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Friday Feedback

June 5, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Welcome to the Friday Feedback and, boy, I sure wish the NBA Finals started last night and we could talk about the series and how this might be really exciting if fate treats Cleveland kindly! Can’t wait!

Let’s soldier on and consider another WVU number to treasure. The post yesterday was intended for football, and there’s a good debate we’ll get into in a moment. If you extend it to basketball, it has to be 44, right? Baseball is probably 5. Wrestling is 184. It’s a fun exercise for all the sports and even for the school. Wouldn’t 44 be the number for the school? Jerry West, Rod Thorn, Jim Braxton, Tim Agee. Not bad.

But maybe years from now we’re thinking differently. How about 88? James Jett (for a year) and Reggie Rembert (and Cody Clay?), plus the ’88 team played for a national title.

And also Kadeisha Buchanan, the starting center back for the Canadian women’s national team. She’s pretty special, if you aren’t familiar. Allow Kicking Nikki to explain.

“I’m a pretty humble person and a pretty humble coach,” Izzo-Brown said, “but I will go on the record and say she will be the best center back to ever play the game.”

Izzo-Brown is adamant about this, and she’s consistent in supporting her point.

“As incredibly gifted as Kevin White is and some of the guys who come through the football program here, she is just as athletic, just as incredibly talented as Tavon (Austin) and Geno (Smith) and all the other greats we’ve had at this level,” she said.

Buchanan, who scored on a header that got past United States goalie Hope Solo in a 1-1 draw in May 2014, is a star up north. Canada decided to feature Buchanan, the 2013 under-20 national player of the year, on a commemorative World Cup Stamp with forward Christine Sinclair, the nation’s most experienced and most accomplished player.

“I don’t know anybody on a stamp that’s alive, and it doesn’t even phase her,” Izzo-Brown said of Buchanan, who has two goals and 35 appearances (32 starts) with the national team.

A stamp! It’s Logoesque. If you’ve never seen her play, you should and can change that. The World Cup starts with Canada v. China at 6 p.m. tomorrow on Fox Sports 1. She also plays a pretty critical and visible role for the Mountaineers. She’s the starter in the middle of the back for WVU, and she takes the ball off the back line and up the pitch, which is something else if you don’t appreciate me mentioning that. Right backs will push the ball up the rail to help an attack. The center rarely does that unless the center is special. That’s Buchanan, and she’s 19.

Her WVU and Team Canada teammate, Ashley Lawrence, isn’t a slouch, either, and she’s made great strides in two years to solidify a position on the pitch and on the roster.

“With Canada, we went back and forth some, and they thought maybe she was better off at a different position,” Izzo-Brown said. “Not to say I was right, but I truly believed Ashley was a midfielder by trade and I stuck by that. These past two seasons, she’s had a great opportunity to show Canada she can be an impact on the field for them, so I’m real happy she’s been able to showcase her trade and her talent and also get better as a player.”

Of all the pipelines we discuss here, the path women’s soccer has blazed from Canada to Morgantown is perhaps most impressive. (Aside: Do we add Lackawanna now? I saw Wesco on my visit and mistakenly thought he was a tackle. He’s a brute. More Clay and less Jace Amaro, but he was a first-team all-state high school basketball star at Musselman, so he can move some.)

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

Mack said:

I am about as big a WVU fan as anyone (though I’m in my 30’s, so I don’t have the history that some have)… and I had never once heard of the name Ira Errett Rogers until it was noted in the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia as the best WVU football player ever. Not long after that his number was retired at Mountaineer Field.

I’m not a big fan of retiring numbers. I think that all of the greats should be recognized in different form and fashion… but there’s so many ways to do it that I think retiring numbers is just lazy and doesn’t really do anything for anyone. Same with building stupid statues of people.

I love that the entrance video for the football team shows all of the great historical plays (the only criticism is that it goes way too fast through all of them and makes it impossible to comprehend them if they’re new to you). I like that WVU brings back the greats from game to game. I randomly passed Major Harris in the Blue Lot one day and got a picture with him. I like all of this stuff because it allows younger fans to enjoy what made those guys great. Just painting a number on a wall doesn’t really do anything for those guys.

As we know, it’s pretty difficult to memorialize a number here. I think it ought to be hard to permanently shelf a number, but I don’t have a problem with a ceremony in which a jersey is retired — and by “retired” I mean framed and handed to a former player for prosperity posterity. That seems reasonable and it’s not done in perpetuity. Statues are cool, but let’s not get all Yankees with it and give everyone a monument.

Mack said:

One last note on the above, I haven’t gone to a WVU basketball game in the Coliseum in a decade, but wouldn’t it be good for some Jerry West WVU footage to be shown from time to time? How many people on this here blog have truly ever seen a minute of Jerry West playing for WVU?

They run some in the pregame. It’s much the same as your beloved football montage. 

Continue reading…

Agree or disagree?

June 4, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Syracuse University, renowned for being proactive and thoughtful in all matters involving sports, did a wacky thing recently: The Orange un-retired No. 44 and then re-retired it. The whole thing was a mess, but it did bring out the best in Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician.

Some numbers are specifically special in some places and are not to be trifled with, and Syracuse’s No. 44 is, quite clearly, one of those. There’s history there, which was what set off so many people. With this being that time of year, people started talking and thinking and creating, and ESPN put together a fun little list with the football numbers you don’t mess with across the country. Can you guess WVU’s sacred number? Do you agree?

Split allegiances!

by Mike Casazza

This is not Curry v. LeBron or Kyrie v. Klay. It’s not even Mozgov v. Bogut. Not here at least.

The NBA Finals is about two title-starved franchises, though Jonnie West or Mike Gansey won’t have to wait as long as their championship series franchises have had to. West is the assistant general manager of the Warriors Developmental League team, and the Santa Cruz Warriors won the league title this season. Gansey is the director of developmental league operations with the Canton Charge.

Only two Developmental League franchises have made the playoffs each of the past four years, and the Warriors and Charge can thank the two former West Virginia stars for doing their part in that achievement and in helping the NBA club find its way to this stage.

Both Developmental League clubs helped their NBA parent teams. Former North Carolina star James Michael McAdoo was an all-star with Santa Cruz and was called up twice by Golden State before he signed for the remainder of the season upon his third trip in February. Seven-footer Ognjen Kuzmin floated between the two teams as well, and West said the Bosnian “has definitely turned himself into, I think, an NBA rotational player and not just somebody who’s considered a prospect.”

Gansey has more time in his role and a longer list of contributions to his NBA team. This season, former Virginia star Joe Harris played 51 games with the Cavs in the regular season, but was with the Charge throughout the season and for all five playoff games. Center Alex Kirk was playing for the Charge before he was part of a trade that sent him to the New York Knicks. The Knicks waived Kirk and he re-signed with the Charge and helped in the playoffs.

In the 2013-14 season, the Charge produced five players who earned spots on NBA rosters, including former WVU all-American Kevin Jones. The team’s head coach and an assistant were called up by NBA teams, too. A year before that, Jones earned his first NBA call-up and the Charge had one league all-star while the head coach and an executive were promoted to NBA assignments.

“We have very similar taste in the guys we want,” West said. “I think we’re both very fortunate to have NBA organizations that do care about our league and want to use it as a tool and not just for show. They actually put money into it and realize it can be beneficial. The main thing about the D-League is you have to find a certain mix of talent and high character and young and veteran guys, and that’s something both organizations have done.”

(h/t sportsunbiased.com for the artwork)

Double the fun!

June 3, 2015 by Mike Casazza

When you went to bed Tuesday night, West Virginia’s baseball team had totaled through the years a sum of two freshman all-Americans. When you go to bed tonight, that number will have soared to four. Second baseman Kyle Davis and starting pitcher B.J. Myers were honored by — try any follow me here — “Louisville Slugger as selected by Collegiate Baseball newspaper, the organization announced today.”

Davis was named to the All-Big 12 Second Team and the All-Big 12 Rookie Team, ranking No. 3 in the conference in batting, No. 3 in doubles, No. 5 in hits, No. 5 in total bases, No. 8 in slugging percentage and No. 10 in runs scored.

Myers was named to the All-Big 12 Rookie Team and finished the season with a 2-5 record and a 3.82 ERA in 14 appearances with nine starts. A native of Flower Mound, Texas, Myers struck out 60 batters in 63.2 innings with opponents batting .263.

This is valuable for a few reasons. Davis was a mobile part of the batting order who was productive at the top and in the heart of things. Myers was the team’s best strikeout pitcher and threw better than his record indicated once he earned a Friday slot in the rotation during the season. WVU also has them both for at least two more seasons. They’re true freshmen and not eligible to be drafted until they’re three years out of high school.

Productivity from freshmen is important in baseball, especially at a place like WVU, which had so many this year. Freshmen can transition to the game pretty quickly and contributions are expected faster than they are in, say, football. Elite freshmen recruits can be stars in basketball, but across the nation more freshmen who were not elite recruits make meaningful contributions in baseball. It’s useful, too, that they have to spend three years in the program, and maturity is especially important for freshmen pitchers, of which the Mountaineers have a pretty good one already and for the foreseeable future.

The big splash and the still waters

by Mike Casazza

Kyle Bosch can play college football at the highest level, an opinion supported by the fact major programs throughout the five major conferences wanted to sign him in the 2013 recruiting class. He opted for the University of Michigan, not terribly far from his St. Charles, Ill., home, and he was good enough to play five games and start three times as a true freshman.

Consider that for what it’s worth alongside this from his new head coach, Dana Holgorsen: The thing with offensive linemen is that if you’re counting on o-linemen, whether they’re JUCO or not, to come in and play right away, you’re team is not in a good spot. 

That axiom is the same throughout the country. Bosch and others as no less prodigious are exceptions. There are a handful every year, and the Mountaineers have one of them now. He wasn’t much to write about as a sophomore last year, and in fact more was written about him after he played one game and then took a leave of absence from the program.

Bosch returned to campus in January to meet the new coach, but he said he was surprised to learn Jim Harbaugh was not as eager about a reunion.

“I was at school all day, getting ready,” Bosch told Sporting News on Tuesday morning. “Then I met with Coach Harbaugh and I didn’t expect the transfer. That was not my original intent when I went up there yesterday. … This was very untimely. If it was my intention to transfer, I would have done that a long time ago.”

Bosch said his meeting with Harbaugh produced two options: stay with the program with stipulations (he did not say what they were) or transfer.

“They were shocked and a lot of people were disappointed that I was leaving,” Bosch said of informing his teammates of the news. “I love all of them very, very much. I saw a lot of my teammates for the first time since I left in September. There were a lot of hugs and tears and it was a shock to everyone.”

He was widely wooed and soon ended up at WVU, where the Mountaineers immediately applied for his 2015 eligibility — less of a case-specific motivation than a general process for WVU and transfers, though the coaches thought they’d earn the NCAA’s approval on this one. That hunch was validated last week when the NCAA green-lighted the 6-foot-5, 315-pound Bosch.

Continue reading…

Let’s throw the challenge flag, shall we?

June 2, 2015 by Mike Casazza

I’ve done a bit of a 180 on this issue: Last week, it was my opinion too much grief was being given to the Big 12 and its sportsmanship initiatives. I’ll hold firm to some of my feelings, namely these are issues (never mind how much you or I enjoy and endorse a good court-storming or a salty chant), and safety and sanctity are things that need some attention from time to time. I also believe these ideas wouldn’t be Things if this were a normal year and spring meetings were spent discussing major agenda items, like, say, playing a conference championship game or how to break ties for crowning titlists.

But a day later the Big 12 tried to keep doing a good thing and whiffed as it tried to improve sportsmanship and on-site environments by restricting the use or replays on videoboards. In short, it’s backward thinking. There were quotes and sentences about excessive replays and whipping up hostility, but the whole thing overlooked a major point: Television productions are killing attendance figures. And here comes the Big 12, one league of many that’s acknowledged the thinning figures by going so far as luring people back by ensuring their safety and cleansing certain orations, taking away (the?) one link to the outside world when inside a stadium or arena.

Beyond serving as an affront to the people who pay for tickets by taking their money and then telling them they aren’t civilized enough to observe a replay, absorb the content and humanize the response, it further facilitates the enemy in this battle for eyeballs.

Television is crushing attendance because it has so many cameras and so many replay options. Some stadiums are battling back by enhancing what they can do with their videoboards, be it with highlights from around the nation or replays of just-completed plays. The Big 12 would like to stifle that and some home-site advantages along with it.

“We want to provide high entertainment to our fans, but we don’t want an environment that’s too hostile,” said Baylor athletic director Ian McCaw, who is on the league’s sportsmanship committee.

This is either the right or wrong place to point out one of McCaw’s employees was fined last year when he used Twitter to complain about how many penalties went against Baylor in a loss to WVU. People were more offended by the fine than the tweets because the officiating was just terrible, a conclusion we reached thanks to replays.

It’s also either proper or inappropriate to mention how infrequently administrators sit in the stands among the people they try to protect and how the suites the suits occupy have easy access to televisions and network replays.

Want to see hostility? Try to calm the people who pay handsome sums and want only to get another look at a catch in the corner of the end zone or a jump shot with toes close to the 3-point line and instead have to wait out a delay as they try and fail to send a text to friends watching the replays on ESPN at home.

Phil Steele is here and the season is closer

by Mike Casazza

One of the mile-markers of the summer is the appearance of Phil Steele. He’s Punxsutawneyish like that. But when he emerges from his bunker and starts dropping things like predicted orders of finish and all-America and all-conference teams, we know we’re not as far from the finish line as we were before.

Well, today we have the first of his top-40 previews (Spoiler: Cincinnati!)

Yesterday after 6 months of long hard work, we sent off the final 32 pages of this year’s 2015 College Football Preview to press. With that in mind, today’s blog will officially start the countdown of my 2015 Top 40 teams that will appear in the magazine and will hit the newsstands on June 30th! Every day now thru July 12th, I will post both magazine pages on each team (for 24 hours only) and you can get an early look on how I breakdown your
favorite team.

In truth, though, the preamble started yesterday. Steele unveiled his all-America and all-conference teams. West Virginia had two all-America selections, and I’m no longer able to resist how fascinated I am by what may come of Karl Joseph’s senior season and how that translates to the pro level. There were 11 Mountaineers on the all-conference teams — three on offense, four on defense and four (!) on special teams — but I’m not going to lie to you: K.J. Dillon is too low if we’re doing this like Steele does it by projecting who will be where at the end rather than listing based on where people are now. I feel like if things go as planned he has a monster year.

We’ll have to wait to see, of course, but we only have to wait a while longer until we get to revel in his junior year and pay that forward.

Three game times, two networks announced

June 1, 2015 by Mike Casazza

Good news Monday with the announcement of football times and television assignments: The season-opener will be a night game and West Virginia’s football team doesn’t have any sort of scheduling conflict with the Pirates … I assume.

The Sept. 5 opener, WVU v. Georgia Southern, will kick at 7:30 p.m. on FSN and not Root Sports! Now, Root is a FSN affiliate, so depending on your location and provider, you might get caught with Root and without an alternative. That’s possibly problematic because the Pirates are playing at St. Louis at 4:05 p.m. A week later, the Mountaineers are on Root at 3 p.m. against Liberty. The Pirates play host to Milwaukee at 7:05 p.m. That should be safe, too. We already knew WVU v. TCU would be on television because it’s a Thursday game, and we learned today it’ll be a 7:30 p.m. game on Fox Sports 1.

Hey, it’s June 1, and that matters

by Mike Casazza

The first day of June is the first day college football teams can mandate workouts for their players, a useful addition to the rule book the NCAA allowed last year. The eight hours every week — for up to eight weeks, though, again, don’t expect WVU to use all eight weeks — is a nice continuity bridge from spring practice to the start of preseason camp and it’s a boon for newcomers.

Ka’Raun White is here, Kyle Bosch was already here but figures to have decidedly more verve now that he’s been cleared to play (more on that later, I promise … and he’s probably not a tackle, in case you were wondering) and just about all the other recruits will arrive over the weekend (don’t be surprised when Gary Jennings isn’t among them; his high school graduation is later than others, but that’s all that will keep him from arriving on time).

This is something Dana Holgorsen is excited about and something he discussed with unfortunate Geoff Coyle a while back.

“…need to probably lean on our defense a little bit to win us some games…” A bold request but a reasonable request if you’re asking Terrell Chestnut.

How to fix scoring: Get better scorers

by Mike Casazza

It sounds so easy, right? Scoring in college basketball is down — I mean, 67.6 points per game this past season, which matches the second-worst average in the past 50 years, many of which didn’t have a shot clock or a 3-point line — and concern is way up. It’s hard to watch a game for myriad reasons, and we’re witnessing the NCAA’s attempt to fix all of this. Some of the aesthetics are covered with regard to timeouts and stoppages. They’re going to work because they’re so logical, but the fundamental fixes exist in theory only right now.

A conference call a week from today will most likely usher in some changes we’re already covered — and some, like eliminating the five seconds violation, we have not — but that feels like the hard way. So-called better rules rules affect officials, coaches and offensive and defensive players, and there’s going to be collateral damage along the bend in a learning curve.

The easy way? Better players, whether through recruiting or development. This is something people are saying, albeit in hushed tones. What these rules threaten to do is not only narrow the gap between those who can score and those who struggle, but also those who are successful and those who meddle. More and more it seems college basketball is a bit like college football in that points per game is the most important statistic (I’d argue the obtuse offensive efficiency is most important in college hoops, and there isn’t a true equivalent measure in college football).

Anyhow, to continue something we touched upon in the F Double, it seems Bob Huggins and this recruiting class are in step with the evolution of the game. Beetle Bolden feasted off ball screens in high school and was a first-team all-state player three straight seasons in Kentucky who scored more than 2,000 points in his career. Esa Ahmad, again, is Huggins’ best recruit since Devn Ebanks, and the Ohio player of the year is a superior offensive player who averaged 25.2 points per game as a senior. Lamont West averaged 18.7 points per game, and though he’s still a bit of an unknown, he’s looks like a smooth handler who’s 6-foot-9, and you can’t teach that.

Then there’s Teyvon Myers, who trumps them all. He had the highest scoring average in junior college last season, and scoring is his thing. “What messes defenders up is I’m actually stronger with my left hand,” he said. “I’m basically left-handed. I’m actually right-handed, but I’m better with my left. People see me dribbling and shooting with my right hand and they try to force me left all the time, but that’s what I want to do.”

There’s basically no video of Myers at Williston State College, where he played and averaged 25 points per game last season, but these are his highlights from the previous year at California’s Allan Hancock College. He lives on the left side.

This is a kid who remembers making 15 3-pointers and scoring 62 points in one game as a high school freshman. He broke the scoring record at another one of his high schools — there were three — in his first game. That was a spring game, and he nearly broke it in the next game. At Allan Hancock, he scored 25 points in his first game, 31 in his second and 33 in this third. He never scored fewer than 20 in his 17 games and surged to a 41-point game late in the season. He didn’t erupt quite as quickly at Williston, combining for 30 points his first two games before getting the first of seven games with at least 30 points his third time out with the Tetons.

Nothing compared to what happened Feb. 11. Myers scored 55 in a five-overtime loss to the North Dakota State College of Science. He was 18-for-43 from the floor, 8-for-24 from 3-point range and 11-for-16 at the foul line. It’s a great junior college story, and Myers, who is loath to soak in the memory because it came in defeat, is careful not to take all the credit.

“It’s not like I was hot,” he said. “My team needed me, and I was willing to do anything I could for us to win. We were so off at the start. We’d just taken a 10-hour ride in the snow. We were late to the game and we didn’t have any time to warm up or anything. But I always have a motor. That’s just how I am. The team was real sluggish and we came out slow, and I was in the huddle like, ‘Coach, please get me the ball. I’ll keep us in this until the guys wake up.’”

Williston led by five points at halftime and Myers still marvels at how his teammates set screens so he could shoot and the way they skipped passes to him when he cut behind defenders.

“I was the one scoring, but we were all doing what we had to do for us to win that day,” he said. “But it was hard.”