Not this night! I’m just about ready to leave for Cincinnati and the 2009 Crossroads. This short week caught up to me far more than I’d imagined. My apologies on top of my praise for a job well done this week. Some of our discussions — The Curse and the seating — were noted higher up the food chain, which, this week, was a good thing.
A few things to sweep out of my mind before my mind drives me crazy driving to the Queen City.
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If you can, get a good, long look at the Loyola (Md.) head coach, Jimmy Patsos, in Sunday’s season opener. Accomplished, capable, demonstrative and quite a character.
You’ll remember last year when Steph Curry was scoreless and squeezed off just three shots in an easy win? That was against Loyola’s triangle-and-double team commissioned by Jimmy Patsos.
“We had to play against an NBA player tonight,” Patsos explained. “Anybody else ever hold him scoreless? I’m a history major. They’re going to remember that we held him scoreless or we lost by 30?”
Patsos took a ton of heat for that and managed to dutifully defend himself against the attacks of many, in particular the hosts of PTI. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but he’s a guy I’d like to have on the bench.
That is, provided he can stay there.
Those are Jeff Mullen’s words to describe post-concussion Jarrett Brown.
“Different in a sense he’s not healthy, he’s not 100 percent, he’s not coming off a four-, five-game stretch where he’s leading the country in a lot of different statistics,” Mullen said. “He’s gone through a couple weeks of getting banged up. He’s coming off a concussion, an ankle, a foot sprain. His shoulder has been injured since the Auburn game. A lot of things tie into being a different kid.”
That’s probably one of the most honest things we’ve heard all year. JB didn’t disagree, and while he wouldn’t use any of his injuries as an excuse, he did say the season is adding up as it nears the end.
The season-long events of the football team, to say nothing of recent changes to the season ticket policy, and the debut this weekend of the men’s basketball season, to say nothing of yesterday’s little revelation about seating inside the Coliseum, made me ask myself a simple question.
I share it with you today.
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With almost not attention, the Coliseum has juggled its seating and snipped about 500 seats from the student section while moving the “Maniacs Madhouse” closer to the floor.
“When we can get this generated, it sells. This is a great selling point for the University. It’s easier to be on television,” Huggins said. “We’re on television 18 times this year, because we changed the schedule to make it more difficult, and people naturally want to watch.
“We wanted to create that atmosphere and have kids watching it on TV saying ‘man, I’d like to be part of that.’”
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Notre Dame’s awkward arrangement with the Gator and Sun bowls ends this year, but you already hear a lot of whining and worrying about how the Fighting Irish might wrinkle some postseason plans.
The Domers’ BCS possibilities ended with Sataurday’s loss to Navy, but they can still take a higher spot in the Big East pecking order with just one more win.
The Gator would like ND, but Gator chief Rick Catlett has been quoted as saying that he wants to see an 8-4 Irish before making the pick, but since it’s the final year of the Big East/ND deal there, the Gator could take a 7-5 Irish even if a Big East runner-up (Cincinnati or Pitt?) is 11-1 or 10-2.
By contract, the Gator can select whomever they want among the (Big East/ND) pool of teams 7-5 or better. However, Catlett has told the conference office repeatedly over the years that the Gator would not pass over any team that has greater than a two-win differential. The bowl has always pledged to the Big East to select the most deserving team.
You can use a lot of numbers to evaluate the success of WVU’s football program in recent years:
– 62-2 when scoring 30 points since 2000
– 30-3 when rushing for 300 yards since 2002
– 53-3 when winning the turnover battle since 2002
– Eight straight wins on turf
– Seven straight wins at Cincinnati
It goes on and on and it’s really quite a list. I wonder, though, if anything is more pertinent, particularly this week, than this statistic:
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I thought it was a joke when I saw the first e-mail. It’s not. Apparently you can buy this shirt. Given how you-know-who coined that phrase here and I’m fond of Liverpool, I’m pretty sure this is blog karma.
Brian Kelly picks the guy with the hot hand and the dangerous legs over the veteran who’s actually seen the 3-3-5.
I’m sorting through texts, e-mail and comments the past few weeks and wondering if people are perhaps a bit too down on WVU. I mean, has your season gone so poorly that a friggin’ beach ball screwed with the outcome of a game? I can’t recall a WVU loss like that … and a fan contributed to it.
The Mountaineers, after all, are 7-2 and, if nothing else, find themselves in a position in November to win the Big East title.
Has it been picturesque getting here? No. Not at all. Should that change the reality? Probably not. The season changes one way or the other Friday and it seems to be it’d be unwise to give WVU no chance to do something remarkable. It seems unfair to forget what’s happened in WVU’s past to get here.
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