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

Good news, bad news

October 31, 2012 by Mike Casazza

First the good: Dana Holgorsen hasn’t forgotten how to coach. The bad? No reboot on defense, no 3-3-5 and no 4-2-5. No option offense and no five-wide all the time. Fresh off a midseason recruiting sweep, when I’m certain WVU discovered rivals were whispering in the ears of some recruits, and WVU tried to combat it, Holgorsen had a feistier-than-normal press conference Tuesday. Basically, the same stuff as we covered during the open week, though with a little more aggression and a little more TCU sprinkled in this time.

Apologies for not getting this up yesterday. Internet was screwy throughout the day. Things should be back to normal now.

Young and younger

October 30, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Two teams stumble into Saturday’s game at Mountaineer Field and, wouldn’t you know it, TCU and WVU are two of the greenest teams in the country.

The Horned Frogs have played 16  freshmen, and a couple of them are pretty good — like Devonte Fields. Texas has also played 16. No one in the FBS has used more.

“In our case, we had to play freshmen,” Patterson said. “We didn’t have anybody else.”

TCU lost 20 seniors in 2010 and 19 last year. A drug bust in February forced Patterson to dismiss four players and three were starters at linebacker, defensive tackle and cornerback. TCU (5-3, 2-3 Big East) has just 11 seniors on scholarship now.

“Up until last year, I’d never played more than three, but last year, because the Rose Bowl team graduated six wide receivers, we had to play three just at wide receiver,” Patterson said. “Most people don’t understand you only have X amount of scholarships at each position.”

Continue reading…

Interesting time for TCU

by Mike Casazza

Statistically, the Horned Frogs are one of the youngest and most inexperienced teams in the FBS. They’re also struggling and looking at times a little like a team that isn’t particularly deep and relies on a lot of youth to build and sustain whatever depth it has. Saturday’s loss to Oklahoma State came by a 36-14 score … and that was after a 14-0 lead.

Not a good sign for a team that lost its quarterback after an arrest and has gone 1-3 since, right?

TCU center James Fry on the game:“I don’t want to admit it, but we quit. Coach Patterson mentioned we quit, and it kind of felt like felt like we did. I don’t know if we were just shocked that they came back or we just don’t know how to dig ourselves out from being in a corner. We just didn’t fight back.”

Oh, boy. That “q” word is the one no one wants to have thrown around, no matter the reality or the perception of the situation. Coach Gary Patterson hurried to the scene and dumped water on things. He explained his team is tired — and he has cut one practice short and cancelled another in the past week, but now must travel east to West Virginia.

“I don’t know what happened in the second half,” he said. “There’s not always an answer for why somebody wins or why they lose. I don’t think they quit. I watched the film. We were still throwing bodies around on defense the whole fourth quarter.

“I think there are guys who screwed up, guys got tired, and I think guys don’t know how to fight through, but I don’t think they quit. Offensively, we need to learn how to fight back. But the defense did not quit yesterday.”

Cavs wave goodbye, waive Kevin Jones

October 29, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Not a big surprise, but the former WVU all-Big East star lost his battle for a starting spot with the Cavaliers. That $50,000 guarantee will only help a little as he tries to stick, likely with Cleveland’s developmental league team.

Continue reading…

Wherefore art thou, vertical pass?

by Mike Casazza

I can’t remember one deep pass against Texas. Never mind one completion. One pass. I remember a handful of attempts — probably in or just outside the range of six or eight attempts Dana Holgorsen says he prescribed — against Texas Tech, but I know just one of them was a winner. I don’t remember one vertical throw against Kansas State. Again, never mind completion. Attempt.

I may be wrong there, and Lord knows my attention waned as the outcome was obvious and deadline was imminent, but the point remains: Something West Virginia was very good at in the first four games — and in truth, it’s probably five as the Mountaineers profess that they chose to go to the gun fight in Austin without that particular weapon — has vanished.

Continue reading…

Friday Feedback

October 26, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which has healed a bruise, self-scouted schemes and gotten its swagger back during this open week. Just wait until I hit the ground running Monday!

Can’t tell you a whole lot about what’s gone on at WVU this week, except that I’ve heard the coaches looked at everything good and bad from the past two games and investigated how the team arrived at either outcome.

They then made plans to repeat the good outcomes and avoid the bad ones, which means reinforcing and removing things and not really adding things.

The Mountaineers went good on good for a few hours Tuesday and Wednesday, just put the ball in the turf and let the offense and defense figure a few things out with some direction from the coaches, and then backed off a little to let all the young kids go yesterday. Now the coaches are out recruiting.

That’s your week in a nutshell and it’s pretty much followed the script Dana Holgorsen unveiled Tuesday, though it sounds as though they went at one another a little more than had been advertised.

To those who (are programmed to) say “They’ll be better after the week of practice!” let me tell you that after the Texas Tech and Kansas State games, WVU said it had great practices leading up to the blowouts — Kansas State, in particular. Next week is the one that matters, but at least the Mountaineers are stringing together good weeks and maybe that builds a bridge to the one that follows.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, swing your sword … or not.

Down South said:

Listening to Holgorsen’s press conference, his frustrated tone sounded exactly like some of Huggins’ press conferences during the hard times last year. I remember Huggs saying that he just couldn’t get the freshman to understand how hard they had to play all the time to be successful at this level. We are playing a whole bunch of 18- and 19-year-olds on that side of the ball. And it is hard to watch. What was that line about not being able to guard the door with a shotgun again?

Good point, good comparison, good chance I steal this and write a story.

Continue reading…

You’ll Never Talk Alone, Episode 8

October 25, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Live again for a special edition at 11 a.m. The chat is open now, so you may get your questions in early or in the inexcusable event you can’t make it. Here’s the traditional link to the chat and here’s your mobile link.

Meantime, there are times I really wish I had another job so I could do things that might cost me my job.

Saturday night and Sunday and even in these past few days that have followed, I got the inordinate amount of sad and angry and devastated and furious phone calls and emails and conversations about the team and its state of being and everyone and everything to blame. The heaviest snow fell Sunday and Monday, when I assume people were calmer and at work, where they had email access and had to conduct themselves appropriately.

I kept getting that Mike Valenti vibe and I had talks with friends of mine about it and how the situations parallel.The thought occurred to me to — never mind.

Well, the next time you see ClarenceOveur, whether here or on Twitter or in person, congratulate him on this masterpiece.

You know, it is rather warm outside

October 24, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Feels like spring, and, I regret to inform you this, but WVU is very much treating this open week like spring practice.

Losers of two in a row, outscored 104-28, unable to one-up defenses, incapable of stopping offenses, without the verve that propelled them to No. 5 in the AP poll just two weeks ago, the Mountaineers are kind of rebooting the 2012 season.

“It’s about mentality,” the second-year coach said. “We’ve got to do a better job offensively playing our game. We didn’t do a very good job of that last week. Defensively, we’ve got to get better at everything that we do and make sure we understand the situation we’re in from a base, alignment and fundamental aspect that we’re trying to play with. That’s what we’re trying to improve now.”

And that’s not the way the second open week was supposed to happen.

When WVU had an open week after season opener against Marshall, the Mountaineers played a lot of live football in practice. That’s not normal, but the offense went against the defense just to keep the team developing so early in the season.

WVU is now in the ninth week of the season, but has more concerns about performance than development. Holgorsen likened this week to what the Mountaineers might experience in spring football or the early stage of preseason practice.

“At this point, I think it’s more important to get out there and focus on the fundamentals of football,” Holgorsen said. “Playing so many young kids, as we are, the first thing that goes in the heat of battle is the technique – and there have been examples of that all across the board. We’ll focus a lot on fundamentals and basic football.”

 

Geno has big shoulders, needs not use them

by Mike Casazza

It was not quite three weeks ago when we asked if Geno Smith could keep it up for an entire season. Not the stats, but the “prodigious drive” we had witnessed and marveled about and heard relayed through a variety of anecdotes.

And beyond that, we wondered, did those around him want him to keep going? They knew he’d try, trusted he was capable, were hopeful the kid could lead a somewhat normal life, but understood his definition of normal was a little different.

“Oh, yeah,” Spavital said. “He’s been this way since Day One. There are times I try to tell him to leave here, go be a college kid, go have some fun. Fun to him is to going out there and playing football. It’s very rare. I’ve never coached one like this, but the happiest he is is when he walks out there on the field.”

Continue reading…

Dana Holgorsen would like a moment with his team

October 23, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Pretty interesting, explanatory, revealing and even foreboding stuff from WVU’s head coach at his press conference today. I’ll be honest: Though I don’t think he’s that guy, or even close, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t anticipate fireworks or rudeness or questions asked to Dana by Dana, but I didn’t know. We’ve not seen this particular situation before. I kind of wondered what answers he could give to the questions he would be asked, some I feel he can’t rightly answer and some to which I feel there aren’t any answers.

Again, this is not that, but I really hadn’t been as curious since Total Self-Evaluation in 2010 — and, boy, that’s a different story today knowing now what we did not then … namely that Bill was fired a week earlier.

Anyhow …

Continue reading…