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

Live chat returns at 2 p.m. tomorrow

December 1, 2010 by Mike Casazza

Thanksgiving was cause for pause last week, but give thanks the one-hour circus is back tomorrow as people try to sneak questions past my filter to see if I’ll do or say something inherently fireable. It’s fun.

Be there live tomorrow or drop your comments in the queue now. Either way, here is your link. You’re also welcome to slip questions in the comments here … just try to make it obvious that yours is a question for the chat.

Among possible topics:

– How ridiculous is this?
– The Quitness returns to Cleveland.
– Do I call my people in Cleveland, plant a fan in the stands and clean up on the +$3,000 money line?
– WVU v. American and who did and did not play for the Mountaineers
– Who did Colin Dunlap anger this week?
– Bowl scenarios and why I find it all infuriating
– Can Randy Edsall pull do it?
– Who’s after TCU?
– Could “match his mountains” have saved Dan Hawkins?
– The exact distance of the corner Rutgers football is turning

See you there.

Why American is good for WVU

by Mike Casazza

Bob Huggins’ Mountaineers play host to the American Eagles at 7 p.m. tonight and, on the surface, it’s a ho-hum December game and the sort of occasion WVU has had no trouble with in recent years.

The Mountaineers have won 31 straight December home games and 31 straight non-conference home games as part of a 50-2 record in such contests the past eight years.

Yet this is a good American — not to be confused with a great American … like Nate Sowers — that has some serious value for the Mountaineers. The Eagles (5-1) are coached by former Virginia Coach Jeff Jones and have a top talent in Vlad Moldoveanu, a 6-foot-8 fifth-year senior forward who was recruited to WVU by John Beilein and played some on-campus pickup games with Joe Mazzulla when they visited together.

American was also picked to win the Patriot League, meaning its the second non-conference foe to carry that distinction into the Coliseum (Oakland was the preseason pick in the Summit League).

The Mountaineers will play a list of others who should or could be conference champions and they are the core of WVU’s non-conference schedule.

Robert Morris, which visits the Coliseum on Dec. 7, was picked second in the Northeast Conference and is No. 31 in the RPI. VMI, a 82-66 loser to WVU Saturday at the Charleston Civic Center, was picked fifth in the Big South. The Davidson team WVU beat in the opening game of the Puerto Rico Tip-Off was picked third in its division of the Southern Conference.

Cleveland State was picked third in the Horizon League, but already is 7-0, No. 20 in the RPI and No. 5 in the CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major Top 25.

The worst of the mid-major opponents would be Duquesne of the Atlantic 10. The Dukes, currently No. 310 of 348 teams in the RPI, were picked eighth in the conference, but have given WVU good competition as part of the perennial series between the schools.

“We’re trying to play some schools that are going to end up in the RPI top 150, at least,” Huggins said. “Really, we’d like for them to be in the top 100. If those people stay in the top 100, it’s a really big boost for our RPI.

“I think, to a degree, that’s why some schools play Division II schools – because they don’t count in the RPI – rather than play a team that’s going to be 300 or lower, at least lower than 250.”

On TCU, the 10th team, math and Marshall

by Mike Casazza

Adding the Horned Frogs and, later rather than sooner, a 10th football team to the Big East puts member institutions into a scheduling pinch. Oh, it makes the home-away balance better with nine teams and eight opponents. It reduces the payouts for buy-in games (like UNLV, which was a pretty useless endeavor for WVU).

Yet it also changes non-conference scheduling. There are, obviously, fewer spots for exposure opportunities. It potentially compromises games already scheduled or … ahem … series that are to be renewed. So says Oliver Luck.

“The conference told us going back a couple months, because this didn’t happen overnight, to keep our schedule open for two potential members,” Luck said. “We have to keep that in mind because it does have an effect on everything.

“South Florida, for example, has said it’s not going to schedule any games without a clause in there that says South Florida can drop the game without any type of penalty. Certainly it’s something that’s going to cause some things to change.”

Big East awards

November 30, 2010 by Mike Casazza

True story: There was a brief conversation among some media people today that Bill Stewart could perhaps be named Big East Coach of the Year.

I’ll wait on you to recover …

We good? It’s not insane, particularly if WVU handles Rutgers and if UConn were to lose to USF … though Skip Holtz might get some burn if that happens. Charlie Strong is not to be sneezed at either. I’m sure Randy Edsall gets some credit for holding that thing together.

Point is, there are bright spots and blemishes for all the candidates. And that got me thinking …

Continue reading…

Bill Stewart and his press conference at 1 pm

by Mike Casazza

Follow along live right here. Among topics on the agenda that might make Stewart’s head spin:

– WVU has allowed 10, 10 and 10 points the past three games. Not since the start of the 1996 season — zero, zero, nine, six and zero — has the team allowed 10 or fewer points in four straight games.

– Rutgers do-it-all Mohamed Sanu might not play and probably won’t play very effectively.

Injury report: WR Mohamed Sanu (leg) and RB Joe Martinek (ankle) remain hobbled and Schiano isn’t sure about their availability vs. West Virginia. Martinek lasted just two plays vs. Louisville before leaving the game and not returning.

– Perhaps not coincidentally, WVU is a 20-point favorite against a team that’s never won in Morgantown. Rutgers, you’ll recall, was favored at home last year. And if you’re interested in these things, USF is a one-point favorite at home Saturday against UConn.

Bluebonnet redux!

by Mike Casazza

Seems so long ago — perhaps because it was — but there was a time when WVU had a horrendous bowl game losing streak.

The Mountaineers won the Music City Bowl in 2000 against Ole Miss in Don Nehlen’s final game and had lost eight straight bowls before that. The prior win? Twas a 31-14 victory in the 1984 Bluebonnet Bowl against TCU.

In honor of WVU’s new neighbor, a review of the preview.

TCU news so big we overlooked Truck and Jennings

by Mike Casazza

As you probably know by now, neither Truck Bryant nor Danny Jennings was in uniform for Saturday’s 82-66 victory against VMI at the Charleston Civic Center. When this sort of thing happens — and with WVU basketball, there always seems to be something, be it bizarre driving habits, unseemly public conduct or mere eligibility — people cconstruct all sorts of theories as to what happened. And sometimes those people are wearing tin foil hats.

This particular incident seems pretty simple. Bob Huggins is not a hard coach to play for. His players revere him during and after playing for him and speak quite sincerely about how he prepares them physically and mentally for basketball and for life. But it’s hard to play for Huggins, in that it’s not going to be easy. It’s not supposed to be easy.

Please note the difference.  If he were a hard guy to play for, it’d imply he’s a bad guy. If it’s hard to play for him, it implies he seeks to prevent bad habits. If he were a hard guy to play for, people wouldn’t respect him as they do. If it weren’t hard to play for him, his players and teams wouldn’t be so tough and, as such, successful. 

Right now, it would seem as he tries to bring a group together not long after a Final Four appearance and the subsequent summer-long affection fest, he’s not at all pleased with players who believe it should be easy to play basketball at WVU.

“We’re not making the progress we need to make,” Huggins said.

“We don’t go hard everyday. We’ve got guys all the time that want to take practices off and not go hard, and don’t want to listen.

“We’re not going to do that under my watch. I’m going to play the guys and coach the guys that want to get better and listen. We’re going to do things right. I want to coach guys who want to learn.”

Huggins indicated Bryant, who averages 11.3 points per game, and Jennings were not suspended. But he did not specify when the players would return to the court for the Mountaineers.

“Anybody who doesn’t come in and try to get better every day, there’s no sense in them playing,” Huggins said. “We are going to survive. We work too hard, we play too hard, we have guys that care too much not to survive.”

TCU press conference link

November 29, 2010 by Mike Casazza

Here. Enjoy.

The late Leslie Nielsen: Long live the locksmith

by Mike Casazza
(Big East/TCU news conference update: 2 pm EST. Not sure about a link yet, but here’s their athletics Web site and here’s their university Web site. Big East personnel is in Fort Worth, in case you needed further convincing)

The passing of Leslie Nielsen was terrible, terrible news at the Casazza home. I was even late to the office today.

Continue reading…

TCU accepts Big East offer

by Mike Casazza

Should be a fun little Monday, what with the Horned Frogs agreeing to join the Big East in 2012. The addition helps both sides and gives the Big East whatever leverage it needed for remaining in the BCS and staying very visible nationally.

The addition of the Horned Frogs will immediately bolster the football league. It also would increase the basketball membership to 17 teams.

The Horned Frogs (12-0) are ranked No. 3 in the current BCS rankings and are guaranteed a BCS bowl. By adding TCU for the 2012-13 school year, the Horned Frogs would take “all of their data to their new league,” BCS spokesman Bill Hancock told FanHouse.

The current four-year evaluation period for the BCS concludes in December 2011, so TCU’s past BCS rankings – three consecutive top 11 BCS rankings, including this year – will transfer to the Big East since it joined the league before the 2012-13 school year.

The current 2008-11 evaluation period is being used to determine if a seventh conference earns automatic qualifying status for the 2012 and 2013 regular seasons – and the Mountain West (TCU’s current home) will not qualify. The Big East, however, already has its automatic qualifying status for the 2012 and 2013 regular seasons by virtue of the contracts, Hancock said.

Adding TCU also would strengthen its position when the league starts renegotiating its television contracts that expires after the 2013 season.

It’s a big leap of for both sides, though a greater one for the Big East. TCU is joining the weakest of the BCS leagues, but it knows where its future is now and knows there will be money there as part of a BCS football league. And I’d have to think the Horned Frogs believe they can win the league a few times and considered that when mulling their options.

As for the Big East, yes, it gets a major footballprogram, but it has to hope TCU remains competitive these next two seasons and no one scoops up Gary Patterson. If one or both becomes an issue, well, that’s an issue.

What’s next? Well, I’d be surprised if Villanova didn’t join at this point. It’d give the Big East its 10 football teams, which creates the possibility for a championship game. You can still have an 18-game conference schedule for basketball, too, by having one school play the other 16 once and two schools twice.

I suppose you could still add a UCF and have 10 football teams and another big market, as well as the 18-game conference schedule for basketball (play 16 schools once, one twice). The basketball schools might not like that, or a move to, say, 20 games, but they’re outnumbered now.

Curious to hear your thoughts on the move and what and/or who is next.