… and it wasn’t easy. Tavon Austin believes, in both actions and then later in words, he should be mentioned in the conversation. I wonder how you’d vote a top three this season and I’d be curious to hear some explanations.
(By the way, this photo and story from Saturday were not meant to be indications of my pick whatsoever.)
We go out of the regular season seemingly the same as we came in — ragging on announcers. I haven’t watched the game yet (and Good/Bad is probably going to be solely from the first half), but I certainly heard about the stylings of the play-by-play guy.
For the record, Steve Physioc isn’t some schmuck. And it seemed like he was well aware of the geographical location before the game. What went wrong, I don’t know, but it was apparently so bad that no one noticed Brian Baldinger’s pinky.
Perhaps the eyes were too firmly focused on the prize — the Pinstripe Bowl and a date with Syracuse!
Every stripe’s precise, K.O.’s in all fights. Fatal like Joe with this murderous flow. The Bronx keeps creatin’ it, you know how texts go. Peace. My edits are in [brackets].
2:30
John Sanders! Bending! Bending!
2:31
Wait. I was wrong. The play by play guy sounds just like John Sanders. If Sanders isn’t still alive, don’t put this in TFGD.
2:35
Rasheed. The only Marshall that matters.
2:36
The sideline guy looks lik he woke up on the floor of Crockett’s 15 minutes ago. Holgo doesn’t have wildest hair on field for once.
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Ready, aim, fire. I’ll hang up and listen…
Man, that’s a lot of seniors.
In case you’re curious, on Senior Day, of course, I was told by separate people last night that Stedman Bailey isn’t participating in the pregame ceremonies today. Dana Holgorsen referenced his 22 seniors a few times this week and as you can tell there are just 21, so there was some curiosity as to whether he’d have his name called. He’s draft eligible as a redshirt junior, he’s widely believed to be going to the NFL and he’s hinted that this might be it for him.
(Aside: The best part about that tweet is the one immediately before that attention-grabbing tweet.)
It can change. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does and if he wants to go, I’d like to see him get a chance today to walk out with Geno and Tavon. But it appears he’ll be just a junior in the final game of the regular season. He and 12 others could have their moment next season — and that’s not a lot of seniors. Let’s yield now for the offensive stalwarts who are calling it a career today.
All of that said, let’s not automatically give this game to WVU. It’s a frightening occasion for Joe DeForest.
“It’s a scary game,” DeForest said. “It really is, because what do they have to lose? They can run tricks in the kicking game, they can run tricks on offense. They’ve had two weeks to prepare for us, so we may see things we’ve never seen before. They may try anything to win their first Big 12 game.”
I actually think there’s something to that.
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Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which will attempt to guide you through West Virginia’s bowl likelihoods. It’s certainly one of these three: Holiday, Car Care or Pinstripe.
A lot is going to happen over the next 36 hours to scramble and sort things, but we can get through this. To begin, here’s the order of picks:
Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Alamo Bowl, Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, Holiday Bowl, Car Care Bowl, Pinstripe Bowl, Heart of Dallas Bowl and, this year, because there are nine teams eligible, an extra bowl, but let’s not worry about that. It’s in Shreveport, La., and I don’t want to worry about that.
And let’s make one thing clear, too: A WVU loss tomorrow puts it in the Pinstripe Bowl, though WVU may still end up there with a win. It’s tricky.
Actually, let’s make two things clear: We’re assuming outcomes here, OK, and who knows what happens in the final week of the Big 12 season? Oklahoma is mentioned a lot below. I’m assuming Oklahoma beats TCU tomorrow. If not, watch out.
Baylor is hot and has the offense a bowl would like to feature and the Bears play Oklahoma State tomorrow. I’m assuming Oklahoma State wins that, but a Baylor win could create a crowd of 7-5/4-5 teams and invite a certain chaos.
(That’s the trouble and the pointlessness of projecting bowls. A weekend’s worth of games is a lot of material.)
Nevertheless, I want you to be careful to track Kent State, Oklahoma and Pitt this weekend as they figure to shape WVU’s eventual destination and whether or not you will attend. Or care.
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I think we know this by now, but Karl Joseph is absolutely not scared on the football field. That can get him as trouble as easily, though not as often, as it gets him in position to do something big, but WVU will take, and encourage, his reckless aggression. In the past month we’ve seen him drift just a little bit, but come back fiercely and go from a guy who made big hits to a guy who makes the tackle in a big way.
There’s a difference and it comes from practice and games and repeatable situations. He is, as is everyone else, better the third or fourth time he’s in a certain situation than he was in the first or second. But he’s leading the team in tackles and he can be the first freshman to ever do that at WVU. If it’s not him this year, then it’s linebacker Isaiah Bruce, who is a redshirt freshman and is in second place.
What Joseph has done, and is doing with back-to-back double-digit tackle games, has his teammates talking.
“What he does is stuff juniors and seniors will do,” said senior linebacker Terence Garvin, who was a safety the previous three years. “He can read keys. He knows now to study film. He just really knows how to play football like an older person with experience. It’s impressive.”
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If you’ve forgotten because of recent absences, we do chats and talk about anything and everything every Thursday at 11 a.m. That’s how I’ll be spending the morning. You can, too, by participating or watching with the mobile link or the traditional link.
How’d I spend my Wednesday night? Seeing signs of life from the men’s basketball team.
How’d I spend my Tuesday night? Taking Jim Boeheim’s advice and solving conference realignment with Robert J. Hertzel.
Bob Huggins has been fed a little misinformation, I think, because yesterday he was promoting some sort of consolation in his team’s 1-3 record because the schedule was ranked, somewhere, as the nation’s fourth-strongest. It’s not. Not close, really. It could end up around there, but that’s relevant in March, not November.
Huggins doesn’t look these things up, nor should he, because he has neither the time nor the inclination to do so, which is probably where you’d want your coach’s priorities to be right now. So someone game him the number 4 and it was a police tape talking point — move along, nothing to see here; this isn’t as bad as it seems, the schedule is really tough — and people breathed a little easier.
Truth is, the schedule is about to get a little more compact and a lot more difficult. WVU has VMI tonight, and the Keydets get a lot of possessions and a lot of shots and a lot off points, before a week off precedes the Capital Classic.
Then it’s very tricky Virginia Tech (6-0, best start since 1985) at home, Duquesne in the Consol Energy Center and then a frankly frightening Michigan team at the Barclays center. Those four games come in a span of 10 days.
I have to think the schedule right now it a little problematic or prohibitive — Gonzaga, 10 days off, three games in four days, two days off, VMI, six days off, Marshall — because the Mountaineers can’t play and learn from games and the value of games in November is off the charts when you’re pieced together like this team is right now.
Huggins said that, despite what people thing, his team is not a veteran team and is still learning how to play they way Huggins wants to play, which is to say still learning how to play together. Confidence can’t be forced or forged and the reality is WVU has so many wavering parts now that it can’t get right right away. A lot of the wrongs can be righted by simply being good on offense.
“You take the opportunities that are there and you don’t force things,” he said. “Our game is to create numbers. We want to create three-on-two and two-on-one. That’s what good offense is. It’s trying to create numbers in your favor. If we have numbers, we want to attack. If you don’t have numbers, run your offense.
“That’s what we haven’t done. We’ve done such a poor job running offense. We pass it and make a couple half-hearted cuts and then we run out and ball-screen.”
How about a live post from tonight’s game? As we proceed …
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Hey! The Kansas passing offense has been almost as bad as WVU’s pass defense this season. Even better, for you, is this trend from the past month or so: The Jayhawks don’t even really try to pass the ball anymore.
So that’s good, right? I mean, WVU’s run defense is actually pretty good and would be better if not for Sam Richardson’s sudden and unexpected exploits last week. But it’s strength against strength and even if your strength gives a little, it’s unlikely, though, certainly, not impossible, to score fast and often enough to keep up with the Mountaineers.
Get a lead, force the Jayhawks to pass and that seventh win comes a little easier.
Yet Kansas will not make it easy and will pull from a very deep bag of tricks to find something to use against the Mountaineers.
“That forced me to spend more time with the offensive staff trying to figure out ways to stay one step ahead of the defenses so we’re not dialing up the same runs every week,” Weis said. “When the defensive coordinators study you on tape, they aren’t getting a look at the same look week to week.”
… not really. Fun moment in the weekly press conference, though.
