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Sunday brunch: Oklahoma 44, WVU 24

October 4, 2015 by Mike Casazza

I’ve no idea what to do with or make of this stat, but I do know it’s interesting. I think. I don’t know. No one knows. Nevertheless, Dana Holgorsen is now 14-9 when his team is ranked. He started 13-3, and the 16th game there was back in the 2012 season. Only seven of those 23 games were against ranked teams. I feel like there’s something there, especially as it relates to that contender-pretender conversation we had yesterday.

And what about yesterday?

Time is going to do something with that game. Time might treat Oklahoma kindly, and yesterday then won’t look so bad, but I think we thought the same last season, and I think these Sooners are not without warts. Time might forget the specifics of the game, which is often the case, and WVU can further edit or erase certain perceptions by winning an upcoming game or two. Or time might reinforce things, and I think the common concern after 44-24, after Skyler Howard’s day, after you saw that some things you thought might be there actually are there, is that what happened for the first time happens more than once.

A whole lot went wrong — some things more than once — in the fourth straight coulda-woulda-shoulda loss to Oklahoma. But WVU is also 3-0 after losing to the Sooners. The Mountaineers made a quarterback change after the 2013 loss in Norman, but I don’t suspect that to be the case here. That said, the conversation after the game was the play of Howard, no matter who was and was not involved in the conversation.

But Howard committed five turnovers Saturday in the most inhospitable environment Howard has faced to date and against the staunchest defense to line up across from him, mistakes he would not defend afterward because he wasn’t made available to the media.

Howard completed 17 of 32 passes for 173 yards, one touchdown and three interceptions. He was sacked seven times and lost two fumbles. Both fumbles and one interception led to 13 points, including 10 of the 17 unanswered points Oklahoma scored to finish the 44-24 win.

“It comes down their defense was better than me,” Holgorsen said. “I’m the one calling those plays, and I didn’t do a good job in the fourth quarter calling the plays you need to call to beat these guys. This one falls on me.”

Holgorsen said he caught himself being conservative with play calls in the third quarter and decided to be more assertive as his team tried to come back from a 24-7 halftime deficit. On a third-and-3 at his 26-yard line, Holgorsen decided to pass and Howard was sacked and lost a fumble that preceded a Sooners field goal and a 27-17 lead.

“I felt like we needed to continue to attack,” Holgorsen said. “When you’re reckless like that against these guys, it’s tough.

WVU v. Oklahoma: Bob Stoops 101

October 3, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Today is the 101st home game for Bob Stoops as Oklahoma’s head coach. He’s 92-8 in those 16-plus seasons. That’s … that’s solid. They’ve had a 39-game winning streak and two 19-game winning streaks and outscored teams 42-15 on average. Today starts Big 12 play — this is the third straight year these two have opened up the conference schedule with one another, which is weird, right? — and the Sooners are 58-3 here under Stoops against league foes.

These are heady numbers, is my point.

But this is not impenetrable. Kansas State and Baylor won here last year and did so by 1 and 34 points. One won little. One won big. (Both were sellouts, as were the 98 others, so let’s understand people would love to have Oklahoma’s “problems.”)

West Virginia is 6-7 on the road in Big 12 games, going 2-2 in 2013, 1-4 in 2014 and 3-1 last season, and has outscored teams by 56 points in wins and has been outscored by 138 points in losses.

True, a lot of that damage was done the first two years. WVU’s tent showed creases in 2012, and there were some bad days away from home, but that was the first time through the league, and 35 and 21 point losses to Texas Tech and Oklahoma State were followed a year later by 31-, 23- and 12-point losses to Baylor, Kansas State and Kansas (!) on the road. Dana Holgorsen almost foreshadowed such events, except that he likely never imagined them to be that bad or that numerous, or against Kansas (!), on the first road trip cycle.

Last season, WVU won at Oklahoma State and Texas Tech, and the Mountaineers weren’t far off at Oklahoma in 2013. Man, remember that game?

And remember the astute Gabe Lynn avoiding Quinton Spain?

You can revisit a lot of Holgorsen’s history at WVU and look at his 23 losses and argue he should have a few more wins. I mean, he’s 1-3 in overtime. There were two one-play, one-point losses in 2012, five losses in 2013 that followed a second-half lead and one one-point and one one-score loss last season (WVU lost by 10 to Alabama and eight to Texas A&M, but those weren’t exactly winnable games … though there were chances early against Alabama. My point is my point, though).

The Big 12 games against Oklahoma are illustrations of the close-yet-far look WVU has and wants so much to shed. Today. Landry Jones threw a touchdown pass on fourth down in the final minute in 2012. The 16-7 loss was there for the taking a year later. The Mountaineers were surging with a rhythm and a touchdown lead last season and — wait, what’s that noise? Wha? That. That’s Jack White’s music!

Then Samaje Perine happened, and it ended up being a 12-point loss, but the Mountaineers were definitely in it but ultimately out of it, which is the wall the team it has to knock down if it wants to be legitimized. WVU started its revenge tour not last week but last season with the aforementioned road wins, the toppling of Baylor and the escape at Maryland. What happened last week was nevertheless optimistic, but what happens today matters most. The difference between contender and pretender is making the plays that have so far eluded WVU against what’s been the league’s premier team and at one of the league’s best and most difficult venues.

Proceed.

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Good week, everybody!

October 2, 2015 by Mike Casazza

I guess I earned this one? I don’t know. I just enjoyed the true irony of his quotes on communication and leaders this week. Truth be told, I was a little embarrassed by this. But just a little. Because when I thought, “How am I going to get interviews with players next fall?” I quickly snapped out of it and remembered the next game is in 2020 and Edsall will have surely gotten over this by then and he’ll be more worried about who Quinnipiac is playing that week.

Dana Holgosen tried to block me in the news conference Tuesday when I said “red zone” and he saw red and tuned me out. But Elijah Wellman is a part of WVU’s red zone resurgence. Fact.

You can read all you want about the game if you like, but I have three other diversions for you.

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New threads

October 1, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Bob Huggins explains the motivation behind the new look:

“When I went to Kansas State, Brad Underwood was there. Brad was my assistant, and it was always K-State. When Brad played there, it was K-State, and he said when you’d take the head-and-shoulders photos, every one says ‘Kansas.’ You can’t see ‘State.’

“It occurred to all of us — and actually, Matt Borman brought it up, which is shocking that he had an original idea — all you see in ours is ‘West.’ You don’t see ‘West Virginia.’ I think the Flying WV has become so synonymous with West Virginia athletics, that it seems like a natural.”

Other highlights from the first basketball news conference of the season, what with practice starting tomorrow?

  • WVU will scrimmage Temple
  • Casey Mitchell was the most talented player Huggins has had here
  • Esa Ahmad can play shooting guard
  • Teyvon MYers is struggling, and that was expected
  • Jon Holton and Nate Adrian are making 3-pointers

 

You’ll Never Talk Alone: S3E4

by Mike Casazza

All done, and you can relive the questions and answers now. We’ll fix the presentation for the next edition.

Live Blog You’ll Never Talk Alone

The Good and the Bad of WVU v. Maryland

September 30, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Saturday was a fun one. Beautiful weather. Hall of Fame occasion. Brad Paisley cameo. Lots of offense. Tremendous defense. On and on it went, and it lent itself to a festive atmosphere in the stands. The place was packed and earlier than normal. It’s not often West Virginia pulls 61,000-plus into the stadium in non-conference play these days and then hammers the opponent. Those are the type of beatdowns reserved for lesser teams from conferences that aren’t quite as B1G.

I saw a number of people wearing costumes, but for obvious reasons, Shredder, clad in gold and blue, seemed apropos. He was great, and he actually showed up at my house with pizza after the game. That’s not a joke. That’s a true story, and I wasn’t there for it, which is another reason I feel like covering games is a bit overrated. You miss so much!

But that’s the sacrifice as well as the beauty of this here feature.

We knew the Mountaineers were much, much better than Maryland after 60 minutes Saturday. Truth be told, it was 15 minutes and possibly 10, despite the objections of Mr. Andrew Zeller afterward. For whatever reasons, WVU was that much better, and understand the on-task home team had as much to do with that as did the undisciplined-upon-unraveling visitors.

I was trading texts with one of you before the game, and I confessed I couldn’t instinctively assume WVU was indeed better than Maryland. I picked WVU to win, but I saw Maryland play Bowling Green, and I thought a weather delay after halftime slowed the Terrapins down and that they weren’t able to keep up once the Falcons got going. “A bad quarter,” I reasoned. Then I saw them outclass USF, a team with talent, despite three Caleb Rowe interceptions. Maryland matched up well and better at most of the spots, and I was probably right to wonder if WVU would enjoy a wide roster-quality disparity in Morgantown.

I was wrong, but I was right to wonder. You hadn’t seen enough of Saturday’s WVU to just expect it when the opportunity is there — and, man, was it there — but I think it’s fair to believe Saturday’s WVU exists, that 45-6 wasn’t the consequence of circumstances but rather a good team doing what it’s supposed to do. Ultimately, it was what we did know about Maryland that proved most meaningful: Not exceptionally led, will turn it over, will commit penalties and will get exposed in the secondary. The Mountaineers did their homework and finished early to saunter into the polls at 3-0.

How did we get there? Let’s find out by taking a look at the Good and the Bad of WVU v. Maryland.

Bad: Scheduling conflicts
We don’t have all the footage from the game because men driving in circles went long and took up some of the football telecast. Without getting too involved with contractual arrangements and obligations or any debate about the money in automotive sports advertising, let me just say it’s absurd that a third-tier NASCAR event, a truck race sponsored by a generic ass Cabella’s, took up a chunk of a college football game on a Saturday afternoon. Look, Fox is party to an enormous 10-year, $8.2 billion television contract with NASCAR, and that’s a bigger deal — literally and figuratively — than the stake it has in the 13-year, $2.5 billion deal with the Big 12. I’ll probably surprise you here when I tell you the truck race had higher ratings Saturday. But let’s not pretend the NASCAR pact is for rights to the UNOH 175 and for that race to bleed into a football game. The Big 12 deal is for rights to football games, first and foremost. There has to be a way around this.

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Dana Holgorsen: Oklahoma week

September 29, 2015 by Mike Casazza

 

Tuesday Taboo: Episode 3

by Mike Casazza

Special thanks to Rushel Shell for balling up last week’s question and throwing it in the receptacle. He was good Saturday, which then begs the question: Was he ever bad? JaJuan Seider would argue no.

Seider’s grades for Shell in the first two games were 100 and 96. He liked the reads Shell made. He didn’t have a problem with how he was attacking the areas that were supposed to open up for him. All that was missing was yardage, and Seider trusted the line would develop to open those holes and Shell would keep finding and attacking them.

“Sometimes it just doesn’t work out,” Shell said. “Sometimes you don’t get the ball. Sometimes you don’t get big holes. I felt like that was part of the issue, but as long as we’re winning, it doesn’t matter.”

Today’s edition? Similarly silly!

Texts from Maryland Game Day

September 28, 2015 by Mike Casazza

We hit the game pretty hard in the live post and yesterday’s brunchtime post. The Good and the Bad is going in on a few players and highlights Wednesday morning. No one’s complaining, of course, because West Virginia has been operating from the Best Case Scenario section of the playbook and that’s been good enough for a 3-0 start and a spot in both polls.

TFGD remains undefeated, too. Why wait any longer? I can hear the drummer drumming. And the trumpets, someone’s trying to summon someone. I know something’s coming, but I’m running from it to be texting at the summit. My edits are, at long last, in [brackets].

10:43:
Randy Edsall just lodged a formal complaint with the NCAA that WVU ran too many plays in today’s game

12:11:34
Given his track record lately shouldn’t that overrated no talent hack Paisely have a jersey that’s half ESP today?

2:13:
Will Brad Paisley wear wire-rimmed glasses in honor of John Denver?

2:27:
If Paisley plays 7NA my head might explode

2:46:
As song written in Maryland about Virginia played at a WVU game. I loved it, though.

3:07:
Heard a rumor Train would be doing a set before kickoff. Pretty pumped

3:15:
Maryland QB is poop

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Sunday brunch: WVU 45, Maryland 6

September 27, 2015 by Mike Casazza

It began like that, and then wild and wonderful made room for weird and whimsy. Randy Edsall’s team tried to play too fast and was warned, then Edsall decided to go for it on fourth down in what might wistfully be considered the wrong place and the wrong time. Odd tone for him to try to set.

Karl Joseph’s tackle ended that drive, and then linebacker A.J. Hendy tried to end Skyler Howard’s day with a late hit out of bounds. Dana Holgorsen said his team didn’t need one play, the other or both to get rolling, that the Mountaineers were ready to play and didn’t need that sort of motivation.

His players were nevertheless moved to make a statement in that 45-6 trouncing.

“Not that we weren’t fired up, because this was a big game with a big atmosphere, and obviously we respect our opponent, but we don’t really care for them, but I think that fired everybody up,” Howard said, “including me.”

Howard internalized his anger. Right tackle Marquis Lucas did not. He spent the time the officials needed to review Hendy’s ejection for targeting by yelling and gesturing at Maryland’s sideline. The call was overturned and Hendy was allowed stay in the game, which was fine by WVU.

“I told Skyler after that play, ‘Now you go kill them,’ ” said receiver Shelton Gibson. “I told him, ‘I don’t even want [Hendy] to get out of the game.’ When they were reviewing the targeting thing, I was like, ‘I don’t want him to get out of the game. I want him to stay in the game. I want him to feel this pain.’ ”

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