Well, despite reaching No. 1 today, and despite some people already purchasing and finishing “Waiting For The Fall,” it seems not everyone is excited about this book. Some are fear it could be their downfall.
One more book thing: If you care, there will be a launch party in town at the end of this month.
Now, some newspaper stuff.
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Harvard Law graduate Daron Roberts, once the WVU outside receivers coach, is now the cornerbacks coach. (Aside: A while back I wrote this sentence: “Right now, I have no idea who is doing what on defense and, who knows, that conversation may soon expand to involve offense, too.” A lot of people took that wholly out of context and kind of accused me of making something out of nothing — through email and Twitter, of course. Um, this is what I was referring to … not that guys were going to be run off the offensive staff.)
The timing is perfect for Roberts. He knows the defensive side of the ball, or as he calls it, The Dark Side. He was there in his career-ladder capacity for four years in the NFL. Dana Holgorsen lost three guys to Arizona in January and sought to balance out the coaching responsibilities on his 2012 staff — five on offense, five on defense, one on special teams — so moving Roberts from offense to defense, which then shifted Steve Dunlap to special teams, worked perfectly. It fit. And Roberts has a year of teaching and studying receivers on his mind as he teaches and studies cornerbacks.
Really, there’s no better way to tell someone how to stop someone else than having actually been that someone else before.
And then there’s this bit of serendipity: Jeremy Lin. Roberts has been paying close attention to what Lin has done in the NBA, and more importantly, how he’s done it. It’s something he’s sharing with his new cornerbacks and many of those players really will be new this season Two veterans, two guys who played a little and a bunch of walk-ons and freshmen. Someone has to get off the couch.
“I think his story is one that is very inspiring and I mentioned that to my guys the other day,” Roberts said. “He could have very easily decided that sleeping on the couch wasn’t for him and become an investment banker, but the game of basketball was important enough for him that he made those sacrifices and he kept pushing until he got his chance.”
I feel like Ben Gates, or something like that, this afternoon. I’ve uncovered a national treasure: Video footage of a WVU defensive line coach going through drills with his players. Hey, I liked Bill Kirelawich as much as the next guy … but his stylings were, shall we say, not fit for video.
Check out the new guy as he goes about his business at WVU’s second spring practice.
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Curious how you feel about this, at this point of the season, but WVU spent parts of the practices preceding Selection Sunday putting in some new sets. It’s not a lot, but these are additions.
Two very different ways to look at this:
A) “Good idea! They couldn’t do the old stuff all too well. It gives Gonzaga something else to think about in practice.”
“That’s what good teams do,” forward Deniz Kilicli said. “Good teams adjust in this situation. You’ve got to be able to play different than what you did the whole year. We’ve played 32 games. Everyone has 32 films on us. They’re going to look at pretty much everything and be able to tell what our tendencies are.
“If we change a couple things on offense and defense, it can work to our advantage. We put in a couple new things. Not too many things, but a couple sets and we changed our defense a little bit.”
B) “Bad idea! Too much too late. They’re asking the same player to lean new things right now?”
“We can’t work on things for two weeks and know what the hell we’re doing,” Huggins said. “We can’t change that much. I tried to outsmart them and put about three different things in for three different people and I thought we could take advantage of it. (The opponents) were more prepared for it than our guys were to run it.”
Really, is it good that they’re filtering and simplifying and installing things — and, let’s be clear, it’s not a lot … it’s not an overhaul — or is it bad that they’re about to rely on some new stuff as they prepare to play their biggest game of the season?
Have at it, folks.
Hard copies will go on sale online and in stores soon. I promise.
(Uh, sorry about yesterday. Server issues, but the problems are solved.)
Interesting revelation from WVU’s football team, the one that took its foot off the accelerator at the end of the 2011 season … and actually may have covered the brake. Sixty-five, 68 and 78 snaps in the final three games of the regular season and them — boom — a season-high 89 snaps in the Orange Bowl.
“The hardest thing to do is gauge where they’re at,” quarterbacks coach Jake Spavital said of the offensive players. “Dana ventured off of it at the end of the year. The difference between the Clemson game and the rest of the year was our thought process coming in was to play as fast as we can.
“If they would stop us, if we were three-and-out and didn’t have much success, then we’d slow the game down. The previous games, we started slow and then gauged if we could actually tempo against teams.”
The goal in Spring II V. 1 for Dana Holgorsen is not to go as fast as possible all the time. That doesn’t always work and sometimes it isn’t a good idea — and the Mountaineers can explain why. The goal, and one they believe is attainable with so many people back, is to turn it on and off when they choose and with no consequences.
“It is going to make a lot more sense to us now,” Holgorsen said. “Having that many starters back, it is more about developing some depth and getting the starters a year better.
“Everything that we do makes sense. We’ve got goals that we want to improve on obviously, but it is more about just getting these guys better at what they are doing.”
Chapter 7: “Yankees” — Enjoy! Please?
Clearly by now you know it’s WVU v. Gonzaga in the second first round Thursday in Pittsburgh. The Mountaineers say they were never sweating it Sunday, or even in preceding days, despite an odd trifecta: Of the 37 at-large teams, WVU had the lowest RPI, fewest wins and was tied with Texas, UConn and South Florida for most losses.
WVU and Gonzaga have never met, but Huggins has been a part of two games against the Bulldogs, including an unforgettable one — seriously, one of the best stories.
Two interesting notes from that truTV Hardcore Brackets show tonight as they relate to the Mountaineers. Mike Bobinski, the Xavier A.D. who can appreciate scheduling matters, was asked about schedules and criteria.
“Road wins are a big thing for me. I like to see teams that are willing to challenge themselves away from home. Teams that would take a chance really make a difference.”
For the sake of this conversation, neutral sites are road games, OK? WVU certainly tried with the Mississippi State game, the “neutral” affair with Kansas State and the Las Vegas Classic. Even the Capital Classic, which is kind of mandatory, mattered.
“There is a fine line between scheduling aggressively and scheduling over your head. You have to be smart and creative; finding your way into preseason events that you wouldn’t get on your campus. You will see a lot of schools have chosen that way to find quality games.”
We’ve been over this last year and again this year, but the Mountaineers pay careful attention to this in the offseason. And tonight you saw why. WVU, in the end, was never really in danger.
Ticket info follows …
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Executive decision: No Friday Feedback today. This isn’t a book thing. Not primarily, at least. I do have some work to do on it, but not so much that I’d neglect the F Double. This isn’t a laziness thing, either. I actually had a pretty sweet travel experience yesterday, which I’ve decided to detail below.
Rather, I took a look at the posts and felt a little bit like I was in “The Lion King.” A lot of the topics are in the past.
Sorry if you disagree, but how much more can we talk about the player of the year snub, the frustratingly familiar style of the loss, the Truck Bryant Experience, the assertiveness of Kevin Jones and many of the other themes we’ve covered? We nailed them the first time this week. I thought everyone was good and funny, so it’s not you, it’s me.
I do have one newish thing for you, and we’re starting to see it more and more now: WVU is certainly not a sure thing for the NCAA Tournament. I think the big issue here, and it could be good, bad or no matter at all, is how the Mountaineers seem to balance all their positives with negatives — a lot of top-100 games, but also a lot of losses in those games — and vice versa — a lot of top-100 losses, but a schedule that’s supposed to matter and be rewarded.
It’s hard to have an emphatic opinion on them either way and that could work for them or against them.
Sometimes you get late in the selection process and there’s a team there and the people have to say, “Hey, is this team a tourney team or not?” It’s a yes or no question. If the reply is, “I don’t know,” then that might mean “No” simply because the answer was not “Yes.” You either are or you aren’t and if the answer is “Maybe,” then maybe you’re not worthy.
Conversely, it can go the completely opposite way in which “I don’t know” means “Yes” because it’s not “No.” If you can’t rule a team out, then that team is worthy.
The truth for WVU is its that is going to be impacted between now and Sunday by the remaining games and consequences, neither of which the Mountaineers can affect.
Now, allow me go over what happened to me yesterday. I really try not to go over my travel stories here, but this is an exception in that it happened once I got home from New York yesterday …
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By now you know Steve Dunlap is for real still an assistant coach on Dana Holgorsen’s football staff. Dunlap is the full-time special teams coach and will also dabble in outside linebackers.
It should be known that Dunlap had questions about his future with WVU, too. A good relationship with Dana Holgorsen didn’t hurt.
“I was here probably four or five days before I was in Dana’s office on, like, a Sunday and we were planning a recruiting trip and he said, ‘We need to go here and here and here,'” Dunlap said.
Dunlap stopped things before they went any further and addressed the obvious.
“That means I still have a job?” he asked.
Holgorsen smirked. “Yeah, why do you ask?”
