Friday Feedback
January 8, 2010 by Mike CasazzaWelcome to the Friday Feedback, which is just now finding its fastball after the disjointed week away at the Gator Bowl — and that goodness that’s over … now I get to mush through the snow up I-79 to the airport and then fly to South Bend.
I’m not at all sad the relationship with the Gator dissolved. It’s a good enough game with nice enough accommodations and such, but, logistically speaking, I can do without the town. I’m thinking the Big East traded up with the Champs Sports and Orlando and an ACC opponent. The Gator, meanwhile, gets middling Big Ten team vs. tertiary SEC team.
With the exception of recruiting, NFL draft and coaching staff news, it’s basketball from here until whenever the men’s and women’s teams wrap up play in the NCAA Tournaments. Two pretty compelling groups, too. The women are good and one could argue they have perhaps arrived a year early. Are they going to beat UConn or Notre Dame or at least get an invitation to be considered at that level this season? Likely not, but it’s a competitive bunch.
The men can look like a No. 1 seed and a Final Four contender, but also a bunch that can drop a game in a bad matchup no matter the site or stage of the season. I just have a feeling the pieces are falling into place there. Maybe Rutgers was the beginning of something, maybe it’s a bit away still, but once eight or nine guys accept roles and responsibilities and figure things out and maybe one or two guys gets hot, WVU can take off and go places. Then again, a number of things can get in the way.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, dress the part.
Bill said:
I just don’t get this guy. I listen to and read his interviews and he goes off on these tangents and rambles about things that don’t make sense or aren’t relevant to the question he was asked.
After being on the fence for two years about Coach Stew, my final conclusions are: great mentor, good players coach, not a details guy, not doing enough to fix all the little things that should be fixed at this point in the season. He’s just not as sharp as he needs to be for WVU to be an elite program and now we are losing some of our best assistants. I hope we can find exiting replacements. Who we do find to fill these slots will tell me a lot.
I’m legitimately worried about our future under his healm. And I’m worried because we’ll probably lose the last of our super elite players in the backfield this year (Devine) and I’m not seeing many potential candidates to replace them. Let’s face it, White, Slaton, Schmitt and Devine carried us the past few years.
Not sure how I can help ease your worries — sounds like “Wait and see!” isn’t a good elixir — but I can tell you some FSU media, which covers Bowden on a daily basis, found Stewart’s presser to be quite fun.
overtheSEC said:
Bill, I’m with you on several of those points but my bigger concern isn’t disappearing talent, it’s a disappearing scheme and a pathetic offense. Mullen can’t say that this is an offense that got better as the season went on. We scored more than 30 points once this year in conference play, and that was against Syracuse! At least after last season we were able to look at the 450 yards of offense in the Car Care Bowl and see what Mullen’s offense “could” look like. I don’t buy that the plays aren’t there, I just don’t know why they’re not being called or being executed well.
Why, it seemed as if the plays in the first half were called by one person and the plays in the second half were called by someone else.
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