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

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June 10, 2014 by Mike Casazza
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At first glance, that’s just a backhoe and it’s parked outside the Puskar Center waiting to do its part as West Virginia builds a new team room right there on the corner of the program’s headquarters.

“I’m just excited to walk outside and see machinery and a fence,” Mountaineers coach Dana Holgorsen said. “I don’t know if we’ll ever start building the team room or not, but at least we have something fenced off.”

Oh, they’ll start, and Holgorsen knows that, and the idea is to have the room done and ready to debut for the Kansas State game Nov. 20.

But for now, Holgorsen and everyone else over there is fine with idle equipment.

“You can point to it with every recruit,” said Alex Hammond, the director of football operations.

That’s not a joke. That’s sincere. A caterpillar or a front loader or an auger or anything suggesting breaking ground, moving earth and building something new are things recruits want to see.

“That’s what Alex and I have been talking about for years,” Holgorsen said. “You can’t be a top-20 program unless you have a crane in your parking lot. I just want to rent one and park it out there.”

Renting or, heck, buying one would be cheaper than what WVU has planned for the Puskar Center and Mountaineer Field, but anything that’s going to be done over there is going to require yellow machines and equipment for a long time.

“Then,” Holgorsen said, “we can say, ‘Look, we’re building!’ “

That plan is already in action. The Mountaineers played host to an important recruiting camp over the weekend. Kids had to walk past the backhoe again and again. They got to move around inside the Puskar Center, where the photo murals are down and simple cosmetic fixes are happening.

Does it matter? Well, the Mountaineers did get a 2015 commitment Monday from a quarterback — “the most under-recruited kid on the East Coast if not the entire country” — who was here for the camp.

“They see paint, that’s what they want,” Hammond said. “That’s progress. That’s not run down. That’s progress.”

‘I think everybody saw this gap coming’

June 9, 2014 by Mike Casazza

Oliver Luck was hired four years ago today, and I needn’t tell you a whole lot has happened since then. Nothing is bigger and nothing matters more than the move to the Big 12.

The athletic director knew a conference shift was coming, and what he anticipated and what he planned to do about it were the things that impressed former President Jim Clements most. Honestly, that’s why he was the only guy Clements interviewed.

What’s funny and kind of scary to think about today is that Luck really didn’t expect to get into that as quickly as he did.

“The thing that scared me the most as an alumnus and a former football player is this college football realignment and us waking up one morning and going, ‘Oh, what happened?’” Luck said last week in Charleston. “It was happening and it was the most important thing on my radar screen when I started.

“Personally, I thought we would be faced with that challenge in the first three or four years of my tenure and it happened much quicker than I thought. There was a crucial three- or four-month period, but thankfully we’re much better off.”

New faces

by Mike Casazza

On campus today for the first day of the new summer session at WVU: Amanii Brown, Yodny Cajuste, William Crest, Jaleel Fields, Dravon Henry, Tyree Owens, Lamar Parker, Xavier Preston and Walter Rauterkus. Today is also the first day of the second week of the NCAA’s revised summer workout period, so those guys are at head of the class, so to speak.

It’s interesting to see Crest, Henry and Parker in that flock because those are three of the few incoming players who have a real shot at affecting the 2o14 roster — others might do it (DaeJuan Funderburk and Jacob McCrary come to mind), but they’re not here yet, are they?

Two names not listed, but already in Morgantown: Postgraduate transfers Cullen Christian and Shaquille Riddick.

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The doctor winks and says, “I’ll fix it.”

by Mike Casazza

(Jevon Carter enrolled today, in case you were curious.)

Bob Huggins, who had to lower himself onto a stool last year because getting in and out of folding chairs on the sideline was becoming a painful task, had surgery this morning to replace his right hip. A status statement form the athletic department says “the surgery went well and Huggs is doing fine.”

He went under comforted by the knowledge his incoming recruiting class is full at last.

BillyDee Williams committed Saturday, when I was out of town. Works every time…

Friday (user left this blank)

June 6, 2014 by Mike Casazza

SheikYbuti said:

Don’t you just love stumbling onto an F-double when you’re not expecting it. It’s like returning from the facilities at a fancy restaurant to discover that your food has arrived. And that, for whatever reason, Uma Thurman is sitting directly across the table from you. And that she seems particularly interested in whatever you have in your coat pocket.

Oh, man. My heart. I can’t reproduce that feeling again today. I have a weekend trip about to start, but I’ll be back Sunday, which means a normal (for June!) week next week and ideally a F Double at the end. My bad. 

I’d like to leave you with two things.

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Clint Trickett: seventh, ninth and also second

June 5, 2014 by Mike Casazza

Friend of the Program David Ubben ranks West Virginia’s presumed starting quarterback ninth among the 10 Big 12 quarterbacks, but also has some nice words for the main man’s mane. NFL.com, on the other hand, lists Trickett as the seventh-best graduate transfer for the 2014 season.

And poor Clint. The guy who has had people wondering whether he’s the best at his spot for a year now isn’t even considered the best postgraduate on WVU’s roster. That’d be Shaq Riddick, who checked in at No. 2. Riddick might be a big-time acquisition. I mean, he does have a publicist working on his behalf.

Eight men out, plus some others probably

by Mike Casazza

Here’s something fun. The Major League Baseball Draft has remembered West Virginia through the years, though never too fondly. The Mountaineers have never had more than six players taken in the draft, and that happened in 2001.

We might witness history this weekend, though. WVU stands to have six juniors drafted, plus a couple of seniors.

No problem, though, because the Mountaineers recruited really well. I mean, better than they ever have before.

“This is the first class of guys we’ve been able to be on since the first day you’re allowed to email them,” said Matlock, a part of the staff since manager Randy Mazey was hired in June 2012. “The first two classes, we’d be moving our feet and trying to find who’s out there, and that’s not always bad. Sometimes you can find the best players at the end.

“But with this group of guys, we beat N.C. State, we beat Texas A&M, we beat Texas Tech. We definitely beat some good teams for these players, where in the past couple of years, all the guys really had was us. That’s exciting to know because to win on the field, you’ve got to win in recruiting and we feel like we did that with a few of these guys.”

The work isn’t done, though. WVU may be in position to re-recruit some guys because maybe five recruits could get drafted, too. So consider this for the 2015 season, the first in the new stadium: WVU loses eight seniors to graduation and could also be without, say, a dozen players who could have been a part of the upcoming season.

Bo and behold

June 4, 2014 by Mike Casazza

Two parts of the beat I don’t particularly like:

1) Football’s national signing day.

2) The summer conference meeting circuit

national signing day (That’s not a typing error at the start of the sentence. Rather, I refuse to adhere to the frenzy to capitalize national signing day and make it a holiday. Shut up. I’m the writer and editor) bugs me more and more every year. Players act more outrageous and more selfish every year, and, frankly, they’re encouraged and facilitated to maddening degrees.

That’s a soap box I don’t want to get on right now, because kids aren’t alone in the wrongdoings and schools and coaches aren’t made to shoulder a fair share of the blame, but know that while I appreciate the meaning of the day, I sort of detest the mania. I know too many people who work in recruiting at different levels and who lose their minds, slowly but surely, to continue to ignore this. It’s nuts.

As for the summer conference meeting circuit, this happens every year: A  conference gets a few days on the calendar. It gets reporters in a room. It gets on the bully pulpit. A league pushes this, that and the other, seemingly for its own gain, and there’s no rebuttal until the next conference gets its couple of days on the calendar. Best of all, the best defense for a league pushing its wishes is “Because.”

So color me really surprised and kind of disappointed to find satisfaction in this story. Bo Pellini picked up one of the hot-button items from the summer conference meeting circuit, spun the proposed early signing period on its head and came up with a game changer: No signing day because no signing period!

The champ is (going to be) here

by Mike Casazza

Long ago, at a time before anything that follows was relevant, I remember Jim Clements, the Clemson University president formerly of WVU and of Towson, bragging to me about the Towson cheer team. They were good, I guess, and his point was that he had a heart and a mind for all the student-athletes on campus.

Truth be told, the Towson cheerers are good. That is not a secret in the community of intercollegiate cheer and dance. It’s a show for football and basketball games, and in 2013 they won a national championship for their commitment and performance.

Then the Tigers gained their greatest popularity when they were suspended for an entire athletic year for a hazing scandal, the details of which went public today. The ban expires soon, and they’ll be on the sideline for the WVU v. Towson NIGHT GAME in Morgantown in September, but be wary of the Tigresses. And behold them, too. No one beat Towson for the title, so I subscribe to the idea the crown remains upon the head.

Welp!

by Mike Casazza

So much (for now?) for Bob Huggins’ carefully crafted plan to address three classes with the three scholarships he was left with this offseason.

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