to extend the game is a successful strategy. No. 2 sort of exists now. Two seasons ago, officials were more or less told to be subjective and not call fouls if the contact didn’t disrupt the outcome of the play. So if there’s a slap on the arm on a layup and the ball goes in, no foul. If the slap keeps the shot from reaching the rim, foul. This never happens. I’d love to see No. 3 instituted, because the last people who want timeouts late are in the media.

smeer said:

the charge call used to be pretty simple

you really had to establish position – not just get to the space first

we’d make official’s jobs much easier and eliminate much of the calls that could go either way by simply making the defender earn a charge

there would be less physicality to the game and thus more offense since defenders couldn’t stick a knee out in an attempt to draw a charge or slide under someone as they drive to the basket

Huggs will hate me for suggesting this

to offset the O’s advantage – start calling traveling and carries again. in my day (cue the guy with no teeth and a cane), you couldn’t palm the ball (pick up your dribble) and then dribble again – defenders don’t have a chance if they can’t come up on a guy once he picks up his dribble.

of course – this will take 15 years to implement since we’d have to start training kids in Kindergarten how to dribble again. that or recruit kids from other parts of the world where fundamentals are still taught

I’m open to any suggestion on this topic. Block/charge is the biggest problem in this officiating crisis. I honestly don’t think all the officials know the rule as it’s been re-written. I also think it’s unbelievably subjective, and officials reward defenders for hustle or toughness or strategy much like they punish offenders for being reckless, even if the opponent is out of position. I don’t know how they go about fixing this, or fixing the mess that’s been made the past few seasons. Coaches at all levels teach it now, so it’s ingrained in the game, but officials seemingly cannot be taught how to adjudicate.  

ccteam said:

I wonder if any Final Four team ever got less out of a recruiting class than Noreen, Cottril, Nyarsuk and Curry? Hard to imagine. One oft injured bit player and 3 washouts. Not trying to slam Huggs or the players. It just struck me when I saw that list.

It might not be in a class of its own, but it doesn’t take long to call roll. Still, coaches will tell you that the recruiting class you put together in the year after a big season (like the Final Four) is when and where you cash in your good play. (Remember, Cottrill and Nyarsuk signed in November 2009, and Curry, who was a UTEP signee, got out of his NLI and signed a grant-in-aide with WVU in April 2010). So the boom-or-bust year was the 2011 class and –nope, it’s still hard to look at this.

netbros said:

I agree wholeheartedly with the point about wing players. That’s the Big 12 game, and so far Huggins hasn’t had that. He now has a few on the roster that have a chance to earn minutes.

You have to have them, if only for defense, because the Big 12 has a list of rangy mid-range players who can score or facilitate. I know we’re fixated upon WVU’s press, but I still feel Huggins would be just as happy having some 6-2 guards, 6-7 forwards and a 6-9 big who can switch and cover across the court. Certainly those ideas can exist in tandem.

Dann White said:

Basketball, in its NCAA evolution is a sport in transition. For that and other reasons, I often feel that the sport, the only sport I actually played, has passed me by and rendered me little more than a casual fan and observer. For that reason I am often hesitant to express opinions, fearing they will give away my lack of confidence in them.
The big exception to this has been my general sense of dissatisfaction in the state of the Mountaineer men’s program, its lack of a clear direction, its often capricious recruitment efforts, and its seeming failure to capitalize on its impressive successes in the Big East Conference carrying that on into the Big 12, where we now appear to be laying an egg.
Since that time, our Mr. Huggins seems to have settled into a pattern of recruiting problem children, perennial prep attendees, partial qualifiers, and as Mike pointed out, replacements. In many cases theses replacement players come in, contribute a few productive minutes for a season, and then depart in a stream of comments about how much they learned from coach or how they’ll “always be a Mountaineer at heart”.
None of that matters of course; they are gone an the program is certainly no richer for their having been there. There is one inescapable thing about these cases though; they don’t resemble traditional college athletic recruiting – where scholarships are given in hopes of a player entering the program, remaining with the team throughout their college careers, and eventually leave; all the while pursuing an education. The quality of this education has traditionally been left up to the player’s own goals, but they should need to be looking for one. If not, we probably would be better advised to leave them out of our plans; it is unlikely that we will build much of a basketball program and tradition on the practice of giving out 1 or 2 year grants-in-aid.
I just don’t see this trend improving under Huggs, the man I always believed would eventually return and lead us to greatness at last. This whole thing makes me really long for the days of John Belein. Damn, coach. Come on!
A lot has changed about the game, from the 3 point goal to the unis, and I may feel a bit behind the times, but I am sure that the practice of having players that share the goal of being with the team from the signing day to graduation day hasn’t gone out of style….has it?

Actually, when you look at the transfer numbers and the graduate student trend and the number of early entries, I don’t know how you could feel anything but the fact continuity is out of style. Dann!

Mack said:

Wvu had Big East tournament success, but it never really finished all that high (say the top 3) in the regular season, did it?

Never. I remember looking at this at some point late in the past season, but apart from some early-season standings when WVU was, say, 2-0 and alone or tied, Huggins has never been in first place in the Big East or Big 12. Even in 2010, Syracuse was really good and finished 15-3 in the Big East.

lowercase jeff said:

mack/dann – i have always believed, and often stated, the college sports is more about relevance than standings/rings, because everything is so unevenly distributed. players, tv time, access to good coaches, etc. anyway, with that in mind, i agree completely with dann that team seemed to sit in higher national regard in the BE than it does now.

that said, i check out long before the doom and gloom. i get nervous when guys my age or older lament the “current state” of things, mostly because we just mean its not ours anymore. and it isnt. its tough to know how bad/un-bad the recruiting situation is at wvu with actual data of other schools. dann, maybe you know it – i do not. i dont know if what happens here is very uncommon. it certainly wasnt good, though, for a while there.

last year seemed different, if only because the number under “W” was bigger. not sure which came first, or if both are likely to stay, but i choose to believe that both the recruiting success, and the Ws are more similar to huggs’ expected performance than the previous 3 or so years.

These mirror my holgorsen thoughts. he is a certified offensive genius. some of us may feel certain ways about that, but no one anywhere else seems to be having that debate. the man is at the vanguard of offense, and continues to be extremely sought after in the offseason circuit. so – i believe its coming. soon. connected to this is that my understanding of WVU as a football program leads me to believe that we dont have the luxury of discarding genius here. he has struggled, and may again soon, but Straight Arrow Genarro is not walking through that door. we need to let this man figure it out, on our clock and our dime. because when he does, he will be our best chance at striking gold.

Excellent. Hey, I don’t want to push past this: WVU was in a better basketball place — be that a conference or a status — in the Big East. That’s something else I don’t think can be denied. It was wonderful, and it all came together at once. We can look back and see Syracuse, Pitt, Villanova, Georgetown and Notre Dame, but only Syracuse was a perennial program before that special little run the league had for several years. The others found good coaches who clicked at the same time and brought their programs back to the forefront. Then Louisville and Marquette arrived. Man, that was great. But the Big 12 has Kansas, which is its Syracuse, I guess, and maybe Baylor, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma have their coaches and are taking their steps forward. Maybe Texas is doing that now, though not from as great a depth, because Rick Barnes was really good for a really long time. There are some parallels, I think, but the Big East just had greater exposure, a much better reputation, coaches with higher profiles, superior media markets and a clear superiority over its basketball brethren. 

chocolate covered bacon said:

The thing that has hurt HCDH the most the last three season is a poor finish to the season. Count the 2013 season as a rebuilding year, every program has them and the roster wasn’t exactly stocked when he took over.

A 5-0 start in 2012, with a 1-4 finish. Last year had a 6-2 start and a 1-4 finish, and that 2013 season had a 2-3 finish. For the last three seasons HCDH has an aggregate record of 4-11 in the final five games. For HCDH to finish 8-4 and win the subsequent bowl game his team has to improve as the season progresses. His first three seasons have suggested the opposite. Last year’s bowl loss mirrored Holgorsen’s end of season record. Great out of the gate, but after adjustments by the opponents little positive results. Ironically, besides ISU and KU, the only team that Holgorsen has beaten in the final five games the last three seasons is TCU.

Comparatively, Patterson at TCU is 2-3, 1-4, and 5-0 in the final five games the last three seasons. Patterson has an aggregate record of 8-7 and a bowl record of 1-1. The one bowl loss was by one point to Michigan State.

I’m with lcj and have set my yearly expectations at 8-4, with a winning bowl record.

My point, HCDH teams have not shown the ability to grow/improve throughout a season. For the football team to finish 8-4 improvement throughout the season is a must. There are coaches that can beat you with theirs and then take yours and beat you again. Holgorsen faces a lot of those coaches in the Big-12.

For Holgorsen to be successful at WVU, he has to be one of “THOSE” coaches. To me, he has to prove he can be that type of coach. This season is the fourth quarter, Holgorsen is down and needs a score, the clock is ticking.

Oh yeah, the late-season slips are a Thing, and people are all too happy to write about them, if even without context. The numbers are what they are, but I think they can be explained, or at least elaborated on a bit. This is unpopular, but the 2012 team wasn’t all that good. It had the offensive talent, but it lacked depth and had to use a lot of youth on defense. The offensive talent was pretty good toward the end of the season, but the defense was abysmal, and that led to a change of coordinators late in the season. The 2013 season was, to me, about quarterback play and more youth. There’s an unknown there, too, because Clint Trickett got hurt in his first start, which was when WVU looked good and beat a ranked Oklahoma State. If your QB fades, it’s hard for the offense to surge. I think the same is true last season, but the larger issue to me was the effect the TCU game had. It was a one-point loss and WVU wasn’t recovered in time for Texas. Then Trickett got hurt against Kansas Stat before the bowl game saw WVU’s defense play as bad as it had all season. The record is bad, don’t get me wrong, but WVU’s been close with some one-play or overtime losses. Even in 2013, how many of those losses did WVU lead in the fourth quarter? True, it counts, and you have to finish games like you have to finish seasons. I think if this is a season that pushes Holgorsen’s fate one way or another, it’ll have a lot to do with what happens in November — Texas Tech at home, Texas at home, at Kansas, Iowa State at home. That can gather or spoil momentum, and that’ll matter heading into the finale Dec. 5 at Kansas State.

Brian said:

Agree that under HCDH recruiting as a whole is better – but – I’ve not been ecstatic with the QB and WR recruiting.

Since Holgo has been here (and Tavon, Sted, Geno and the previous regime guys have gone) our most productive guys at those positions have been transfers with limited time here.

Sure, Tricket, White, and Alford were very productive and successful, but it took all of them 50% of their tenure here to “be all that they could be”, and that was coming in with only 2 years. And imagine where we would have been without them? Juco guys and transfers are great, but they cannot comprise 90% of your QB/WR production. That much turnover at those positions is just a mess.

Clearly, what we would all prefer is to have guys come in right out of high school and have 4-5 years at WVU – that appears to be what WVU has been building wiht respect to LB, OL, secondary, RB, and other positions on the team right now.

But go back and look at the 2012 QB and WR recruiting class for WVU. It isn’t good, and I gotta think if Holgo had brought in another QB or two and some better WRs, WVU would be more in a Baylor or TCU type position as far as expectations as opposed to still being a middling Big 12 team.

I put that on Dana – he’s the guy who should be consistently pulling high level 3 and 4 star recruits at the QB and WR position. His guys have gotten their shot at the NFL. Right now all we have are question marks at those positions – the most proven WR we have on the team is either Shorts or Thompson. Skylar is the most proven QB.

Agreed, but it’s a process. It takes time. It takes planning. It takes patience. And at the same time, other schools are doing what they can do get the players you want so they, too, can develop depth. It’s trending the right way now, and has been for a while, though. As for the elite-level quarterbacks and receivers, your guess is at least as good as mine, but Oklahoma’s having no less than a similar problem right now.

Dann White said:

Coach Huggins continues his semi-retirement in Morgantown, West Virginia..Its hard to believe he needs a driver, a secretary, and a full compliment of assistants to come up with this
Its OK, I don’t mind. Go ahead and tell me how great he is……………

Sympathy for the devil, for a moment: It’s hard to schedule after a year like WVU just had. Good teams aren’t lining up to come to Morgantown to face WVU’s press and veteran roster. Also: Dann!

jvance said:

Same stuff from Huggins. He’s not a great coach. Add 11 more wins to his meaningless record. If he was so great with all those wins why is he never in the HOF talk.

Actually, I don’t know why he isn’t in HoF talk.

tls62pa said:

I don’t like it. Our 3 toughest games are all on the road, with a yawner of a home schedule. Better be sitting pretty heading into the conference stretch again…

Maybe they are, maybe they are not, but perhaps they’ve fixed a bunch of stuff on offense, particularly in the half court, by that point? Sorry, I’m trying hard to defend this.

chocolate covered bacon said:

Even if Huggins doesn’t see his team improve early in the half court offense, reducing the number of fouls his team commits will improve the average score of opponents. While it might not be a great early schedule to attend, it’s a good early schedule to work out kinks in a half court offense.

OK, good, I’m not totally alone on this. This doesn’t dismiss the fact there isn’t one big name in the home portion of the non-conference schedule, but Louisiana Monroe might win its league, James Madison will contend and Eastern Kentucky is usually a good RPI boost. WVU’s been really good through the years of finding RPI boosters that aren’t big names. But selling that to ticket-holders, good luck.

overtheSEC said:

How much do Iowa State’s odds move if Hoiberg goes to the Bulls? Do we think that’s happening?

They plummet. How much depends who is hired, and I thought it was interesting and/or convenient that Hoiberg lost a really good assistant to St. John’s — can’t wait to see how that works out, and it’s off to a good start already — and then went out and brought back an assistant he previously lost. Maybe that’s just doing something smart and maybe it’s doing something proactive. That looks like a place that promotes from within. I believe he’ll go. I’ve talked to people who think it happens quickly. But he’s given no indication what he’s thinking, and we can’t ignore his heart and what the pro game does to people. Given his in-game prowess, you can’t give them the same odds or anywhere near the same odds if he walks, no matter who replaces him, correct?

SheikYbuti said:

It appears that a C-note on WVU at 100:1 to win the national title wouldn’t be the worst bet ever.

Will a hundred of you pitch in one dollar? There’s a performance art piece I’d love to track on the blog all season.

I love you, Doug! said:

Maybe more than a C-note, Sheik.

Enjoy the extended weekend!