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

WVU hoops remains in the headlines

April 4, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Gary Browne had surgery recently to repair “internal damage” in his right ankle — the one he had wrapped after games, the one he tended to favor from time to time this past season. It bothered him during the season and surgery was scheduled for after all the games were done.

He now has time to fix it and he’ll need that time — recovery is two to three months.

Now, for the good news: Pat Forsythe and his bad ankle received their hardship waiver — ie, medical redshirt. He’ll have four more years to play four seasons … and he remains to me a big “what if” wild card for 2011-12.

I thought he was coming on as a defender and even more as a rebounder, however briefly, before he got hurt. Who knows what might have happened, but I think he could have developed and fit nicely into a 8-12 minutes per game guy who would get some hard rebounds, box out and deter some shots and every so often throw the ball into the basket.

Two things worth tracking with him:

1) That right ankle. A stress fracture cost him basically all of his freshman season. A year before, he was rolling along and some say on his way to Mr. Basketball honors as a high school senior, but he broke his right ankle in the postseason.

Is this now an injury history? Probably too soon to say, but, again, worth monitoring. Big guys and their feet are oftentimes mutually problematic.

2) This is three straight seasons abbreviated or affected, or both, by injury. Remember, this is a late-bloomer, a kid who didn’t play until eighth grade and didn’t travel for AAU ball until the summer before his senior year, the very same Pat Forsythe who admitted to me, “To be honest, I didn’t know I’d be this good.”

Well, how good could he be now? That’s what I wonder. He’s still got time, and plenty of it, but I feel for the kid because he could be so much more ahead right now if these past few years had gone smoothly.

There are the ankle injuries from these past two seasons and the fractured L5 vertebrae during his junior year. That’s a lot of stuff and a lot of time recovering and rehabbing, as opposed to developing. Fortunately for him, he was just granted more time by the Big East. #noconspiracytheories

WVU to park its Ford in 2012

by Mike Casazza

Slight news from Dana Holgorsen yesterday. Barring injuries and subsequent necessity, January enrollee Ford Childress will redshirt in 2012.

“It’s in the best interest of the football team to do that, just because Paul is so far ahead with all the reps he got,” Holgorsen said. “We’ll let Ford absorb it and get a bunch of reps this year and then we’ll let him come in and compete for the job next year.”

This doesn’t surprise or alarm me, not even with the grayshirt coming before the redshirt. It seems apparent WVU has more faith in Millard right now, which isn’t a slight against Childress and only makes sense since Millard was a January guy last year and did play a good bit last season. It wasn’t always great, but the coaches always said he was ready to go. Plus, he was there. Childress was not and while that’s nothing he can control, it is something that matters to the coaching staff.

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Pat Miller’s break before spring break

by Mike Casazza

One of WVU’s four scholarship corners and one of just two with any real experience, Pat Miller broke a bone in his foot March 22 and had surgery Tuesday morning. Coach Dana Holgorsen said the senior from Alabama and quasi star of MTV’s Two-a-Days will be back at full speed July 1. Ideally, the defense will keep pace without him.

“We’re not very deep at corner,” Holgorsen said. “We have Brodrick Jenkins and we have (sophomore) Avery Williams, who obviously needs work. We have (freshman) Terrell Chestnut, who obviously needs work.

“Lawrence Smith is a guy who didn’t play last year and is back this year. He needs reps. Cecil Level needs reps, but he’s another walk-on. We’re thin and I think we’re down to three scholarship cornerbacks.”

Josh Francis 1, Ryan Clarke 1

April 3, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Another one of these fun, competitive, good-on-good drills at WVU’s practice. Watch linebacker Josh Francis get the better of Ryan Clarke before Clarke gets the better of Francis.

And so far, these guys have been two of the more pleasant surprises during spring practice.

Running backs coach Robert Gillespie: “It’s hard to find depth with Garrison being hurt. We have Shawne and Buie, but the dark horse, the guy that has stepped up and has taken pressure off, is Ryan Clarke. Clarke is a kid that carried the ball a lot in the past, but he proved that he was a willing blocker and he bought into his role.”

Defensive coordinator Joe DeForest: “We’re just getting to know them all, but Josh Francis is an impressive player, because he plays so hard all the time. Von Miller played that spot, and of course he’s a good player. Josh is similar to Von in that he’s a quick twitch guy, He’s not as big as Von was, but we’d like to mold him into that guy and use him in that capacity. That’s probably the most impressive thing I’ve seen on defense, but they play hard every down and their practice tempo is remarkable.”

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Curiously named Erik Slaughter gets to know his guys

by Mike Casazza

There’s something refreshing about spring football, what with all the new faces and the game so far away, and there’s always something nuanced about new coaches as you get to know them. Erik Slaughter, whose surname seems just so ironic right now, and his way with defensive linemen ought to show you why, especially when compared to the methods of his predecessor.

“I’m a positive person,” Slaughter said. “I don’t like to be yelled at and degraded. I prefer a pat on the back. I’m going to push them hard to work hard, but I’m going to love them harder.”

You thought Kirelawich was old school? He was, for sure, but Slaughter is a throwback to a time most players ought to remember fondly, back when their game was just that.

“We’re going to be out there working every day, but there’s no rule in football that says we can’t have fun while we’re doing it,” Slaughter said. “I think guys perform better when they have confidence in what they’re doing.

“A confident football player is a fast football player and a fast football player makes plays. That’s the name of the game.”

P.S. Video isn’t my creation. We’ll get the spelling right soon.

Looks like country roads head to Tobacco Road

by Mike Casazza

Interesting development in the state last week when Ryan Switzer, the George Washington High running back who is said to be the state’s best football recruit in many, many years, decided to pick North Carolina.

Another name on Switzer’s list of finalists? Duke.

Is it a big blow for WVU? Perhaps, though I’ve heard different stories about one party’s interest in the other — or at least the depth of it. It is instead another blow for WVU.

This follows a pattern, of sorts, in which the state’s best college or professional prospects have headed to school out of state, or are thinking about it. In particular, the state of North Carolina seems quite popular, and if not there, then it’s somewhere in the ACC.

This trend figures to continue, too, because WVU is off to the Big 12 while kids will remain fond of making it easy for their families to see them in person.

“You can go to Chapel Hill and it’s not far. Heck, they play Virginia Tech and that’s what, a two-and-a-half hour drive from here?” he said. “Compare that to going to Iowa State or Texas Tech and some of these places, and it’s not a hard decision.”

Mike Switzer said it all without saying anything directly: West Virginia’s move to the Big 12 Conference is likely to be more of a detractor to in-state talent than it is to be a draw for athletes to go to Morgantown.

It’s far from just a Switzer thing. Ripley’s Chase Fischer plays basketball at Wake, and Hurricane graduate Sam Kmiec is a freshman on the Demon Deacon baseball team. Nitro senior catcher Korey Dunbar has signed a letter of intent to play baseball at North Carolina and his former teammate, J.R. Bradley, had signed with North Carolina State before being drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks and opting for a professional baseball career right out of high school.

Terry Henderson gets his revenge

April 2, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Terry Henderson is No. 24 in white. He’s about to get dunked on, but he wastes no time evening the score on the other end against the opponent who dunked on him moments earlier.

This delighted his future WVU teammate, Eron Harris.

“I’ve seen some of his stuff on YouTube and this guy can really play,” Harris said. “I’ve heard he can shoot and he can score, but I saw this one video and he’s playing in Orlando (Fla.) and he took off in the middle of the lane and dunked on this guy and hung on the rim. I thought, ‘Dang, this guy’s got to be athletic.'”

I dig talking to players about other players for two reasons. 1) They usually know one another, if not by competition, than by research. 2) They’re honest. Henderson, it turns out, is a fan of Harris.

“He’s a great shooter, and to tell the truth, he probably has more range than I do on his shot,” Henderson said. “He goes out way farther than I do and he knocks down those shots.”

Harris laughed, but he won’t deny it.

“I don’t remember the last time I shot a 3-pointer near the actual 3-point line,” he said. “I usually take them around the NBA line or the college line. It’s a habit.”

And then there were none

by Mike Casazza

I’m not sure if you’re concerned and I’m not sure what the protocol is here, but West Virginia currently has zero players committed to the 2013 football recruiting class. This is going to be interesting to track for a variety of reasons, perhaps most notably this desire to get more players from Texas, when it’s understood the first cut generally picks Texas and Texas A&M and then everyone else comes in after to get the remaining players. And players down there like to commit early, so , in theory, WVU could start scooping up players not too far from now.

What hasn’t been mentioned is WVU, which has been actively recruiting and offering kids, actually had one commit. He was Jayme Thompson, a nice-looking safety from Toledo. He picked WVU in February, but just flipped to Ohio State. And, man, Urban Meyer isn’t making friends.

Friday Feedback

March 30, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which is this close to self-reporting my work schedule to — what’s that? We’re not unionized? Never mind then …

The rather ridiculous NCAA received a self-report from WVU earlier this month when, after a standard review, the WVU compliance department discovered the football team had mistakenly, as opposed to brazenly or stupidly, violated NCAA bylaw 17.1.6.5.

That little rule covers athletically related activities in the offseason and, specifically, states student-athletes must have two calendar days off per week. WVU gave its players 58 1/2 consecutive hours off twice in February — ending a workout at 6:30 a.m. on a Friday and beginning a workout at 4 p.m. Sunday. Surely you know 58 1/2 hours is greater than the sum of two days, but WVU’s only “calendar” day off was Saturday.

So WVU compliance caught it after it happened, rather than before it happened, and then told the NCAA. WVU punished itself by taking four calendar days off in two subsequent weeks before the start of spring practice, which observes the 2-for-1 rule often applied to secondary violations like this, or spider pads. You remember those.

And WVU doesn’t expect any more trouble from this little incident … no matter the football program is still on probation through July 7, 2013. Maybe it’s just me, but I think that has to be a sigh of relief over there. The probation process is just a pain in the neck in which you have to record and report everything in detail, and one would think part of that would have you looking at every athletically related schedule. And while WVU did have the proper system in place to catch the mistake, it did not, in would seem, have one in place to prevent it.

I thought that would matter.

Listen, this is devil’s advocate stuff. I think it’s an important rule, but also as minor a transgression as you can commit and I can’t believe a school would get in trouble for, essentially, giving players more time off than the rules suggested. I’d say a rule was misinterpreted more than it was broken, or even bent. Understand WVU would have ended at 11:59 p.m. Friday and been back at 12:00 a.m. Monday, allowed for 48 hours, 1 minute of time off and gotten away with it.

Now, I also just happen to be the guy who has twice made a meal out of secondary violations — and one, in particular, is a part of my book. I don’t think this is that … or those … whatever … but what WVU and two former head coaches were convicted of in July in the summary disposition process was a failure to monitor.

To be honest with you, when I saw the headline yesterday, I figured there would be problems attached to the probation because, well, monitoring things adequately would have prevented this, right?

And I was wrong, which is good for WVU. Again, silly violation because it’s a silly rule, and it looks bad only because it happened and who it happened to. The point here seems to be that WVU has a new coach, and you can’t hold what his predecessors did against him, and that this offense is in no way related to the prior ones, which were basically all related to letting too many people do too many things they weren’t allowed to do. Even the failure to monitor is, I guess, unrelated because it’s a failure to monitor totally different things.

Fortunately, we have the tin foil hats and the really enjoyable theories about how this made it to the media. WVU doesn’t go public with secondary violations. They’re too common and too insignificant. Yet this one popped up in the newspaper, quite prominently, and WVU has had to answer to it. Some people sure are having some fun with it.

Also, I made it all week without using this space to push my book. That ends right here, right now. All I ask is you take a look. Pretty pleased with this.

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

JP said:

Keeping in line with the theme of Casazza’s book, this paragraph from today’s article jumped out at me:

Asked if Holgorsen would have a “non-compete” clause in his contract that would prevent the former Texas Tech and Oklahoma State assistant from leaving for another Big 12 job, Luck said he didn’t think that was necessary “and I doubt Dana will go for a non-compete … but there will be a buyout in there.”

It is interesting, because the immediate question would be “Why wouldn’t he sign it?” And it is in other coaching contracts. But in all honesty, Dana wasn’t hired by a Big 12 Conference team. I think it would be hard to apply it. If things got testy, Dana could just point at that if he were asked, “Why not sign it?” And we know how much a buyout is worth, but the guy is building a house here.

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BREAKING: Having a coach actually helps players

March 29, 2012 by Mike Casazza

Tis true, per Corey Smith, who had ups and downs and just about nobody to go to last season for a mechanical fix that would accelerate the mental fix.

That’s old hat now that WVU has a special teams coordinator in Steve Dunlap and a kicking guru, of sorts, in Joe DeForest. Turns out that’s looking more and more like a good thing.

The highs, of course, are easy to take, but the lows really work on you.

“It’s big for your mental aspects,” Smith said. “Most of us are pretty strong mentally, but once you go through a tough stretch it gets hard. It just shows if you stay with it things will work out.”

What was making it really hard was that they were without a real special teams coach. This year Holgorsen has added Joe DeForest, something of a special teams specialist, and it has helped.

“It’s hard (not having a coach),” Smith said. “We all watch each other and know what we do, but it’s still hard for us. Coach DeForest being here has been a big help. He sees stuff that, yes, we know, but not every day we would see.”

One difference is there is much more film of their efforts in practice.

“We are able to analyze more film every day. He knows what he’s doing. He’s been very successful everywhere he’s been. I think he will be very helpful,” Smith said.