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5:54 pm: If ISU can put up 35 on TTU, WVU should be able to do SOMETHING offensively next week…maybe
Why, yes, I’m inclined to agree with that, though while Texas Tech gradually gravitates toward normal on defense as the difficulty of the schedule increases, the offense remains potent. One might argue it’s more potent.
The Red Raiders are ranked No. 13 nationally in scoring offense, No. 3 in passing offense and No. 6 in total offense. They did allow 35 points at home Saturday against Iowa State, but they also had 101 snaps and 36 first downs (both season highs) and 666 yards and 6.59 yards per play (both the second-highest total of the season).
The worry then is not only whether WVU’s offense can stay apace, but if WVU’s defense was exposed to the world for what it is against spread offenses that will snap the ball in a hurry. True, Baylor is Baylor, though Baylor looked mortal Saturday, and Baylor is not Texas Tech, but it’s not that much different.
The resiliency of the Mountaineers will be tested, again, but this is the sort of occasion for which Dana Holgorsen hired Keith Patterson away from Arkansas State. And this is the sort of occasion Patterson prefers. He’ll apply a little bit of heat, a little bit of pressure and a little bit of Dick LeBeau and he’ll like his chances.
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Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which wastes no time today. Let’s jump right in right now. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, do the right thing.
Parks said:
I just didn’t see a head coach with a game plan on Saturday night. If communication was a problem with Clint, then pull him and keep him out. Don’t keep making switches on 3rd down situations and you sure as hell don’t put the 3rd string guy in on a 4th and 2 at midfield and run a draw play. Baylor is as good as anyone in the country and I’d love to see them play Oregon in a bowl game, but we were totally inept out there. O’Toole is the real deal and I really do think our defense is better than what they played, but they still need to continue improving. I’m beginning to lose all hope for our offense. If Crest is as good as advertised, he’s got to be licking his chops and counting down until he can enroll in January.
We saw a game plan. It was “go deep, it worked last year,” which may have been a bit misguided when you heard Dana talk after the game and then again this week — he doesn’t have a quarterback or the receivers to make that plan work, and you know he didn’t suddenly discover that. There were not adjustments to speak of, though. To advocate for the Devil, though, WVU threw 14 deep passes against Oklahoma State and seemed to move the ball pretty well against a better defense. Baylor’s defense isn’t as good as OSU’s. As for Crest, nobody I’ve talked to has any clue what to expect from him. He’d also have to master that tricky communication thing, too. And when you consider he follows Paul Millard, Ford Childress and Chavas Rawlins as Holgorsen QB recruits … well, let’s wait a tick.
Spatial Angel said:
How much of this is lack of talent? How much is coaching?
O-line is very poor. QB play ditto.
Was shocked to see the success BU had running it up the gut.
HCDH in game management and decisions poor. Some very poor hiring decisions. Has not recruited a competent QB.
Not ready to pull the plug on HCDH, but not particularly optimistic.
ADOL’s first major hiring decision not looking too swift at the moment.
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Big news to start the show and bigger guests to follow. Walt Anderson, the Big 12’s coordinator of officials, joins me in the first hour. Just a few things to discuss with him. In the second hour, it’s Brett McMurphy and his thoughts on expansion chatter that I sense will get going once Texas names an athletic director.
Oh, and about that. There’s honestly not much I can tell you because there’s literally not much I can tell you. I know there are some reports out there about upcoming appointments, but I can’t tell you those are accurate. We can speculate, I guess. I don’t do that in print, but on the radio? Why not? Anything else on your mind about WVU football, basketball or administration, I’m game. Anything about college football as a whole, I’m still game.
So an invitation: Drop your comments or questions here, by way of email at scoopandscoreshow[at]gmail[dot]com or on Twitter at @pickupasixpack.
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Oh, oh, oh. Remember this? It was last October and Bob Huggins, then a fresh 59 years old, was on the verge of a revised contract that would add seasons and dollars to the lifetime contract he wasn’t about to abandon. He’d taken some time for himself and for his family in the offseason, he was pumped up about joining the Big 12, which had just picked WVU to finish sixth in the conference, and he really, really, really believed he had a winner in his gym that would prove the 2012 season was an aberration.
“Honestly, if we’re the sixth-best team in the league, it’s a hell of a league,” Huggins said. “I’m telling you, this is a team that, if I had scheduled it that way, would win 25 games. It’s going to be really hard to do that with who we play, but if we did what a lot of other teams do and play 18 home games and buy everyone in, we’d win 25 games with this group and most people would say we’re a pretty good team.
“We’re not going to win 25 probably because of who we play, but we’ve got a chance to be pretty good.”
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There were player interviews after this. I spent some time with Juwan Staten, Terry Henderson and Kevin Noreen for a story I’m working on that comes out next week, but something branched off of each of those chats: The Mountaineers are really impressed with Jonathan Holton’s skill, but also his motor. Staten and Henderson called him “Mr. Energy,” which, if you followed last year’s team, means a whole lot. Noreen was impressed with how quickly Holton took to the conditioning aspect of college.
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Also, I’ve read the comments. No The Good and the Bad? Because I’m OK with that. Obviously. Would gladly devote space to the fair instead.
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Dana Holgorsen has his regularly scheduled press conference this afternoon and that’s followed by interviews across town with Bob Huggins and his players. I’ll drop Holgorsen’s press conference here sometime this afternoon.
I haven’t re-watched WVU v. Baylor because I took an extra day in Texas and ate a ton of fried food at the State Fair of Texas. (Texas Fried Fireball and Golden Fried Millionaire Pie … whoa, boy.) That said, I still plan on doing The Good and the Bad, but I never planned to have it ready today, and I think I told you that in the chat. No Wednesday Walkthrough and no chat this week because there’s no game, but we’ll do just fine without them.
So I’ve taken a lot off your plate this week, but I still want to give you a chance to feast. Can I do an entire WVU hour Thursday night on “Scoop & Score?” I say yes, but I’ll need your questions and your phone calls. That’s part of a special show that’ll have some news about future programming, as well. But seriously, load up your questions and talking points. You can submit them here, via email at scoopandscoreshow[at]gmail[dot]com or on Twitter at @pickupasixpack.
Meantime, how bad is WVU’s running game? So bad it’s making WVU pass the ball, which WVU never really wanted to do in the first place.
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Can’t argue with that. It’s going to be a long week for WVU and Dana Holgorsen because there is no game this Saturday and what happened this past Saturday is the sort of thing the Mountaineers want and need to flush out of their system.
“I said weeks ago Baylor has the best tempo and the best team, and they turned it up even more here,” the senior nose guard said. “I can’t give those guys enough credit. I know they’re going to win the Big 12. Nobody’s going to beat those guys.”
Rowell was among the handful of Mountaineers who were consistently pushed back by Baylor’s massive offensive line, which started players who weighed 310, 330, 295, 340 and 315 pounds.
“Those guys were great,” Rowell said. “I’m not going to sit here and make excuses for anybody, including myself. I got blown off the ball a few times.”
But that humility is fleeting. Humiliation is not. That one’s going to leave a mark, as it should, but I guess the next two weeks will provide many other diversions and give us plenty of other things to talk and think about, and that might change the talking points just a little bit.
It can’t be a bad time for WVU to have a week off for the first time this season. That’s a team that’s quietly and proudly been wheezing in certain spots for a few games now, so rest and recuperation will help. But this is also a team that needs to figure out a few things, like why it can’t run the ball, how to complete vertical passes, why the coach and the quarterback can’t communicate, how to keep that from affecting the game and if the defense is — well, what is this defense?
Yes, Baylor is going to make teams look bad, but the Bears did it the way they wanted to do it in the areas WVU sought to guard the most. And if you had concerns about WVU’s improved defense, I have to think your concerns were validated quite often in Waco. It started bad right away and got worse … actually, it got worse right away, too.
The Mountaineers, who a week earlier won at home against then-No. 11 Oklahoma State and held its formidable offense to 21 points, let Baylor set the Big 12 record for total offense and erase the 807-yard mark WVU set last year in a 70-63 win against the Bears.
That 2012 game set the tone for the worst defensive season in school history. This game at least made WVU wonder what was real.
“The reality is we just came out and laid an egg,” said safety Darwin Cook, who had an interception and scored a touchdown off teammate Travis Bell’s interception and lateral in the fourth quarter. “I didn’t think we were too high on ourselves. There was nothing like that in the way we practiced and the way we prepared. There wasn’t a hangover from the Oklahoma State game.”
A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday’s life. Somewhere a queen is weeping. Somewhere a king has no wife. And the wind, it cries T.F.G.D.
My edits are in [brackets].
12:36:
If WVU beats Baylor then Oklahoma’s players would have to throw games in order not to win the conference.
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You are looking live at the Baylor band practicing inside Floyd Casey Stadium. I was perched atop the damn roof and let me tell you how windy it is today. Those kids weren’t even blowing into their mouthpieces. They were just holding their instruments in the air. I’m serious.
The band spelled out Baylor as well in its prep so I sat around a while after this waiting for “Virginia.”
I’m concerned about their depth, Craig. I don’t know if they have the numbers to pull it off this week
Turns out the folks in red and black are from West High School and that Baylor is doing something with the kids this week. And that’s neat, of course. And I’m odd.
But, yes, it’s windy, so prepare to hear about the wind and how the wind affects passes and kicks and punts and all the coaching decisions that are attached to each and the wind must be considered. My kingdom to see Dana Holgorsen use his timeouts in the first quarter to make Baylor punt into the wind.
I think this wind is an element, though, because both ends of the stadium are, as you can tell, open. There aren’t bleachers shielding the length of the field from this breeze. So let’s track it, I guess.
More about this stadium. Cool murals on the outside. I’m a big fan of stadium murals.
I’m a big fan of the live post, too. Shall we prance?
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And we’re off to Baylor, but what if I told you that Jordan Thompson spoke? To reporters, no less! Timing is everything and here’s proper perspective about this game: Understand that WVU had 807 yards of offense against the Bears last year. Of all the players to contribute to that, only Thompson and his 16 yards played in last week’s win against Oklahoma State.
His 17-yard reception last week was a big one for the Mountaineers and Thompson, who actually started against the Cowboys after not even playing the prior two games, is apparently off the self-described, though not self-prescribed “probation” period.
“They knew last year wasn’t really a great season for me and it was disappointing for myself,” he said. “But I look at it and I’m glad I had that season. I felt like I built experience as a freshman, and because I gained a little experience, I can relay that to a lot of the first-year players. That’s making the team grow and grow and grow, and we’re going to play together for a couple of years.”
