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Surely you’ve heard that Steve Dunlap was dismissed Saturday, the second assistant coach to be fired by Coach Dana Holgorsen this offseason. Dunlap, the school’s record holder for tackles in a game and a season and still No. 10 on the career list, will have an option to stay within the university in an off-the-sideline capacity.
That could be all for Dana. There might be another move. He’s in Nashville, Tenn., for the coaches’ convention. He has his cornerbacks coach and is only waiting on the thumbs up from human resources — unless it gave a thumbs down — and Holgorsen will be looking to find or finalize a new hire now.
This is isn’t as sudden as fire-a-guy-Saturday-start-looking-Monday, though. I keep hearing everything will be done this week.
But what happens now? It looks like the offensive side of the ball will remain as it is. Let’s assume everyone still employed on defense will remain employed on defense — or rather, will remain employed.
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Not exactly the sounds of promise following Saturday’s 67-57 loss to Oklahoma.
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You are looking live at the Maniac Musings, pulled from the thin student section without any resistance because the students aren’t back yet. That said, the Coliseum is sold out this afternoon and this is the guide for the chuckleheads who don’t have class again until Jan. 14.
Today is WVU’s sixth game during winter break. The Mountaineers are 3-2 but have won the past three games. A win would be WVU’s longest winning streak since five in a row Dec. 8-22 last year. That was a five-game tear and that’s the best run since 10 straight into the 2010 Final Four.
Think the Mountaineers and Sooners can top the football debut in this league by WVU?
If you’re curious, Baylor and West Virginia combined for 133 points in the 70-63 gridiron thriller at Mountaineer Field on the last Saturday in September. On the hardwood, this 7-5 WVU team is averaging 70.2 points, just better than Oklahoma’s 67.9.
That means WVU and OU have combined for 138.1 points this hoops season.
Over/under 133 for the Mountaineers’ Big 12 basketball debut … what say you?
If you want to get a little more particular for this day, over/under for the 99 points these two combines to score in their football game. Neither team is what you’d call an offensive stalwart.
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We’re one day shy of a week since the last time Bob Huggins pelted his team in a postgame press conference — although to be fair, we ought to add that it’s one day shy of a week since WVU completely perplexed Huggins with its performance. The Mountaineers came from ahead to come from behind to beat Eastern Kentucky and Huggins was, as he has been twice already this season, flummoxed.
“It’s incredibly frustrating to have to say the same thing day after day after day after day,” Huggins said. “It’s incredibly frustrating. They just keep doing the same things.
“Do you have kids?” Huggins asked one reporter. “When you do have kids, you’ll find out that when you tell him ‘stop’ for the 74th time, he’ll start getting under your skin.”
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A week from today, Dana Holgorsen will have a staff meeting with his coaches. Two days later, there’s a team meeting with the coaches and the players on the eve of the spring semester, which features winter conditioning and spring practice. Those will be the first two meetings since the Pinstripe Bowl loss.
Between now and those two get-togethers, some things will be changing for the Mountaineers.
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So Sunday morning I was outside my hotel, killing time until my car service (!) picked me up and took me to the airport. I’ve had this song stuck in reddmy head for a while and it was running laps around my idle thoughts. I was tapping my toe as I pieced a few things together and, man, Fun.’s “One Foot” suddenly made sense.
I’m standing in Brooklyn just waiting for something to happen. I can’t help but love thinking that everyone doesn’t get it.
That Pinstripe Bowl? I think it gets a Bad.
Don’t get me wrong. I quite enjoyed my time before, during and after the game. The bowl people took great care of the media and all its needs. The events were good. The hotel was fine. The transportation wasn’t bad, and that 2 1/2 hour trip from WVU’s practice back to the hotel Thursday was not the norm. I didn’t even mind the open-air press box and the arctic conditions encountered covering the game.
That’s not the gripe.
I just have questions about the luck and the future of the game that’s supposed to be a novelty, a postseason game in a baseball stadium in a famed city, but in a non-traditional bowl climate. It it’s had six 7-5 teams in three years and two games compromised by weather. Unless you’re covering the game, root for one of the teams or work for the Yankees, you’d have a hard time being in the city and knowing the game was coming.
WVU had to practice inside one day — inside a hotel ballroom. There was an alternate option, but it was on Long Island and thought to be too tricky a trip because of that afternoon’s weather.
The field was in awful shape by the end of the game with mud and ice. It wasn’t catered to at halftime and both teams wondered why — and the reply, as told to me, was that no one wanted to do it. The infield was exposed toward the end of the game. The sidelines were really slick — and also close to the outfield walls and the sponsorship signs.
But, man, that bowl logo was always visible at midfield.
Ryan Nassib, Geno Smith, Alec Lemon, Tavon Austin, pass rushers, cornerbacks, even coaches were limited and the ones from this sentence with names couldn’t properly show off their abilities in their final games. One of the hooks of the Pinstripe Bowl is the media market, the attention of the sports world and the stage and exposure for professional scouts.
That’s not ideal for the bowl and that’s not what teams, or conferences, are signing up for. On one hand, it’s football weather. It’s the elements at play and teams at the mercy of that which they cannot control. But that’s now what bowls are supposed to be about.
And so I’m curious what happens next. The Big 12, now 0-3 in the game and twice bothered by the conditions, might not want a part of it in the next bowl cycle. Given the way the conference has been resurrected in the past few seasons, it might aim higher.
The Big East is going to look very different once the current bowl cycle expires next season, so will the bowl want to invest in the UCFs and ECUs and SMUs it is bound to welcome? Or will it have a choice? And what happens if it’s Big East v. Mid-American Conference? It has a lot to offer, but it has some red flags, too.
There’s a lot on the line there and, while the bowl is a neat idea under optimal circumstances, it’s impossible to guarantee those conditions. It was a great idea and the concept was worth pursuing, but you have to wonder where it goes from here.
But that’s not something WVU has to think about right now after the 38-14 loss to Syracuse Saturday. It left the Mountaineers with a 7-6 record after a 5-0 start and a long offseason to endure before whatever happens in 2013.
How did we get here? Let’s take a look by examining the Good and the Bad of the Pinstripe Bowl.
Bad: Omens First play from scrimmage and isn’t that a hell of a way to start a game? Watch Pat Eger, the right guard, throw it in reverse. It was like that for much of the game up front, and what was discouraging for WVU was it knew it had to at least hold its own up front because Syracuse was better there.
There was never a string of plays where WVU got the better of the Orange and 37 runs netted 88 yards.
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The same program that weathered a blizzard at Rutgers and then made and rode a series of breaks to the Orange Bowl in 2011 wasn’t nearly as resilient, opportune or menacing in 2012. Not sure exactly why, because I thought that was the great and redeeming virtue of last year’s team, though surely it had something to do with the competition and the roster. Yet what happened in the Pinstripe Bowl against a Big East team was entirely emblematic of what happened to WVU throughout the season.
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I’ve said this a few times here through the years, which makes me wonder if it remains true or applicable, but I’m not the guy who points to the officiating at the end of a game. It’s too common a denominator, and too often one call or one miss overshadows a list of other highlights and lowlights in the two halves or four quarters of the game.
I just tend to tune it out when it’s brought to my attention — though I make exceptions because, as wise man told me, I can’t be censored.
Well, I was going through my texts Sunday from Saturday’s game. I don’t pay attention to my phone during the game and I don’t look at the texts until the day after, when I run them through the program that turns out Texts From Game Day. I wish I had been looking Saturday because one before the game from someone in the college football business texted a rather providential note about “once-suspended” referee Jay Stricherz and his Pac-12 crew.
After the game, I was overwhelmed by the texts and blog comments and the email and the conversations that complained pointedly about the officiating and the effect it had. A few of the tips were persuasive enough that I gave it a separate look. And I’m glad I did.
Saturday’s game was not expertly officiated. I’d say it was excessively officiated. And I think, unfortunately, that it mattered.
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As a pretense, let’s wonder for a moment what might have been for WVU this season if TCU’s two-point conversion pass in overtime hits the turf? Or what if a cornerback forces an Oklahoma receiver outside instead of giving up the slant and the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds of another loss?
Maybe the Mountaineers aren’t in the Pinstripe Bowl to play a team that was far more excited to play WVU than WVU was to play Syracuse. Maybe WVU gets an opponent that doesn’t have WVU’s number on offense and defense and probably even on special teams and in coaching, too.
I know it’s a reach, but it’s the premise because it might be difficult or dumb to accept, let alone explain, WVU’s Pinstripe Bowl loss was similarly structured. Two plays, two opportunities, two breaks that broke the Mountaineers.
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WVU’s new and future defensive coordinator didn’t have a very good debut, or a very different result, in Saturday’s Pinstripe Bowl. The run defense was depressingly bad and the defensive errors were difficult to excuse, both in penalties and in mental mistakes committed by a variety of players.
Patterson tried to take a lot of the blame by saying he didn’t do a good enough job telling his players Syracuse’s running backs were really good and that it was really important to stop them, that he didn’t do enough to teach his players his things in the roughly two-and-a-half weeks before the game.
