The season-opener starts here shortly and it’s West Virginia’s Mountaineers against Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers. That won’t be confusing at all. The MSMountaineers were 18-14 last season, but won nine of their last 11 games and lost to LIU-Brooklyn in the championship game of the NEC tournament.
They press and run and let it rip from deep, so buckle up tonight.
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Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which will be in the Blue Lot next to a smokestack of ribs, beef and sausages early in the morning tomorrow … and then later in a shirt and tie and in the press box at around 4 p.m. Night games are about as close to “real life” as I get to be for a home game. And that’s juxtaposed with the jerk back into reality that, no, this Nestea is fine because I have to go to work later.
But I’m fine with that, believe me. I know no one will play sad violin music as I talk about the pities of my job, but I just want you to know that one some days, and specifically some nights, I’m jealous that I can’t get that experience. Tomorrow night is going to be fun and even without bias I’d like to be a party to the party because I feel like that’s going to be a good game and a great environment. I can root for and be a fan of those things.
What strikes me is when I look at things on paper, yeah, Texas has the better roster. More depth, more talent. I don’t think I’m wrong here: Texas has the best roster WVU has faced or will face this season. But there’s a lot of paper to look at and the more I get into it, the more I think these teams aren’t much different from one another.
New defenses, though Texas tried to do it midstream while WVU reorganized before the season, and then midstream a little, too. Both have defensive fronts that establish the tenor of games and defensive ends who make plays when they’re playing well. Both will feature a nickel back and both will move a safety around to blitz or to play the run, which means both will play a lot of man-to-man in the secondary.
Texas wanted to have its offense spread teams and play fast this season. Major Applewhite, the Texas offensive coordinator, spent the offseason putting that together. The Longhorns now play slower and run the ball. WVU is running more and better than it passes the ball, but WVU, of course, wanted to play faster and throw more. Each team has made changes the the offensive line, but none in the past five games. Both are reaping the rewards of that continuity.
Why have the offenses sputtered and called audibles this season? Quarterbacks!
Both teams have made changes, and dealt with injuries, and neither team has a quarterback is wholly trusts. Still, both teams will take shots down the field and both teams have receivers who can actually stretch the field — and that’s really underrated about the Longhorns. They have a fleet of playmakers there, and this is where you circle back to the part about man-to-man in the secondary.
Then you’ve got coaches who can’t please fan bases and athletic directors making headlines and, well, who knew Texas, held in the highest possible regard in the Big 12, had so much in common with the newly arrived Mountaineers?
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, stay in line.
Spatial Angel said:
Rutgers 2.0 on Saturday. Then, if they can just manage a split of Kansas/Iowa St.
Rutgers 2.0 is the best thing this week. Worst? Prospect of Rutgers 1.0 in the Pinstripe Bowl.
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We’re live at 11 a.m. for an hour-long look at WVU v. Texas, Oliver Luck remaining with the Mountaineers and the start of the basketball season. It’s OK to blink. Here’s your mobile link.
Same old, same old the rest of the week. Scoop & Score tomorrow morning, when we’ll be joined by Big 12 Senior Associate Commissioner Tim Allen. He’s the fella who puts together the football schedule. Before yesterday, I wanted to know how he went about nailing the final five weeks this season. After yesterday’s 2014 revelation, I need to know if Iowa State is WVU’s Huckleberry.
The chat will follow at 11 a.m. Friday starts with the F Double and ends with the Mount St. Mary’s v. WVU live post.
Pour one out for Doug Rigg. Never forget!
Also, the football schedule is out and it’s interesting: No back-to-back road games. Three uninterrupted weeks of non-conference games and an open week before Big 12 play starts. A Thursday-night home game, another regular-season finale against Iowa State and an open week in the final week of the regular season.
Finally, there’s an athletic director quoted in that story and his name is Oliver Luck. That’s because Mr. Luck remains WVU’s athletic director. Texas has hired Steve Patterson from Arizona State.
We can talk more about this later, though I’m not sure I really care to at this point, and we might hear more details as time goes on, but I’ll just refresh what I heard all weekend and up to last night: The folks at WVU and some folks near Texas thought it was going to be Luck. Nobody ever told me it was absolutely him. I don’t believe there was ever an offer or negotiations or imminence. I was nevertheless assured Texas would wrap this up early this week. I guess that part was right.
The wave of texts I got from People I Talk To was a mix of shock and relief. Interesting to note: There’s this guy who hosts a radio show on Thursday mornings and he said a while back Texas would hire Patterson.
In short, the cement always dries.
I have a feeling WVU is trying to buck the trend. Not only that, but WVU might be capable.
It can’t undo 4-5/2-4, but it can prevent a situation in which things completely unravel. Teams can get a little better and do a few new things in place of a few old things that weren’t working.
We’re looking at a small sample size, and we must not forget that the Mountaineers just lost three in a row before unwrapping a win against TCU, but there are some things that should have our attention. WVU doesn’t run plays with four or five receivers anymore. WVU uses Cody Clay a whole lot. WVU runs the ball a little differently than before. And why is that? WVU doesn’t really have a dearth of receivers (Aside: Dana Holgorsen told me yesterday that Ronald Carswell is suspended indefinitely, but I’ve also been told he’s off the team.). Clay is pretty versatile and serviceable. Some new running ideas have been uncovered.
This may be one of the side effects of this roster this season. Holgorsen needed and took time to figure out things. You saw a pretty dramatic reorganization of the offensive line. You saw three quarterbacks in six games. You saw a stable of receivers get their chances. And think of the carousel of philosophies and plays. Screens came and went and came again. Quarterbacks threw shorts passes and then deep passes and now throw a mix of each. Then Saturday you saw the most meaningful dose of power running plays. You saw Ron Crook’s Fingerprints.
“That’s him,” center Pat Eger said. “We were going to put it in before he got her.e Coach Bedenbaugh was going to do it. But when Coach Crook came in from Stanford and that’s all they run at Stanford. It’s been great having that experience running power because he can teach us all the runs. It’s brought a whole new element to the game.”
That three-play sequence in the second quarter must be circled: Sims 29 run, Alford 27 pass from Trickett, Sims 31 run. (Oh! The quote from Holgorsen about his quarterback and the play action pass to Alford must not be forgotten, either: “Clint actually threw the post the way he’s supposed to.”)
It’s simple stuff with guards pulling out of their stance and sweeping across the line of scrimmage to lead on the other side of the play, but it’s effective and it was effective Saturday because TCU wasn’t really prepared for it. And how could Dick Bumpas have anticipated that?
Then WVU got lathered up and showed what you see above: Seven offensive linemen, no receivers, two tight ends in the backfield. That’s as Stanford as WVU is going to get and WVU got all Stanford on us in the ninth game of the season. I promise you that got the attention of one Greg Robinson.
Might have to bend my rule a little bit. Just a little bit.
How did we get here? Let’s find out by taking a look at the good and the bad of WVU v. TCU.
Good: Light switch
If this thing turns out good for WVU, which is to say there is a continuity of competence against Texas and then later against Kansas and Iowa State, and the teams ends up 6-6 or 7-5, we should probably remember this series. The Mountaineers had nothing going. I mean, nothing to the tune of 63 yards in four possessions. WVU then called the power plays, and watch Quinton Spain on the first play and Mark Glowinski on the third go to work. That’s tremendously tremendous and it made the score 17-10 when it looked like TCU might set the cruise control.
And don’t look now, but Spain has been great the last two games and Glowinski played about as well Saturday as I can remember an offensive lineman playing in quite some time. I’m not limiting their performance to the power plays, too. TCU does a lot of weird stuff up front with twists and stunts and it’s designed to put the two guards and the center in conflict. They handled it very well.
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Two wins in the final three games gets WVU in a bowl, thanks in large part to the gracious hosts at TCU Saturday.
The Big 12 had nine of its 10 teams eligible for a bowl last season. It’s looking like six or seven this season, and that’s no guarantee. The Mountaineers seem fated to either the Texas Bowl Dec. 27 in Houston or ye olde Pinstripe Bowl Dec. 28. It can go either way, really, but WVU can’t get into anything above that and there’s no feasible scenario that ends with the Big 12 needing more bowl spots than its conference already receives, as was the case last season.
Kansas State is 4-4 overall and plays at Texas Tech Saturday, plays host to TCU and Oklahoma and closes at Kansas. WVU, as you know, gets Texas at home, goes to Kansas and plays host to Iowa State. Are there two wins in there for both K-State and WVU? It looks like it, but let’s not trust these teams to stay on the rails.
If K-State and WVU both have six wins, at least, it could go either way for both of them. If you picked purely on standings and head-to-head results, you could project K-State getting the nod for the Texas Bowl, but logic doesn’t always have a seat at the table when it comes to bowls, unless you consider it logical not to send the Mountaineers to the Pinstripe for a second straight season. I think that has to matter.
Neither team would be particularly jazzed about being dispatched to the Bronx, though. The Mountaineers were nonplussed with their experience last season — they thought the people who ran the bowl were fine, but that’s about it — while the Wildcats played in the debut debacle in 2010 four days after a historically bad blizzard. There will be a lot of lobbying to get into the Texas Bowl.
But I repeat, let’s not guarantee anyone anything. Neither team is what you’d want to call reliable, though both have played better of late. Then again, K-State’s rolling against WVU and Iowa State while the Mountaineers were fortunate to win Saturday.
Not to brag, but this is from Saturday’s game post:
Simply put, a bad team loses this game. These are two underachieving teams affected by the move to the Big 12, whether you want to admit it or not, and issues with depth, injuries and quarterback play. The game is winnable for both sides, but the team that doesn’t win it will be the team that can’t win it. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but when these teams are in this spot at this point of the season, one side is good enough for a day to win and one is not. The latter usually makes its case by doing the things that have led it to this point, while the former finds a way to play above its level and/or make the most of the other team’s misgivings.
Nailed it. Credit to the motley Mountaineers and what they did with their passing game as well as the changes they made on the fly on defense. Come get money with me if you curious to see how it feels to be with T.F.G.D. My edits are in [brackets].
11:33:
The sweatervest is getting a lot of looks inside this Starbucks.
1:08:
I just bought a pair of cowboy boots.
1:15:
New goal in life is to adopt a retired greyhound!!!!!! I’ll tell you later.
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I’ve been over this before, and as I recall we had an oddly divisive discussion about it, but everything TCU does is cool. The uniforms, the facilities across campus, the publications, the marketing, I could go on and on, but suffice to day I’m a fan.
I mean, that’s the damn billboard that greets you when you pull off the exit for TCU’s campus. You’re likely to crash your car, or your team bus, because you’re staring at the thing or because you’re frightened of frogs. It’s science.
And, hey, if WVU is trying to get used to the Big 12 by basically borrowing from and copying Big 12 programs, well, do I have a tip for you …
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Up in the air today and bound for Texas, though not the University of Texas and not to interview to replace DeLoss Dodds.
If you’re keeping score at home, Mr. Oliver Luck was not in his office or in town yesterday and was instead traveling for a previously planned speaking engagement. I believe I know where, but I’m not positive. Conflicting reports there, and it’s not really a critical detail. Where he was and where he’d need to go if he were in fact meeting with the UT selection committee can be entirely different places. He’ll meet the team in Fort Worth today and he should be in Houston tomorrow for a homecoming of sorts when the Colts play the Texans. He’s not locked into watching every one of Andrew’s games, though, and he missed the Monday night game in San Diego a few weeks back because of work.
So tread lightly.
Nothing has changed on this and the things I’m being told remain the same. WVU believes it can happen and is good to go if it does. Luck remains a, if not the top candidate. This could be done really soon, though I wonder if it’s kept quiet until, say, Nov. 10. There are other names out there — I still wouldn’t ignore Steve Patterson — and there remains a significant part of a significant number of people who think Luck will stay. They seem to be the minority, though, and need I remind you I’m flying today and Sunday.
This was a topic, of course, on Scoop & Score yesterday, when we were joined by Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News. If you get a chance, tell him thanks.
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We begin at 11 a.m. Lots of … Luck … to you? Here’s the mobile link. See you there!
