The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

So what about Baylor?

May 19, 2016 by Mike Casazza

 

This isn’t good. It’s beyond bad, actually. Baylor, which has already been made to deal with allegations the university ignored sexual assault and that football players were seemingly protected against like charges, is in it even deeper now.

Now we learn the football program wasn’t exactly strict about punishing players accused of violent and serious offenses.

According to the police documents, at least some Baylor officials, including coaches, knew about many of the incidents, and most players did not miss playing time for disciplinary reasons. None of the incidents has been widely reported in the media.

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JaJuan Seider has good vision

by Mike Casazza

That was May 5, I’d like to point out, when that eighth grader received his second and third scholarship offers. North Carolina State was first, and all of that was to virtually no fanfare.

That all changed today when Alabama’s scholarship offer made the news, and I don’t know what’s less of a surprise: Lane Kiffin’s school is pursuing a middle schooler or JaJuan Seider is in that deep in Florida.

Answers, now and later

by Mike Casazza

Don’t question Randy Mazey, who rolls into Lubbock, Texas, with the hottest team in the country with a NCAA-high 10-game winning streak and 13 victories in the last 14 games.

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Maurice Fleming has but one goal

May 18, 2016 by Mike Casazza

 

Maurice Fleming, who is, I guess, tackling a Pitt player, thought I suppose any means necessary is fine by you, says he’ll be on campus two weeks from today.

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Son of a …

by Mike Casazza

The Bison with a FBS move right there. Farewell to Jeff, who played the games — football and basketball — in college. He’s one of the good guys in a sea of opposites, though we’ll never know what might have come of Culhazza.

Once more, with feeling.

Ten in a row, and how the hard stuff begins

by Mike Casazza

Three frames to note: West Virginia, maybe a bit too comebacky last week, scored three times in the second inning, which helps on the road. In the bottom of the third, Pitt tied the score, and starter Braden Zarbnisky only lasted those three innings. The relief? Manager Randy Mazey had a lot of arms to use, but in a mid-week game that, as noted, he could not lose, he went to Ross Vance, his No. 2 starter.

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Now or never

May 17, 2016 by Mike Casazza

West Virginia’s baseball season essentially came to an end Friday afternoon. William & Mary, a barely-.500 squad that came to town to facilitate or finish the Mountaineers, chased WVU’s top starter and led 7-0 after six innings. That was it. The six-game winning streak and all the momentum and postseason chatter that came with winning nine out of 10 was rolled up in a tarp and stowed away until the start of next season.

And then the — I don’t know — unthinkable happened, a couple times, and the Mountaineers rallied and won 8-7. The highlights do a good job reliving the drama and at the same time probably don’t do it justice.

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‘I’m always going to look out for West Virginia’

by Mike Casazza

Will Grier enrolled at West Virginia University Monday, and he’s back in classroom after taking the spring semester off following his departure from the University of Florida. He’ll sit out the 2016 season, and we don’t yet know if he’ll be allowed to start the 2017 opener or if the NCAA’s year-long suspension will resume and extend to cover the first six games of that season.

What we do know? The Mountaineers can thank a pair of spontaneous trips and some serendipitous seating for Grier and Clint Trickett becoming friends and for Trickett counseling the QB-in-waiting before, during and presumably after the transfer process. “West Virginia got lucky with him,” Trickett said.

A little help is on the way

by Mike Casazza

We should have visited this yesterday, but it got bumped back because of other news. It’s nevertheless important, because at some point near the end of spring football, I asked Tony Gibson if he was beginning to think about players who’d join the team over the summer. By then it was clear he had some worries about depth at linebacker and cornerback in particular. But he also had some pretty good junior college transfers and freshmen headed to campus in May, June, July or perhaps even August to offers assistance at those positions.

The defensive coordinator’s reply circled around that and then got to “maybe a graduate transfer,” though for obvious reasons. “We need guys who can play immediately. We don’t need guys who’ll get here and sit a year. We’re to the point now if we’re going to bring guys in, they need to be able to help us.”

Say hello to Maurice Fleming, a cornerback who, as you can tell, just graduated from Iowa.

He announced last month he was leaving the Hawkeyes after four years and three seasons of sporadic playing time, but Fleming wants to play, and it would seem he has a shot to be more than a nickel back at WVU than he would have at Iowa.

Farewell, DTW, and all the others

May 16, 2016 by Mike Casazza

We knew this was coming, and Marcus Simms was wearing No. 8 in the spring. Meanwhile, how about that 2014 recruiting class?

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