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

Friday Feedback

April 4, 2014 by Mike Casazza

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has a lot of candles to blow out today.

I don’t want to bore you with the sentiment and the details, but that’s a pretty sweet deal right there. Tip one for your homies if you get a chance tonight.

Newspaper people can be weird about nostalgia and benchmark occasions, but in our trade, longevity is not a guarantee and you can do any one of a number of things to lose your spot or any one of a number of things can happen to take that spot away from you. And didn’t you see that this week, what with a tweet that has people all sorts of fired up and a decision up in Newark that affected a lot of people.

Tom Luicci was awesome at the Star-Ledger. You probably got to know him through his columns about Rutgers and the Big East and you’ve probably heard him on the radio around here. Maybe you even knew his daughter attended WVU. He’s no more, though he’s handling it all with grace and humor you would expect.

True story: I probably only talked to Tom a handful or two of times, but one of those times was a 15- or 20-minute conversation over the phone before the WVU v. Rutgers game in 2009 and, no lie, I learned about all I ever needed to know about the politics of bowl games.

Then there’s Brendan Prunty, nattily clad and just as sharp with his craft. Golf, baseball, college sports, breaking news, whatever. He was just fun to talk to before games at Madison Square Garden or after games in Piscataway. And then you read what he wrote because you had to. He, too, is gone and if you’re looking for a job in newspapers or with a web site, you better hope your resume was in someone’s hands already. He’s getting a job really soon … if he wants one.

Those are two terribly nice guys who were really good at their jobs, so, yeah, don’t mind me for feeling pretty good about our birthday Sunday. Bad things can happen out of the blue, but good things can happen, too, and I’d like to think we’re in the midst of that now at the Daily Mail.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, keep your guard up, please.

Sammy said:

Patterson’s approach appeared to be working wonders early in the year but it’s hard not to watch the Baylor game and think that maybe WVU should be lining up faster. (Among many other issues that day.)

That’s the Extinction Level Event. Coaches reference that game all the time when they talk about what went wrong and when it started last season, and those conversations include some of the pre-snap problems. This is all interesting, of course, until you remember it was freaking Baylor and freaking Baylor made a lot of teams this side of Orlando look Benny Hillish. So you wonder, and understandably, if the explanation is merely justification to make this change popular amid so many changes, if it’s valid or if it’s an overreaction.

Dave Wannstedt:

They just gotta run faster

You joke, but that’s true, and there’s something to be said about keeping things simple enough so that a player can line up and wait for the snap and then just play faster. 

Continue reading…

Big role awaits Smallwood

April 3, 2014 by Mike Casazza

This sudden wave Wendell Smallwood has made as the second-best inside receiver and single-most intriguing offensive player in WVU’s spring football really isn’t new. You’ll remember last season that Smallwood’s star started to shine and it led me to ask if what I thought I saw was really happening: Were the Mountaineers grooming Smallwood to replace Charles Sims?

And way back in late November, the answer was an unequivocal “Duh.”

Very little has changed since then for the Mountaineers, who practice for the 11th time today and then again before the public at 1 p.m. Saturday at Laidley Field in Charleston. I said this is Smallwood’s spring, and I can’t believe that’s a very bold opinion.

But the “what” does not interest me. It rarely ever does as much as the “how” or “why” always seem to suffice. And for Smallwood, this is his spring because he made bold moves in the winter after a bobble in early December.

(Aside: Scoop & Score podcast is available now. Heavy on me, features Wu, lacks a guest.)

Capital Classic

by Mike Casazza

Still in December and now with a new day of the week. This won’t help matters.

Scoop & Score and travel trouble

by Mike Casazza

We begin at 9 a.m. and I’m worried about whether I’ll have a guest because of his travel trouble. Fortunately, we’ve got enough going on that I can go solo and entertain with things like where might the Wu-Tang Clan play on a football team.

You think I’m kidding? Try me.

Your autophobic 2013 WVU secondary

April 2, 2014 by Mike Casazza

I think WVU seeks to play more man-to-man defense this coming season. Not exclusively, but not rarely, either. A year ago, the Mountaineers tinkered with it and then seemed to abandon it.

This being spring and spring being about exploration and explanation in my line of work, I tend to favor one of those stories over the other.

So, sure, it’s news that Tony Gibson, in his first season as the defensive coordinator, wants to man up more than before, though I don’t find his reason to be all that shocking. In short, he feels a lot better about this year’s group than he did about last year’s group, but, yeah, spring football, y’all.

Then again, it’s the the specific feelings and the differences between them that grabbed my ears. If he feels confident about this year’s group, he must have had an opposite impression of last year’s group. And so it was that I found his confession for why WVU didn’t and wouldn’t lean more on it last season to be enlightening.

Oh, hey, some good news

by Mike Casazza

West Virginia! Your team went 4-8 last season but plays the the 12-easiest sched … oh, crap. The Mountaineers play the 12th-hardest schedule in the country next season.

True, true. It’s a perfectly imperfect ranking system perpetuated by the NCAA, but I think we can agree a schedule with eight opponents that played in a bowl, plus Towson, is a mouthful.

Also … Marshall. What a season that might be in Huntington.

Holton sounds adjusted

April 1, 2014 by Mike Casazza

While there’s no arguing WVU lost a lot when Eron Harris decided to transfer and that WVU gained a lot, and maybe more, with Juwan Staten’s decision to stay in school, there’s probably some disputing the expected contributions from ineligible forwards Jonathan Holton and Elijah Macon.

I don’t want to pour water on anyone or anything — that seems to be frowned upon all of a sudden — but the concerns are pretty clear and pretty real. At the minimum, nothing is guaranteed.

What Holton has going for him, though, is what worked against him and the Mountaineers this season.

Continue reading…

An answer to an important question

by Mike Casazza

“I’d say I’m the fastest on the team,” he said.

WVU went looking for another Tavon Austin and instead  found this guy, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

Craig Turnbull punches back

March 31, 2014 by Mike Casazza

Fired Friday, Craig Turnbull, the now former longtime wrestling coach at West Virginia, offered his side of the story. It’s one that hints at age discrimination and tells of a tactless ouster, but one that others might tell you is much like many other firings, even ones for like reasons. Whether we like it or not, whether Turnbull likes it or not, sometimes a coach just isn’t getting it done and he is asked to justify his existence when presented with doubts that it should continue.

Whatever the truth, whatever the outcome, Turnbull’s two cents about a lengthy conclusion are on the table now.

Remember this?

by Mike Casazza

I ask because this was, at the time, a little unusual. Keith Patterson was taking over the defense and putting his touches on it and he was asking West Virginia’s maligned unit to do something that didn’t really seem to make a whole lot of sense.

He wanted the Mountaineers to slow down, not to pounce, but to be patient. There were problems he had to fix, but if there was one issue requiring his immediate attention it was immediacy itself. It was making sure players got to the right spot. It made no difference if WVU got somewhere first if WVU was wrong.

Everyone wanted to play fast on offense, which meant the Mountaineers would have to slow down on defense.

How’d that work out?

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