The WWF’s first undisputed champion, the purveyor of some of sports entertainment’s best gimmicks, Chris Jericho is also the front man for Fozzy. For those reasons, and so many others, I have no issue whatsoever with him taking aim at one of our favorite songs. (Warning: Ear muffs.)
Seeing as if I didn’t have a functioning laptop Tuesday night and couldn’t do things like share my real-time predictions about a switch to a zone or inevitable coach of the year columns — you’ll have to take my word for it! — I feel like we omitted a fun part of that experience.
The crowd was great, but also very aware of the history between these two teams. There was a Holy Crap cadence for much of the first half, as though no one could or would believe what was happening, and that paired nicely with the Aw Crap vibe present every time Texas made a basket. WVU would lead by as many as 18 points and made 10 of its first 10 shots, but the Mountaineers fell in love with the 3-point line and then missed 12 of 16 shots. The Longhorns, meanwhile, shot like 75 percent for almost 30 minutes and made a lengthy 23-6 run in which every swish or slam was followed by a pained gasp from the crowd.
It was so great, and it continued after the 1-1-3 one and a 13-2 run that included a mind bottling Jon Holton 3. Texas wasn’t done, though, and got close thanks to some more brown paper bag shots. The damage was never done, though, and the Mountaineers quietly finished 20 for 23 from the foul line. The 87 percent is the best of the season and powered by Devin Williams (!) going 8 for 10, including 5 for 6 in the final 1:18, when he was on the floor, but also getting the ball against the pressure.
Remember when WVU Against a Zone Defense was a Thing? I think I do, but I’m not certain. It could have happened, sure, but given the way the Mountaineers have performed against zones lately, I think we can use a lowercase t now.
There was a time when teams like Baylor or Texas could prevail with a 2-3 as a go-to defense, and there were times when teams like Kansas State or Iowa State … or TCU or Texas Tech … would throw it out to and have success because WVU would have struggles.
That seems to be in the past now, and WVU has to feel pretty good about what it’s doing offensively as it heads to No. 19 Baylor — piping hot, by the way — and its 2-3 zone, if for no other reason than getting Texas, of all teams, to bail Tuesday night.
There was also a time when many thought this would be a long season, and that remains true, because 31 regular-season games and 18 weeks is a long time and as such ample time for a team to figure out how to do a few things or how to do a few things better. Look at WVU’s improved passing and avoidance of deadly errors against a zone, to say nothing of unveiling a zone of its own, and witness little pieces come together here and there over the past two weeks and you get the idea the Mountaineers are improving at the most ideal time.
“We’re getting better, we’re getting closer, but it’s a big jump, a bigger jump certainly than what they realized and probably everybody else realized,” coach Bob Huggins said. “I think they’re getting better, and those guys are starting to understand things better. The practices are better because they understand what they’re doing. We don’t have to spend so much time trying to over-explain things to them.”
The first game against Texas this season, a 77-50 loss on Jan. 17, was the worst the Mountaineers have played. They set season lows in points, baskets, shooting percentage, assists and points off turnovers, but there was one problem at the root of all their struggles.
It was something Huggins could point to and discuss with his players and something they could accept was out of character.
“We watched the film and looked at our effort out in Texas, and the effort from when we were in Texas to here is totally night and day,” said forward Devin Williams, who had 14 points Tuesday after totaling 13 in the first four games of his career against the Longhorns. “You could tell the difference, you could feel the energy from the bench and see the focus from everybody.”
The Mountaineers had 14 baskets in the first half Tuesday. They had 13 in the first game against Texas. Eleven of those 14 baskets came with an assist, and nine players had at least one. There were only five assists last month. Fourteen of the first 17 points came in the paint, and the attack inside forced Texas to adjust. WVU responded by scoring 12 of the next 16 points from 3-point range.
Proof of their progress came when Texas ditched its 2-3 zone in the first half, and then when the Mountaineers had to change tactics and abandon its full-court press in the second half to play a 1-1-3 zone they hadn’t shown all season.
As many of you may have already heard, No. 20 West Virginia did a very important thing Tuesday night to alter the course of its season and calibrate all the talking points about this team.
Oh, and the Mountaineers beat Texas, too.
Along the way, WVU signed Nicholas Wince, a 5-year-old with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and had him spend the day with the team as part of the always awesome Make-A-Wish campaign. Wince spent the day with the team, before and after the game, participating in the shootaround in the afternoon, signing a scholarship after passing the test, joining the the layup line before the game and finally visiting the team after the win in the locker room, where things got crazy.
Jon Holton, for the damn win.
Bob Huggins always says he’s got “good guys,” and you assume it’s just because they get along with one another and don’t want to let teammates down and go to certain lengths to do the right things. You don’t really see it in action, because so much of the team and student-athlete experience is private, no matter how many interviews they do, no matter how many games they play on national television.
This is an exception, a wonderful exception in which the Mountaineers seemed not only proud to have done what they did, but also the beneficiaries of an experience that was supposed to help someone else and ended up rubbing off on them, too.
The record-holder for freshman single-game rushing is leaving West Virginia at the end of the semester, and he knows what people are thinking: The Mountaineers are way over the scholarship limit and the running back room is crowded. The coaching staff probably forced him out to create space for someone else.
There are a few problems with that, Garrison said. For starters, he’s grateful for the opportunity he got at WVU, the only Division I school that offered him a scholarship, and while things could have gone better and he believes he deserved to play more, he said he doesn’t hate his coaches or have anything against the staff.
He’s also been thinking about this for a while. A long while.
“I knew before the bowl game I was going to do it,” said Garrison, who carried the ball just 20 times last season and not at all in the final three games. “(Tuesday) was the day I finally decided I wanted everyone to know about it.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about since basically my sophomore year, but I always told myself to fight through it. Things never really went how I thought they would, and through time I started to think it was time for me to make my own decisions and do what’s best for me.”
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Well, the monkey’s off the back, right?
Not exactly.
Q: So, Daxter Miles, how’s it feel to beat Texas? A: The frog’s off the back.
— Mike Casazza (@mikecasazza) February 25, 2015
Play like he did Tuesday — forget 12 points, four rebounds, three assists and five steals; his heads-up press break and the long inbound pass from Jevon Carter for a dunk late, a role reversal from that happened late against TCU, something Miles calls “Love at First Sight,” that was enormous — and you can use whatever language you want.
Bob Huggins doesn’t believe his team needed that win for more than better odds of winning the conference title and better seeding in the NCAA Tournament, and he didn’t believe his team had a mental hurdle it could only overcome by beating Texas.
Respect due to the presumptive Big 12 coach of the year, but his players players spoke quite differently after the win. Here’s what struck me: The postgame interviews included Miles, Devin Williams, Jevon Carter and Jon Holton. Only Williams played in last season’s three losses to the Longhorns. Holton was on the team and was pained to watch while unable to help. Miles and Carter were months away from their first dose of Texas.
Each of them said something to “The frog’s off the back,” and that would mean one way or another the first-year players were clear on what it would mean to beat Texas.
Realistically, what’s it mean? WVU is one good Saturday away from … yikes … the biggest regular-season game in Huggins’ time with the Mountaineers, but for the time being, it means there aren’t a lot of questions left about this team.
The Mountaineers had lost the past four games to Texas (17-11, 6-9) by 11, 17, 17 and 27 points and trailed by at least 21 points in each. They trailed just once this time, and that 2-0 lead lasted 31 seconds.
“We were down just two weeks ago, and there were a lot of ‘buts’ and questions marks in the air,” forward Devin Williams said. “I don’t know who’s been on the road with us as far as traveling and interviewing us, but I said we were going to be all right.
“There’s a whole different feel this year, a whole different team. All I can say from this game is, let’s just say this is a new West Virginia team, and we’ve proven that we are a different team from last year.”
Devin Williams has had a lot to cheer about in just shy of two seasons of college basketball at West Virginia. His performances against Texas? Not exactly bright spots. Williams knows it, too, and he’s made comments to the effect of “This time will be different!” between the second and third and third and fourth games.
On the cusp of the fifth, he’s seemed to tone it down, saying that No. 20 Wests Virginia wants Texas, which makes sense for a team that believes it’s on the uptick, but has had it’s number taken by the Longhorns the past four times the teams have played. But it wasn’t dagger-wielding and vengeful. It was traced with respect and acknowledgments of the past. He knows the score, and he understands that he’s probably made it a bit too personal in the past.
“I think I definitely have, but it’s the competitive spirit in me,” Williams said. “Last year, I didn’t know a lot of what was going on as far as the Big 12 opposition and things like that. I was just trying to challenge myself. I haven’t been too successful with that, but I have to keep challenging myself, and the only way to get better is to figure that out.”
Williams has never predicted a victory against Texas. This is not Pittsnogle v. Marshall. He’s merely vowed to play better and not to repeat past performances, and that hasn’t proved to be true as of yet. And so it wasn’t surprising 1) that we asked Williams about Texas right the heck after beating Oklahoma State and 2) he didn’t hide his desire to play the game and get that line right on his resume. He tempered his competitive spirit this time, but the point remained.
“I do that from time to time,” he said. “That’s just me being excited out there to play against those guys. I need to be just more toned down about it and go out there and play ball. Sometimes I go out there and try to do too much.”
There are worse transgressions for college players, never mind ones literally in the middle of a team’s plan. Safe to say Bob Huggins would have in the past few seasons liked a couple more players who took things personally and wanted it too badly and even tried to do too much to make it happen the way it happens in their heads. We forget Williams is tying his Nikes and slipping on the Rec Specs for the 60th time tonight, and he’s had to learn on a slope as a critical figure in the post all while playing with his back to the basket for the first time at a level even closely resembling this one.
Pardon him for trying to be enthusiastic about the challenge, the opportunity, the privilege and endeavoring to right how he feels he and his teammates have been and have done wrong.
“If I was lucky enough to play professionally and get some money, people don’t tend to have the same passion about what they do, so this is mostly about me going out there trying to get some respect,” Williams said. “That’s all it is for me. I’m trying to get respect. If I have your respect, I feel better about myself. I don’t feel like they respect us as a team, so we’re going to try to go out there and get it. They’re a good team. We can’t take that away from them. It’s about respect at the end of the day.”
Respect the blog …
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For the second time in a week, Kansas not only lost a game, but did so on the road to trigger a court-storming.
“I wasn’t nervous for me,” Self said. “There were several students that hit our players. I’m not saying like with a fist, but when you storm the court, you run in, you bump everybody, stuff like that. This has got to stop. I think court-storming is fine, but certainly you can get security to the point where players’ safety is not involved like it is here the last several times.”
(Bill Self is the best, but I’m biased. He knew the game was not the story, and he couldn’t have been happy about what happened during or after the loss, but he didn’t overdo it. Principled. Tolerant. Measured. Read the rest of his quotes and just imagine how other coaches would have reacted.)
It was a pretty dicey situation — I wouldn’t say it was frightening, but I wouldn’t say it safe, either — and so you should prepare to have a lot of people tell you how you should feel about rushing the floor and how you should conduct yourself if you’re privileged enough to do it. You will need oven mitts to handle these takes.
There’s also a real possibility the Big 12 will make a move now — it was Kansas, after all — and it’s already reviewing the situation. The SEC will fine schools anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 fans hitting the court, field, pitch, ice, whatever. Goose, gander sometimes.
Bigger story? WVU is one game behind Kansas in the conference standings and plays at Kansas a week from today — and don’t tell me the Jayhawks don’t look ordinary lately. It would behoove the Mountaineers to win out, which means they can’t lose tonight, of course, but even if WVU is going to lose another one, it can’t happen at home, which means it can’t happen tonight.
Beat Kansas at home on a Monday and then be a ranked team on the road five days later and you’re going to feel pretty good about yourself. The Mountaineers are riding high right now and were ranked No. 20 in Monday’s Associated Press poll when a week ago it was fair to wonder if’ they’d have a spot in the top 25.
And here comes Texas … right on time?
The Longhorns have won the past four games in the series by 11, 17, 17 and 27 points and led by at least 21 in each.
“We’re definitely feeling some type of way about that game and how it went in Texas,” WVU point guard Juwan Staten said after Saturday’s 73-63 road win against then-No. 22 Oklahoma State. “There should be a little extra, added motivation.”
The Mountaineers (21-6, 9-5 Big 12), who have played eight of their conference games against ranked teams and two more against a team that was ranked previously, were No. 23 last week and will rise in Monday’s poll after beating the Cowboys and No. 8 Kansas. In six days, they doubled their win total against top-25 teams, and the back-to-back wins followed stretches of three losses in four games by 20, 19 and 18 points and four losses in eight games.
The longer stretch began with the road loss to the Longhorns (17-10, 6-8). WVU finished with the season’s worst totals for points, baskets (13), field goal percentage (24.1), assists (five), rebounding margin (minus-12) and points off turnovers (eight).
“We want them, to be honest,” said WVU forward Devin Williams, who has 13 points and 10 rebounds in four career games against Texas and its formidable frontcourt. “They’re a great team and we respect that team. They have some great big men, some great guards and a great coach, stuff like that, but we’re going after them.”
You get a firm feeling the Mountaineers want to play, and of course to win, this game because this team is continually trying to prove itself in the presence of doubts. Too young. Can’t shoot. Weary legs. Ridiculous schedule. Somehow, some way, WVU still has a look at the conference title with four games to go, so why is a win at home against a team below .500 in conference play out of the realm of possibility?
Matchups, maybe, and that hasn’t shifted to favor or even be kinder to WVU.
And so conversely, it might be true that the Mountaineers are coming along at the right time for Texas, too. The Longhorns didn’t look right before playing WVU last month and haven’t looked right since, save a three-game winning streak … against Kansas State, TCU and Texas Tech. Texas is playing for its postseason life, and, who knows, Rick Barnes might be coaching for his job. Whatever the circumstances, the Longhorns haven’t found good wins or won big games with a 1-9 record against the RPI top 50.
Kevin White was who we thought he was, and probably even more.
Show of hands: Who thought our G.A.M. was faster then Mario Alford? OK, OK, a few. I can believe that. And now who saw 4.35 (followed by a “Yeah, I did that” 4.36) in the 40-yard dash?
That’s more like it.
Overall, White did everything he could to solidify his standing. He did 23 bench press reps, which tied for the high among receivers, and didn’t rank among the best amid a really deep pool of prospects in vertical leap (36.5 inches) and broad jump (123 inches), but didn’t embarrass himself either.
There’s no question about White now. I mean, there’s a question about exactly where he get picked, but I’m going to Chicago in April and White’s going to have his name called early. I have a few friends who work in the NFL and who are or work for agents. They were there or tracking it closely. I was in Stillwater. But we couldn’t help but blabber about White Saturday. White was the talk of the day as it concerned prospects who made waves and made money, or failed to do so, and that was in the presence of Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota.
The 40 was a game-changer. It was a life-changer. Allow this clip to put it in perspective for you.
How much money did White actually make? It’s impossible to say for sure, but you can make an educated guess, provided you are educated. A friend who is an agent took a stab. The difference in the contracts between where he had been projected before Saturday and where he was being projected Saturday night is more than $7 million.