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

WVU v. Pitt: Trick or treat? (Postgame updates)

November 25, 2011 by Mike Casazza

Louisville and South Florida set the table today with their 11 a.m. game and WVU’s chances for the BCS are enhanced if the Bulls find a way to show up, care and try and also beat the Cardinals. Whatever the outcome, you’ll know a lot more about what’s at stake tonight once the appetizer is digested. Bobby Eveld is, as he was last year, your man today.

If Louisville wins, WVU needs to win out and have Cincinnati win out to get to the BCS. If USF wins, WVU still needs to win out and that’s it, though there are some tiebreakers the Mountaineers could fall back should they lose to get to the BCS.

Now as for tonight, there’s some different language coming out of the Pitt athletic department. WVU athletic director Oliver Luck has said all the proactive and optimistic things about the Future of the Backyard Brawl, but his counterpart sounds a little less convinced this series can continue.

“I’d say it’s pretty mixed, just in an initial response to it,” he said, when asked what he’s hearing from Pitt fans. “People feel both ways. It’s been a good game. But if it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense.”

I don’t know how it doesn’t make sense, especially with the changing dynamics in scheduling and conference affiliation and finances and recruiting, but, whatever. What I know is this is somehow a swing game for the conference championship and if it’s the last time the Mountaineers and the Panthers go at it for a while, at least there’s something to it.

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Hey, how about that Civic Center?

November 23, 2011 by Mike Casazza

No WiFi in the arena. Roughly three power outlets for all of press row. A copy machine that breaks in the postgame. Those are things that bother the media, which I understand and accept don’t matter much in the big picture.

Yet throughout the first half there were three distinctly different game clocks and scoreboards and the buzzer didn’t work and had to be replaced by an air horn, which was just about spent by halftime. The game feed went in and out, or just out, according to people who emailed and tweeted me. It was fixed by halftime, but it was bad form. 

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No live blog

November 22, 2011 by Mike Casazza

Can’t connect to the WiFi on press row. Even if I could, there’s one power plug for all the laptops. I’m pretty happy about this.

One, maybe two, record to fall at Stedman’s feet

by Mike Casazza

Stedman Bailey, once too short, too slow, too uncelebrated to play high-major college football, will break the school record for receiving yards Friday against Pitt. Probably on the first pass. He knows he needs just seven yards to get past the 1,043 David Saunders submitted in 1997.

Should Bailey catch two touchdowns, he ties Darius Reynaud (2007) and Chris Henry (2004) with 12 touchdown catches in a season.

That will probably have to wait, but that’s no matter to Bailey. His time is now. His records are coming. He knew it would happen in spite of what others once thought.

“The critics do drive me,” he said.

There really are no limits on where Bailey will wind up as a receiver. While he isn’t a blazer, he has speed and he is intelligent and hard-working, understanding what defenders are trying to do so that he’s able to take advantage.

He has 1,000 yards with two games left beyond the Pitt game, South Florida and a bowl game. How high can he take the record this year?

“I’m averaging 100 yards a game,” he noted. “That would be 1,200 or 1,300 if I hit my average, but I may go for 200 in one of those games. In this offense there is no limit.”

And with the attitude he carries there also is no limit.

“Football is my first love,” he said. “I’ve played since I was 9 years old. I’ve always been able to make plays. I just love the game so much I can’t picture life without football.”

Probably worth noting, too, that Tavon Austin needs six catches to give him 78 this season and pass Saunders (1998) and Shawn Foreman (1997). The guy throwing them the ball will break a few records Friday, too. More on that part a while later.

I’m in Charleston now. No promises on the live game blog tonight because the Civic Center WiFi is always shaky. You’ll know as soon as I do.

Attention: Charleston

by Mike Casazza

Bob Huggins would like you to know good tickets remain for tonight’s game at the Civic Center.

About 1,000 tickets remained Monday afternoon for the 7 p.m. tipoff, at $15 for the upper level and $27 for the lower level.

“We should probably go there more,” Huggins said. “I don’t like to perform in half-full arenas. I’ve said it a lot, but I came home to try to help make this something special.”

Not so fast, Dana

by Mike Casazza

Interesting admission from Dana Holgorsen, who allowed a moment of retrospect late in his first season. This offense you’re seeing at WVU, the one you thought would so closely resemble what he’d done at Houston and Oklahoma State, is not really what he’d done at Houston and Oklahoma State.

For a time, it trended in that direction, but Holgorsen has since pulled back to get a better control of how the Mountaineers move the football.

“I’ve changed quite a bit in what the play calling is and how fast it gets done and the amount of plays that we’re running,” he said. “All that stuff is a little different than what I’ve been used to.”

He said his first season with the Mountaineers is not like what it was with the Cougars and Cowboys, but like it was when he joined the Texas Tech staff in 2000.

Houston Coach Kevin Sumlin wanted Holgorsen to run his offense, but to hurry it up as much as possible. Oklahoma State Coach Mike Gundy then wanted to have what Holgorsen did at Houston.

“The (previous) philosophies offensively at Houston and Oklahoma State were similar,” Holgorsen said. “There were guys that were used to doing things similar to how we run them. The personnel was in place to where we could handle that.

“We’re not there offensively. It goes back to Texas Tech when we were changing a lot of philosophies and changing the way things were done offensively.”

 

Try as we might, no one got the coaches to bite

by Mike Casazza

(I fixed the link. I have no idea why it’s doing it this week, but that’s three times already where the link has been blank. Usually when I screw it up, I paste the address in wrong. This is new.)

Though events from the previous three years suggest otherwise, Dana Holgorsen and Todd Graham do respect one another and the success and achievements Friday’s adversary has produced along the way. Now, “respect” does not mean “like” or “endorse” or “seek each other out to have dinner when they’re on the road,” but neither was going to wobble and veer off a carefully crafted company line.

“To me, the bigger deal is the fact we’ve had competitive games,” Holgorsen said. “I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for him and what he’s accomplished and I suspect the respect is mutual based on the success we’ve had.”

Everyone is asking and no one knows for sure, but the hope here is this series continues because, in some ways, it’s just getting good with these two atop their programs.

I’m not sure how long they can behave. I’m sure they’re both going to get it going. I’m not sure Penn State and Ohio State will escape the notoriety or the NCAA unscathed. I’m sure the recruits who might normally go there will be willing to listen to different pitches. I’m not sure there’s a better regular non-conference possibility out there for either school. I’m sure they — the schools, not the coaches — will sustain their disdain until they meet again.

Your weekly Bob Huggins speech!

November 21, 2011 by Mike Casazza

Bob Huggins had some wonderful wizardry this morning when he managed to steal headlines from the Backyard Brawl. Get ready to read a lot tomorrow about your men’s basketball coach again questioning the fan culture at WVU and even admitting it hasn’t caught on as fast as he thought it would.

What you might not read, yet what I think is fit for print, is that Huggins also figured out what is wrong with America. He was, for some reason, asked about coaching salaries and then tasked to connect that with the rise in football ticket prices from $2.50 to $78. He pulled it off and then gave you this:

“Back when you’re talking about, coaches had tenure. So they didn’t get fired. They may have not coached, but they always had a job because they were tenured. You ask a majority of the coaches, they’d rather be tenured than get fired after three or four years. You give up one thing to get something else. But that’s America.

“The truth of the matter is in America, it’s supposed to be a free enterprise system and people are supposed to get paid for what they do. The problem is we’re paying them for what they don’t do. That’s the truth. That’s why we’re in the shape we’re in. We’re paying so many people to do nothing.”

As for the headline-robbed Dana Holgorsen, he said stuff at his press conference today about the game against Pitt and his relationship with Todd Graham. I give you videos after the jump.

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Matt Lindamood is playing football, which is good

by Mike Casazza

On Sept. 23, WVU’s junior fullback who endeared himself to fans last season with a bruising, straight-ahead style that just hasn’t appeared with the same force or frequency this season, walked into the head trainer’s office and gave Dave Kerns some bad news.

“The information Matt came to us with was, ‘I’m not supposed to play football anymore,’ ” Kerns said.

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What if all this conference realignment was for naught?

by Mike Casazza

I mean, what if in three years there were no automatic BCS bids that go to a conference champion? What if the BCS games took its 10 teams based on the BCS rankings? What if there were no BCS games and in their place just a title game and the old school bowls? Wouldn’t this arms race we’ve witnessed in the past 24 months, the one where many schools made decisions about their future because a move either created or enhanced an opportunity for a BCS bid and a national championship dream, seem a little … I don’t know … misguided?

Well, don’t look now, but the BCS gets its next makeover in 2014 and there is already considerable chatter about doing away with the AQ concept.

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