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

Minor-league baseball close to Morgantown home

March 26, 2013 by Mike Casazza

The intent of the news conference in the Jerry West Lounge Tuesday morning was to push the base-runner deeper into scoring position so the winning run can be driven in here soon.

The TIF district to fund construction for a new WVU baseball stadium is past the Senate and in the House Judiciary Committee with a vote waiting there, maybe this week, before it goes to the full House. From there, it has to be approved by Earl Ray Tomblin and then WVU’s Board of Governors.

I do wonder why this was necessary if things were so certain to end the way they all wanted it to end. But I’m told it’s got a very good chance to get thumbs up everywhere and that there could be a minor-league team, probably from Jamestown, N.Y., playing home games in Granville next summer.

A lot has to happen, though, and the particulars of the stadium remain unknown. There are plans. You won’t find someone involved in this process who doesn’t have a list of specs and features both desired and required. Until the thing gets passed and all the sides sit down with a criteria developer to put together a plan, no one knows how much it it will cost.

It could look like this:

The bond capacity for the TIF plan is $16 million. Construction could cost $18 million and, let’s be honest, even more. If so, WVU and the New York Penn League will have to find a way to handle the rest.

Nevertheless, people are pumped to play ball …

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At least they’re honest

by Mike Casazza

First Darwin Cook more or less says WVU’s defense was “terrible” last season because the players had bad discipline and maybe worse attitudes.

Now Ishmael Banks, who was swallowed up by the injury to Travis Bell that I still think people can’t accurately measure the effect of, points the finger at himself. Watch the cornerback explain why he was a so-so safety before he was moved back to a starting cornerback.

“It caught me off guard,” he said. “That’s what I’m there for. I’m supposed to be ready at all times for any problems. But I didn’t prepare like I should have in the offseason.”

Banks didn’t like the way he played, not as it was happening and not now as he looks back at the few games he played safety. There’s a level of pride that compels him to advertise, “That was not me.”

“I was playing corner and getting in the rotation a lot and then it was, ‘We’re going to move you to safety,’ ” Banks said. “That was like, ‘Oh, man, that’s not me. I don’t play safety. I want to play corner.’

“I don’t feel like I accepted my role – I know I didn’t accept the role. I didn’t. I didn’t pursue it like it was my job. I feel like if it was corner they were asking me to play, I would have taken that on.”

I think we can agree admitting there was a problem is a big part of fixing the problem.

Tier 4 Inbox

March 25, 2013 by Mike Casazza

There are no spring football practices this week because WVU is away on spring break and I’m doing celebratory trips along 705 and University Avenue and High Street because there’s no traffic. It is glorious.

Anyhow, the Tier 4 studio remains open and ready to work. Fire off some questions you have about spring football — repeat: spring football — and I’ll get to a bunch of them for Tuesday’s video blog. If you’re reading this by way of Twitter, tag your question #Tier4Q.

And seriously, just spring football.

Deniz kills the 2013 team

by Mike Casazza

You saw this coming, right? There was no doubt in my mind late in the season that Deniz Kilicli was fed up with his teammates. Not all of them, but many of them and in particular the ones he was often made to share space with in a season gone wrong.

His body language was easy to translate. From reactions to interactions, and the lack thereof almost, you could see it in him. His telling postgame press conference after the loss at Oklahoma asked “When?” and not “What?”  You weren’t curious about the issue. You were curious about the moment he’d reveal it.

And after the loss in the Big 12 tournament, when the media was allowed in the locker room for the first time all season, you could pretty easily tell Deniz spoke freely and no longer with any concern about what his teammates thought — and I promise you people were struck by how light and carefree that locker room was that night.

Well, it finally happened. Kilicli unloaded on unnamed teammates, probably a few that you won’t see again, for the way attitudes conspired against WVU in Kilicli’s senior season. It’s … it’s not pretty.

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A rather simple explanation of WVU’s 2012 defense

March 22, 2013 by Mike Casazza

“It was terrible,” Darwin Cook said, beginning a conversation about the 2012 season and why it went so badly.

 

The ball is tipped …

March 21, 2013 by Mike Casazza

… and, hey, there I am! Third row back above the V in West Virginia. You know what today is and I trust many of you are not at work, or are at work and so compromised by diverting your attention elsewhere that this isn’t a place you’re likely to visit too often today.

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Trust that Seider knows what he’s doing

March 20, 2013 by Mike Casazza

I think we can all agree that in JaJuan Seider WVU found itself someone who can capably recruit the parts of Florida Robert Gillespie mined so well the past few years, and that that work continued what the Mountaineers have done there since Doc Holliday was wearing out a path before it started to pay dividends.

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WVU is not a Crook offense — or is it?

by Mike Casazza

Maybe the funnest and most interesting plot to spring practice is wondering how Ron Crook will impart his experience coaching the Sanford offensive line in the Jim Harbaugh-inspired offense upon the WVU offensive line and the Dana Holgorsen-influenced offense.

It’s not merely that one prefers to run the ball while the other prefers to pass it. It’s that the two really couldn’t design, install and call running plays much differently. Yet here’s Crook, hired for a reason and with a purpose, now a third of the way through his first spring with WVU.

A simple view reveals the Mountaineers are at least looking at different tools with which to skin the cat.

“We have the parts to do some of it,” Crook said. “The difference is we recruited at Stanford for the scheme we’d been running for years – same as what we’re doing here. We’re recruiting for the scheme they’ve been doing here for years. But when you don’t have five or six tight ends on the roster, you can’t go out and run three- or four-tight end sets. It doesn’t work.”

Just because personnel won’t work doesn’t means plays or philosophies can’t transfer. According to Crook, there isn’t much variation between what Stanford does with a running back and two tight ends and what the Mountaineers might be able to do with Holgorsen’s diamond formation.

Where Stanford’s tight ends are on the line of scrimmage, Holgorsen’s blockers are to either side of the quarterback and in front of the running back in the shotgun.

“We’re going to try to experiment throughout the spring to see what fits and what doesn’t fit,” Crook said. “There’s some stuff we’re going to look at on the field and say, ‘This doesn’t fit,’ and we’ll try other things and say, ‘Yeah, I like the way this looks.’ “

‘… this is very rare’

by Mike Casazza

West Virginia University’s Mountaineer Sports Network is in the final year — heck, the final weeks — of a three-year contract with the West Virginia Radio Corp. that grants the radio group “exclusive local radio broadcasting rights” for football and men’s basketball games.

Given the reach of WVU’s radio audience for games in those two sports, I would argue that’s a more valuable commodity than a football game for Root Sports or any of those Tier 3 properties for a provider. Radio is, and has been, big business here. Why, how many people do you know who turn down the volume on their television during a game and listen instead to the radio?

It’s not just valuable here, though. It’s valuable across the college multimedia rights industry. There are six- and seven-figure deals, depending on the brand the university has, for the radio rights.

You know about licensing. It’s the reason you can’t put a Flying WV on a mud flap without certain permissions granting you rights to use the logo.

Anyhow, one national sponsorship consultant told me WVU should be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000 to $400,000 annually on rights fees for radio broadcasts.

Take a wild guess what West Virginia Radio Corp. pays MSN for the radio rights.

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Video blog: Day Five

March 19, 2013 by Mike Casazza

Fine, fine. I’ll talk about the quarterbacks, but nothing I say trumps the lines from Keith Patterson today.

P.S. I erred about the schedule early in the video. They’ll practice Thursday and then break. And I knew that because I can’t make Thursday’s practice. I’ll try harder next time — but this is two one-take vlogs in a row. Joe DiMaggio is impressed.

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