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

It’s that day!

July 7, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Found it!

by Mike Casazza

Previously on WVUSBWMC, we lamented that there is “basically no video of Myers at Williston State College, where he played and averaged 25 points per game last season.” That’s no more because this popped up on YouTube about a month ago — and nine days after our lament. There are no coincidences.

We did have tape from the 2013-14 season at Allan Hancock College, but he was much more of a scorer and not as much of a facilitator there. In the WSC tape, he’s driving and dribbling to pass much more often. That’s indicative of growth, and he’s told me before he felt like he became a point guard last year. One thing is the same from one reel to the next: He loves to go left, drive with his left hand, shoot from the left and finish with his left hand. You can see the trouble it gives defenders here. (By the way, from 2:18-3:10 is footage from his 55-point game.)

Some of his style will have to be toned down a little bit — the expanded dribble, where he pulls the ball far from his body and takes his defender’s eyes off the ball, won’t consistently survive trips through the paint — and he’ll be asked to do less and focus on strengths. That’s the Bob Huggins “Do what you do” directive. But he’s going to give WVU something it doesn’t have in excess: Someone who can start from a stand-still and end up scoring one way or another — and he can set up scores the same way.

It’s nice to have individual talent like that, particularly at the end of a shot clock. How often last season did WVU have to scrap together an attack late in the possession last season? How did that generally go? How much harder will those possessions be without Juwan Staten and with a shorter shot clock?

There’s a 500-pound gorilla in the room, though. Myers is still in California and didn’t enroll in either of the six-week summer sessions. He was taking classes back home, and Myers told me yesterday he plans to be here at the beginning of next month and enroll for the fall semester. However, he won’t travel with the Mountaineers for their Bahamas trip. (The Esa Ahmad story is a touch different. No one’s panicking, and he’s doing what he can, like taking classes and retaking assessment tests, to make sure there are no problems. He, too, is expected to be here next month.)

Insight into leaders?

July 6, 2015 by Mike Casazza

This might answer some of your questions. The media days are July 20-21, and WVU goes on the first day.

The Big 12 announced all the planned representatives today, and I only counted three quarterbacks: Iowa State’s Sam B. Richardson, Oklahoma’s Trevor Knight and TCU’s Trevone Boykin. I’m not sold on two of those guys being the starter on their own team. Times change, huh? There  were seven in 2012. Seven!

On that note, I’m sort of surprised Skyler Howard isn’t involved. We can also put to bed the charm from last season, when Nick O’Toole went and WVU said it wanted to have a representative from all three sides of the ball. Whither Josh Lambert?

Quick fix, but also a fix

by Mike Casazza

The NCAA released college basketball attendance figures today and, predictably, attendance was down in Division I. This coincides with iffy television ratings released in March. (Take a look at the television numbers from 2013-14 and 2012-13 and you can understand the crisis theory the basketball powers are overseeing and attempting to manage.)

But 2014-15 at WVU was better than both of the past two seasons, what with a Sweet Sixteen appearance and 25 wins after one NIT appearance and 30 wins the previous two seasons. Sure enough, the Mountaineers saw a big jump in attendance: They were No. 39 in average home crowd (10,189), and the rise from 8,594 in 2013-14 (No. 52 nationally) was the eighth-best in the country.

In which I ask for some help

by Mike Casazza

So, for starters, Kadeisha Buchanan was the best young player  in the World Cup. You can find that early in the 2015 women’s soccer media guide, I’m sure.

But say the Tier 4 retreat came up with a way to preview the 2015 football season and touch on a bevy of topics and was most interested in satiating the audience. What should some of those topics be?

Full disclosure: I’ve got this mapped out already, but I want to overlap your suggestions with mine, see which are mutual and which are not and then figure out if my list is the best list or if I need to grab the red pen and make some wise adjustments. Have at it, please, and send forth ideas — positional previews, position battles, strong points, weak points, big pictures, overlooked details, any and everything you can think of — to help me help you.

Happy Fourth

July 3, 2015 by Mike Casazza

See you Monday. Meanwhile, your favorite patriotic jams are welcome here. Never forget.

 

Inching closer

by Mike Casazza

 

ESPN shooting footage of our guys for to use during games this fall #HailWV

A photo posted by WVU Football (@mountaineerfootball) on

This is a good sign, no? (Neat to see Skyler Howard and Shelton Gibson remain inseparable.) A month from today, WVU practices for the first time, and then you’re racing downill toward the start of the season and all the pomp and circumstance of the home schedule, which WVU dressed up a bit Thursday.

Honor on the horizon for Buchanan

by Mike Casazza

Team Canada made a run and came up just short, but it would be hard to say the women’s World Cup wasn’t a success for the host nation. It’s a team on the move — of course, so, too, are many other nations — with a promising roster. In the middle of it all, we know, is West Virginia star Kadeisha Buchanan. She was (and has been) among the best defenders in the event, and she’s just 19 years old, which portends great things for her future and for Canada’s, a reality FIFA.com could not resist, even in defeat.

But as the dust settles and the worst of the sadness and disappointment ebbs away, the time comes to take stock and look ahead to the future, in which a rising star in the Canada defence is destined to have a big say.

Kadeisha Buchanan was in tears when the final whistle was blown in Canada’s 2-1 defeat, but she soon snapped out of it when her mind turned to the shape of things to come. “It’s a big responsibility, because our future will only be bright through a team effort,” the down-to-earth 19-year-old told FIFA.com. “But I know that I have to start taking on a leadership role now. I have been playing in this team for three years and I think I can do even more. There are a number of us in the team who are both young and experienced.”

That would include WVU teammate Ashley Lawrence, who scored in group play and who has carved out a sport for herself after questions about her role that now amount to passing clouds, and Jessie Fleming, a 17-year-old who is committed to — gasp! — UCLA. But the WVU tandem has been good for the Mountaineers, which is precisely the sort of thing Kicking Nikki foresaw more than a year ago, and things just might get even better and more difficult to ignore.

Big 12 version 2.0 (2012-2???)

July 2, 2015 by Mike Casazza

July 1 came and went and Navy joined the American, meaning the last moving part of the great realignment era had finally come to rest. And before we could collapse into a rocking chair and marvel What a time that was, we were already dealing this these obscure conversations about the future of the Big 12.

Any idea where this is going?

We’ve got presidents and athletic directors talking, and we have to assume it’s not for nothing. But it’s also summer, and you can get a whiff of expansion/realignment nostalgia with all of this, as though people long for the days of rumors and reports. So maybe it’s manufactured as opposed to organic. But having witnessed the sinking of the Big East, it’s folly to stand with arms crossed and shake your head to deny it’ll happen. And when people are proactive, even in a just-in-case sense, they sometimes get a good look at a better picture and begin to see and thing You know, we could make this happen and it wouldn’t be that hard. That’s the goofy part of all of this, and it ought to be bothersome.

People seem happy to use the words imminent or inevitable, and though I probably agree with the latter, if only because the business changes too much or too fast to remain static for another decade, I think I need a better definition of the former.

In short, I don’t see the room for it right now, but I certainly anticipate something as we get closer to the end of the grant of rights agreements. I fully expect someone to get itchy before the 13-year period ends and at least talk about litigating a way out of one. But how do the pieces move? Where do the schools fall? Does the highly visible fraternity expand by taking in schools from the group of five? Is a highly visible league absorbed into the other four? And what then happens to the schools in the group of five that don’t have a seat at the grownup’s table?

It’s all very strange and hypothetical, and I can’t shake the fact this is warming up just before the Big 12’s media days (July 20-21), where and when you just know it’s going to be a topic and a little more of the cat will come out of the bag. I guess I’m trying to get an idea of what that cat will look like, and I’ve never been much of a cat person, so enlighten me, please.

Where are we now, where are we going and where are we X years from today?

Sleep easy, for now

July 1, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Tony Gibson’s on vacation, and he’s left his defense in the capable hands of his senior leaders. But Gibson won’t much rest wherever he is, and he knows his players will remain on edge, because they’ve been watching Georgia Southern tapes. Reminders of Willie Fritz’s hybrid option attack will ruin a day at the beach faster than a shark fin breaking the surface.

The Eagles are fun to watch and it’s miserable to prepare for them, but that’s why Gibson is getting a big head start.

Consider this: Last season, WVU opened the season in Atlanta against No. 2 Alabama. At this point of that offseason, Gibson hadn’t started readying for the Crimson Tide like he is now for the second-year Football Bowl Subdivision program.

“We were watching, but not really explaining things and talking to the kids this much about it,” Gibson said. “But you have to with this kind of attack.”

Georgia Southern is an offensive force, but it once was an annual powerhouse in the Football Championship Subdivision, a national titlist in 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990, 1999 and 2000, a proving ground for coaches like Georgia Tech’s Paul Johnson and Army’s Jeff Monken.

A year ago, the Eagles jumped up to the FBS and won the Sun Belt. They finished 9-3 and won all of their eight conference games by an average of 18.3 points.

They also averaged 379.92 rushing yards per game, easily the highest national average this century. That has Gibson’s attention. The fact the dual-threat quarterback and the team’s top two rushers return next season after combining for 3,284 yards and 41 touchdowns last season has Gibson’s attention.

But what worries him most is not who the Eagles have or what they do, but rather how they do it. They have a triple option offense, but it call it that limits their skill and scare. Georgia Southern is a mix of different option ideas and varying formations with zone blocking.

“They’re in the shotgun. They’re going to run split-zone, lead option, load option,” Gibson said. “They throw the ball, too. They do a little bit of everything. It’s to the point right now where if we’re going to play them, I’d rather play them first. I definitely don’t want to play them in game two, three or four.”