The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board

This was not a particularly pretty game last season, but it was fun from start to crazy finish. There were stretches of good and goofy play and then a strategically organized conclusion that featured two buzzer-beaters, but just one that counted.

Juwan Staten, of course, won the game with a cheeky reverse layup and then WVU nearly did what WVU did all last season and gave up a 3-pointer to Kenny Chery that nearly won the game, but that was waved off because it came a touch too late.

These teams have changed a lot since then. Gone are Eron Harris and Terry Henderson for WVU and the Mountaineers have welcomed seven first-year players and totally renovated the way they play. The Bears said goodbye to Ike Austin, Cory Jefferson and Brady Heslip, three of the team’s top four scorers, and said hello to a few newcomers, as well, but they remain long and tall and still excel at rebounding.

The static might decide this game. WVU has Staten. Baylor has Chery. They’re the engineers to their respective attacks, and each has to possess a particular set of skills today. Chery has to handle WVU’s pressure and defer to ball-handlers and incorporate his shooters. Staten has to solve Baylor’s 2-3 with drives and passes and jumpers.

Chery would also like to avenge last season’s loss — and he kind of did that in the rematch later in the season in Morgantown — because he wasn’t really right throughout that first game. He sprained the big toe on his left foot in a practice before the game in Waco and just didn’t look like did before and has since. Chery sat out the next game, played 20 combined minutes the next two and then absolutely exploded. The Bears went 10-2 to finish the regular season and advance to the Big 12 championship game, and Baylor then beat Nebraska and Creighton in the NCAA Tournament.

Chery was healthy and triple-double good — literally … he had the school’s first in a win against Kansas State — averaged 13.6 points, 4.9 assists and 32 minutes per game as he finished with a flurry.

That wasn’t lost on Chery, and in reality his toe wasn’t the problem last season. The issue was Chery himself. He didn’t want to sit.

“I just wanted to be out there with the fellows and to go through with what they go through,” Chery said. “I wanted to battle with them.”

Born in Montreal and a then a two-year starter at Archbishop Carroll, in Washington, D.C., Chery didn’t have any Division I scholarship offers. He played two seasons at Missouri’s State Fair Community College and was an all-American as a sophomore in the 2012-13 season.

The start to his Division I career wasn’t what he wanted, and Chery declined opportunities to take a break and let his toe heal. It was the only way he knew, the lessons learned from a single mother.

“I wasn’t raised in a wealthy family,” he said. “My mom worked a lot, and that motivated me. She always told me, ‘If you want something, you’ve got to work for it because it’s not going to be given to you.’ That’s always been the main thing in my career and my life. You’ve got to work, work, work and you’ve got to go get things you want.”

He took a cortisone shot before the game against the Mountaineers, but wouldn’t use that as an excuse for letting Staten get by and win the game. Not then, not now.

“I probably would have been better off just keeping him out and getting us used to playing with who we had,” Drew said. “Sometimes you play someone five or 10 minutes a game — and he played more in that West Virginia game — and he’s not as effective, so you’re better off putting a healthy player out there.”

Let’s get ourselves right in the live post …

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has an appetite for analysis today. For the record, we did not insinuate Wednesday that Dana Holgorsen is packing on pounds, though he may have taken it that way.

Actually, he took it that way, like a pastry off the tray at the continental breakfast. What was meant as a look into the details and the dynamics that dominate the push toward the finish line turned into something very different about coaches and their late-game lifestyles.

Dana’s self-deprecation got me going somewhere. The questions went to one assistant after the other, until all six had been quizzed. The pressured was applied with increasing force, like extra helpings on a button. “We eat terribly,” Lonnie Galloway confessed.

They do, and as someone who travels a comparable amount, I can relate, though I don’t try to pack nearly as many tasks critical to the existence and success of a football program into one day. They have so much more on their plates and there isn’t a lot of room for finicky eating and diet-conscious decisions. So it’s early-morning breakfast buffets, drive-thru fast food for lunch and possibly even a bedtime snack and those dinners. Those homemade dinners.

A visit from a coach or a couple coaches is an event in that household, and those homes usually dress it up with a meal. Gibson still remembers the quantity and the quality of the food former linebacker Marc Magro’s mom prepared 12 recruiting classes ago. But sometimes those families don’t know they’re somewhere on a list of stops that night.

“They welcome you into their homes and most of them know when you’re coming, so they say, ‘Coach, we’ll fix you dinner,’ ” Galloway said. “You want them to feel comfortable around you and you want to feel comfortable around them.”

That’s Galloway’s polite way around stating the obvious.

“You eat whatever they put out there, let me say it that way,” he said.

When are you finding time for a treadmill or a bike ride or a swim? How are you counting calories or carbs or differentiating between good and bad proteins? What the hell is a gluten? Imagine you’re JaJuan Seider and you’re in south Florida trying to close a big-time running back or offensive lineman. Whoever. You and Holgorsen show up for a home visit. It’s your third of the night. You had hot wings at the first, some arroz con pollo at the second and now here comes the paella, which takes forever to make. How much Floribbean food can you take?

As much as is offered.

They’re not about to risk all that progress by pushing back a plate or saying no to supper.

“That’s why we all get fat and gain a lot of weight this time of year and have to start working out,” Gibson said. “On Monday, we’ll start.”

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, tell it like it is.

hoot said:

slightly off subject here, but who wants to bet Bruce Irvin gets a notice from
the league to report to the principal’s office after the game?

I’m sure he’ll get fined, and he deserves it, but I wouldn’t punish him too much. I think he actually diffused the situation — nobody wanted that thing to escalate once Bruce started raining knuckles. No way that was going to jump up a notch.