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

A Huggins prognosis borrowed from Dr. Clubber Lang

July 29, 2010 by Mike Casazza

Randy Meador, WVU’s coordinator of athletic training, is the same fella who’s helped various WVU basketball players the past few years get through injuries both simple and complex. Meador may also be working with Bob Huggins when the basketball coach returns to campus and gets to taking care of his ribs.

Meador’s prediction? “Pain.”

It’s no joke, though. Broken ribs are excruciating and involved in even the most basic of movements, but also the most critical … like breathing. Meador can’t be sure how long Huggins will need, but he knows the 56-year-old coach will need time because of his age and because of the complex and varying nature of all rib breaks.

“If you or I fall down and roll an ankle, I can say four to six weeks and feel pretty safe about it,” Meador said.

“We don’t know what complications there are right now. I hear everything is OK, but there could be complications. Are the fractures straight? Are they lined up? Until you know that, it’s hard to say what happens next.”

Broken-rib cases always involve such variables.

“If you broke seven ribs and I broke seven ribs, which seven did you break and which seven did I break?” Meador said.

“Do all your fractures line up and do all mine line up? How good of shape are you in? How good of shape am I in? Your pain tolerance may be different than mine.

“We could have the same injury, but yours could be different than mine because of various things.”

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck … isn’t a duck

by Mike Casazza

Former Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli is apparently headed to Ole Miss, which is an intriguing prospect for a player who, despite all his issues, remains very much the same.

Before things get out of control, he’s not and never was coming to WVU.

Now there was, on some level, interest by the troubled quarterback in WVU … which could mean something as insignificant as Masoli telling one of his people, “I like WVU” which is then relayed to someone with a notebook or something as slightly less insignificant as one of his people picking up the phone to call WVU.

Not sure where it registered on that scale, quite sure WVU was never, ever interested — or even aware — but all it means for WVU is it was an attractive place for a spread-option quarterback who was one of the nation’s best players last year, not that a spread-option offense was interested in a player who was one of the nation’s best players last year. There’s a very big difference.

Still, Division I football people were talking about this and other people were hearing it. These rumblings had reached the Mountaineers. Two people within the program said they’d been asked by others about Masoli-WVU, though they knew nothing of it beyond being a rumor. Apparently this got trumped up a little bit by something some day on a radio show, for which WVU wasn’t entirely happy. A third person sternly contested even the possibility Masoli would be considered at WVU, let alone taken in, and suggested there’d never been anything done by either side to make this more than completely bogus.

And now, on with your Thursday.

Huggins … has left the building

July 28, 2010 by Mike Casazza

Tenderized Bob Huggins has been released from the Las Vegas hospital where he spent the previous five nights. Huggins, 56, broke seven ribs in a fall in his hotel room Friday.

Ebert & Austin

by Mike Casazza

The Poet is a film buff. Star of several ooh-worthy highlight videos across the Internet, Tavon Austin admits he was at first a fan of clips of Noel Devine in high school and Steve Slaton in college.

Make that, still is a fan. The sophomore wide receiver in 2010 takes time every so often to go to YouTube or somewhere else and watch the clips of his predecessors for inspiration.

It began years back, though. In Devine he saw a player doing the same things he was doing when he was in high school. In Slaton he saw a similarly sized back with what he believes are also similar abilities. He found the common denominator between Slaton and Devine to be WVU and, yes, it’s what opened his eyes to a future in Morgantown.

And you thought recruiting was a complex science? It’s reached point-and-click simplicity now.

For Austin, though, he found it to be not nearly as simple as he expected. There were humbling moments and he later realized the one who gained the most from the hype was also affected most.

“Most of the time I think it hurts you,” he said. “If you come in there and think you’re going to do that to people, if you think you’re pretty tough and you’re going to do the same things at that level while the whole time you have linebackers who have the same speed as you, sometimes it hurts you when you come in with the big head.

“When I came in, I thought I was going to do the same things, but it’s not like that. I thought I was going to be able to make a couple people miss and score, but the reality here is if you make one person miss, someone else is going to come in and tackle you.”

Stewart keeps asking more of Devine … and teammates

by Mike Casazza

First, the third-year coach insists Super Noel must add a Santana Moss element to his game to benefit the offense. Never satisfied, Stewart would like to have Devine be the Mardy Gilyard + Reggie Bush (sans NCAA infractions) in special teams.

Piece of cake.

It may be just desserts, though. Stewart wants badly for WVU to change the reputation of its special teams, which means changing an attitude among players.

“We got it better, but we’ve slid a little bit and I’ll tell you why,” Stewart said. “It’s this attitude of some defensive guys, some offensive guys, who’ve got to get out of this, ‘Let the other guy do special teams.’ That’s bull crap.”

When practice begins, Stewart will introduce his third team to a new reality. There will be more special teams drills and more time devoted to the craft on the field and in the film room.

“I’m going to make a strong impression,” Stewart said. “If we want to win double digits, we’ve got to play all three phases. Right now, we’ve been good at phase one and phase two, offense and defense, defense and offense, whatever way you want to say it, but phase three? Special teams? We were the best there for a while and now we haven’t been for a while.”

Meet Joe, youth counselor from Greensboro, N.C.

by Mike Casazza

Let me see your war face! Catch a former WVU “running back” at 10 p.m. tonight on Spike.

You have to admire Pitino’s focus

July 27, 2010 by Mike Casazza

Fascinating opening arguments yesterday in Karen Sypher’s trial yesterday and one detail that makes you wonder what was going through Rick Pitino’s head on the cusp of a Big East regular season title.

March 6, 2009 a letter is delivered from Tim Sypher to Rick Pitino in the hotel right before Louisville is to play West Virginia for the Big East regular season title. In it, Sypher demands college for all her kids, two cars, a house, $3,000 a month for food and bills and $75,000 when Rick leaves Louisville. In exchange, she will keep his name clean.

That was the ESPN Gameday debut in Morgantown and, if memory serves, he did an on-set interview. He also had no visible trouble handling a pretty tough game.

If a Frohnapfel is good for WVU, a Frohnapfel is good for Marshall

by Mike Casazza

Colonial Forge (Va). High tight end Eric Frohnapfel opted to join WVU’s 2011 recruiting class two weeks ago. His brother, Blake, decided over the weekend he would sign up to play quarterback for Marshall.

“He reminded me how West Virginia has done lately and how Marshall hasn’t beaten them,” Blake Frohnapfel said Monday, two days after he verbally committed to play football for the Thundering Herd. “And he likes to say how cool WVU’s uniforms are, especially the all yellow.

“As soon as I committed we were trash-talking each other. It will probably go on until the day we die.”

The brothers, rising seniors at Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, Va., have made their pledges to the Mountain State’s two Football Bowl Subdivision programs.

Eric, a 6-foot-6, 247-pound tight end, picked the Mountaineers on July 15; Blake, a 6-5, 210-pound quarterback, opted for the Herd over the weekend.

Both student-athletes are aspiring doctors, and had initially planned to find a mutual fit for their academic and athletic endeavors.

“We were going to play in college together, but it became apparent we weren’t going to be able to pull it off,” Blake Frohnapfel said. “So once he committed, I asked myself what I was waiting on and I pulled the trigger.”

Mountaineers take ownership, Devine takes extra passes

by Mike Casazza

The main reason Noel Devine decided to stay at WVU was not to finish his education or to make a run to a national title. Oh, those were motivations and they’re fine and commendable ones at that. Devine, though, wasn’t going to be drafted in a very favorable position — at least not in accordance with his opinion of his skills and potential. That’s a pretty good motivation, too.

So the Mine Mule returned and, by all accounts, has been at the head of what seems to be an inspiring summer of workouts and preparation for WVU. Bill Stewart calls it “ownership” as exhibited by the most veteran and respected leaders on his team. It is Devine who’s personified the quest to take it upon himself to improve as a team. In doing so, he’s addressing those minor critiques about his game to get better as a player, which then makes the Mountaineers better as a group.

“One of the pro guys sent word back here and said Noel may go in the second round if there’s a team that needs a third-down back,” Stewart said. “I said, ‘That’s the same old bullcrap.’ That’s what they said about Stevie Slaton. All he did was run for 1,000 yards. This guy can play. He’s got to get in the right offense and get in a system that can give him wiggle room.”

Devine also must adhere a little more to the NFL style. He’s eased a lot of worries about his durability by constructing a stout physique and keeping so many of his natural gifts, and he’s handled 206 and 241 carries his past two years while playing through injuries.

Yet he’s only caught 35 and 22 passes in those years and averaged just 6 yards per catch. He’s averaged 6.2 yards per carry over the same time.

“We talked and I said to him, ‘You’ve got to catch a hundred balls a day. You’ve got to be a Santana Moss type. You better learn to catch balls,'” Stewart said.

The reports that have found Stewart say Devine has done just that, with enthusiasm and without complaint.

“Guys see that and they remember that,” Stewart said. “I said earlier in the year, ‘Why do guys come back? It’s because there’s a trust factor.’ There’s never been a trust factor like there is in this program right now.”

The big question is asked

July 26, 2010 by Mike Casazza

Well, was asked but just as I disappeared. Joe Manchin is running for and likely winning RCB’s senate seat. The primary is late next month and the election in November.

This, in a very relevant way, affects the future of the WVU-Marshall series, as explained by Jack Bogaczyk.

It’s Manchin’s baby, but a lot has been thrown out with the bath water since then.

Of the seven principals in the room at the state Capitol for the formal contract signing on May 17, 2005, only Manchin is still in the same position. (The others were Mike Farrell, Bob Marcum and Mark Snyder for Marshall and WVU’s David Hardesty, Ed Pastilong and Rich Rodriguez.)

However, the overwhelming statewide notion is that it would probably take Manchin to extend the series, and if Manchin runs as expected for Byrd’s old seat and wins in November, he goes to Washington immediately after election results are certified.

If that occurs, Marshall loses its hammer in trying to forge a new deal.

The question now is if and perhaps when does Carte Goodwin picks up the political football>