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Texts From TCU Game Day

November 5, 2012 by Mike Casazza

So you turned back your clocks this weekend, gaining an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning that you may have wasted after watching your team give away a game Saturday evening. And that loss brought us back to the halcyon days of 2004, which was the last time WVU lost three straight games. That was a team that was also (prematurely) positioned toward the top and in no way prepared to handle the highs and the lows.

This team? Let’s just say some of you previously voiced concerns that this might be that. Now, that being said, I thought WVU at least showed something by rising up on defense and, by the sounds of it, using all the criticism and ridicule it had been made to study to really change the conversation. Who saw that coming?

Truth be told, the defense, for perhaps the first time all season, submitted a winning performance for 58 minutes. And that botch in the final two minutes ought not have mattered because the offense owed it to the defense to make good on some of the many good situations the defense provided in the second half.

Yet there they are, 5-3 after a 5-0 start and one bad road trip to Oklahoma State away from a losing streak not seen since the faraway days of 2001 — or six Todd Graham jobs ago. And at 5-4, with Oklahoma coming to town, you start to entertain silly thoughts, like bowl eligibility and the number of bowl tie-ins the Big 12 possesses. This is really weird stuff to be thinking about, am I wrong?

The postgame Saturday night was a weird one. It is harder now than before to deny some things, like opposing defenses borrowing ideas from one another to stop WVU’s offense. A unit that was buoyed by confidence is now bothered because it realizes it’s bothered. The players are admitting this now, maybe because it helps to say it, never mind hear it. Some players didn’t, or weren’t allowed to, meet with the media. Many who did the meet did so quickly without showering or washing the eye black off their faces. That can be a bad sign, because locker rooms are supposed to be fun, or at least bearable, places to be.

Before you think people don’t care, understand a lot of guys were said to have just sat at their lockers, not wanting to take off their uniforms or get a shower or do anything that took them closer to stepping outside those doors and into a three-game losing streak after two pretty good weeks of practices.

There are positives and the momentum the defense supplied and can inspire shouldn’t be overlooked. Dana Holgorsen apparently had a lot to do with that and involved himself in ways people have not witnessed before. My guess is he gives the offense the same treatment this week, because it looks like a lot of the trouble, be it the lack of a run game or the fact teams rush three or four and get to the quarterback, has to do with the offensive line, which had a third different starting lineup in as many games.

I’m all about my cake. I’m trying to marry Betty Crocker. A package on the way, you know my text game proper. My edits are in [backets].

1:39
Ok. Just took my Dramamine so I can watch this defense. READY TO ROCK

2:39
Grey gold grey is horrendous.

3:03
I’ve never seen a team run to the endzone and pray when they came out of the tunnel. Hmmm

3:06
I hate this uni combo

3:06
What in the hell are we wearing???

3:11
Did Pat Miller just make a stop? No. Can’t be. Must be an illusion!

3:13
My whole section just did an excited standing ovation because our defense got a three-and-out….yeah, just about describes our season there…

3:18
Am I going to need lots of alcohol to get through this…again?

3:25
Omg…wide open! Do we have zero defense IQ???

3:29
I think I saw this game at least twice already….

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Dana spoke, speaks again soon

by Mike Casazza

Here’s the WVU head coach Saturday night, hoarse and hardly harangued, though he did say a lot in just short of seven minutes. He’ll be asked to follow up on some things at 11:40 a.m. on the Big 12 coaches’ teleconference, namely, I know, what his quarterback is doing that is so average lately. TFGD is done. I’ll roll it out in a little bit, but I felt this trumped that.

WVU v. TCU: Live and in multiple colors!

November 3, 2012 by Mike Casazza

(8:43 p.m. update below)

I’m very scared today. When I arrived to my seat at press row this afternoon, I found a Manilla envelope addressed to me. I was stupid to open it and not have it scanned for Anthrax, but I survived. Inside is a photocopy of a six-page letter to Greg Hunter. The above is an excerpt and I doubt if the FBI could find rhyme or reason to the use of the highlighters.

It is an exhaustive and exhausted review and undressing of the football program and it pulls no punches when it comes to the defense and recruiting.

That said, I am partial to the idea the optimists invented the airplane and the pessimists invented the parachute. You can’t argue with that and you must wonder today if you will fly or if you will float.

And honestly, that’s not the best part. The best? I don’t want to say who it’s from, but it is from a Richard in Michigan.

Onto the live post. Follow me …

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Friday Feedback

November 2, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which begins the second half of the 10-game season tomorrow. Not a typo. This is essentially a 10-game schedule for the Mountaineers now.

They were once 5-0 and ranked No. 5. They have five games left in the regular season to salvage things that once seemed destined for something so good. No one can do anything about the previous two games to make them go away, but they can be dismissed or forgotten, and that’s all totally dependent on what happens the rest of the way here.

The second open week came at a curious and perhaps completely beneficial time for the Mountaineers. They needed to heal some injuries and some soreness and they needed a classroom experience to figure out what the hell had happened and how it could all be fixed.

I’m sure they think they have everything debugged and they happen to follow the best team they’ve seen in Kansas State with a beatable, battered TCU team. If WVU hits tomorrow and wins and restores confidence, the boulder has been pushed to the top of the hill. There are still obstacles and opponents who won’t let the Mountaineers simply roll, but the Mountaineers will have rebuilt a good chunk of the belief that’s been robbed the past two games.

It’s my opinion Dana Holgorsen is probably a pretty good manager in these situations. Small sample, I know, but how he adjusted within the course of the schedule last season, how he re-adjusted before the bowl, how he and everyone with him, be they players or coaches, seemed able to build barriers to the outside world and all the daggers it threw in their direction, was actually pretty impressive last year.

This is a defining time, right?

Now, there are differences. There were some elements at play last year that tend to unite a team that cannot be manufactured and they are not present now — and that’s obviously not an entirely bad thing. But this has also been a more humbling experience and it’s extra confounding that it’s happened on the immediate heels of such great success this season, which only reinforced the success of late last season.

WVU’s largest problem last season was that is was not yet very good at what it was trying to accomplish on offense. Can’t say that now … and again, that’s not a bad thing.

But it is different and it has to be more difficult to accept and overcome. It’s easy to get set in certain ways when things are going as good as they once were for WVU, which then makes it harder to get out of those ways. Last season, the Mountaineers hadn’t done any great things and Holgorsen could always point at times and players from his past and the Mountaineers really had no choice but to nod their heads and realize it had not yet happened to them, but that it still could.

Bill Stewart was pretty good at this crisis stage, and the best and most successful coaches excel and flex their muscles here. We’ve laughed about Remember November, but Stewart really did follow through on that — and he probably should have had a marquee win at Cincinnati to his name. And in 2010, he went 4-0 to finish the season after it seemed lost and after learning he was losing his job. I’m not trying to compare one with the other, but there is precedent here, and precedent Dana has contributed to with his run last season, to at least believe in during a trying time.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, represent yourself properly.

Jeff in Akron said:

So, is it safe to say the game between WVU and TCU is now the “That Q Word Bowl”. I can see both coaches telling their players. “If you smack them in the mouth early, they’ll fold.” Ironically, one of the coaches may actually be correct, here’s to hoping that coach drinks Red Bull.

Yes. Done. The Q Word Bowl awaits…

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Oh, hey, this is neat

by Mike Casazza

Three weeks ago, WVU has its issues against Texas Tech’s man-to-man defense and the way the Red Raiders played very close and allowed for very little open space. Two weeks ago, Kansas State played mostly zone with ample cushion and Dana Holgorsen was driven crazy by the way his quarterback and receivers played into that plan and didn’t play in the open space.

Well here comes TCU, long one of the nation’s better defensive teams, though experiencing some of the introductory struggles fellow Big 12 newcomer WVU is. The Horned Frogs get after defenses, though, by playing man to man defense. And zone defense.

On the same snap!

“They do about three things from what I see and a lot of it is man or zone, but they will do man/zone concepts where they’ll straight up man you on one side if they believe they can man you on one side and they’ll play zone on the other,” WVU quarterbacks coach Jake Spavital said. “It’s all about who they believe they can match up with.”

TCU might play man outside against WVU’s Stedman Bailey and J.D. Woods and use one safety or two to guard against vertical passes. The Mountaineers (5-2, 2-2) use three or four receivers on most snaps and sometimes feature five. TCU could cover the inside receivers, whether there are one, two or three, with a zone defense without compromising the other coverages.

Yet TCU might also play man on Woods on one side of the field and zone with a second defender on Bailey on the other side and still keep the same plan for the inside receivers.

“Sometimes I get confused if it’s man or zone because there’s a lot of matching routes that goes on that looks like man,” Holgorsen said. “It’s 50 percent man and 50 percent zone pressure.”

Cornerback to the future

November 1, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Daron Roberts remains a popular interview request at WVU, and I need not tell you why. On Tuesday, he was again discussing the embattled players at his position when he said something interesting about freshmen cornerbacks Nana Kyeremeh and Ricky Rumph.

“It’s a difficult position to mature quickly at,” Roberts said. “That’s absolutely not an excuse, but they are developing. I can’t make a prediction and start calling them the next Brandon Hogan and Keith Tandy, but the questions we’ll get in two years will be more, ‘Wow, aren’t you happy you’ve got two experienced corners? Isn’t it great they played their freshman years?'”

My quick counter: Actually, you do have Hogan and Tandy.

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You’ll Never Talk Alone, Episode 9

by Mike Casazza

We’re back live for an hour of anything goes Q&A on WVU sports. The queue is open now, so you can jump line or submit a proxy question. I’ll favor queries about football and WVU v. TCU, but try to get to other ripe topics. Here’s your mobile link for participants who are on the go and here is the traditional link for the rest of the world . These are also your links to the transcript after the show.

See you soon.

Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Stole this from @johnallevato because it’s brilliant and because I’d like to invite you to a caption contest. Proceed.

It appears TCU will travel with a quarterback

by Mike Casazza

It also appears that it will be Trevone Boykin, the semi-sidearm artist who has started the past four games after Casey Pachall left the team to receive inpatient treatment at a drug and alcohol facility.

Boykin, who injured a knee in last week’s loss to Oklahoma State, is 1-3 as a starter and has made big plays for his team and for the other team. He nevertheless has the Big 12’s attention and he’ll have WVU’s attention Saturday … if he starts.

“He’s got a strong arm and does a nice job delivering things on time and he’s an outstanding runner,” Rhoads said. “We thought he was very, very explosive and tough to bring down. He’s going to give teams fits for a number of years.”

Boykin is also learning the position. Patterson thought enough of the runner in Boykin to try and get him on the field as a running back. Boykin was practicing at running back the week he was asked to replace Pachall.

In his four starts, he’s run 46 times for 130 yards and a touchdown.

“He’s a dual-threat guy who’s dangerous with his feet, especially with his weapons around him,” Holgorsen said.

“The receivers he’s got are quality players who could have gone to different programs. He’s doing a tremendous job distributing the ball to a bunch of different people.”

Three out, others remain day-to-day

by Mike Casazza

Mysteries solved: Avery Williams (neck), Travis Bell (shoulder) and Jewone Snow (shoulder) are out for the season. All three are eligible to apply for medical redshirts, though Williams, who hasn’t played this season, would seem more likely to take a simple developmental redshirt, which he can still do.

Bell and Snow can’t go that route because  both have played this season.

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