Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which would like to put on a sweater vest and a pair of penny loafers and give a history lesson today. The season was 2004-05, the sport men’s basketball. WVU had a formidable squad powered by a beautiful style of play.
They were also maddening in one particular aspect. The Mountaineers had a habit of playing close games for a few different reasons, but basically because their style lent itself to hot and cold spells and, for some reason, the players were just more comfortable in close games. Without fail, the team would jump on a team and usually allow them back into the game.
Nowhere was this more apparent than at the end of a half. WVU would put a run on an opponent and take a lead of 10 or 14 or 20 points and inevitably head to the locker room up six or eight or 12. It was uncanny and the team was thereby dubbed in the place I used to work as “The Team that Never Learned.”
Well, they learned. In the Elite Eight game against Louisville the Mountaineers were up 20 late in the first half when the Cardinals closed on a seemingly harmless 7-0 run. People in the press room were amazed at the way WVU had played … and that included the WVU press, which couldn’t believe it’d happened again. I remember talking to a WVU employee who walked up to me and rolled his eyes. At about the same time we both said, “Smallest 13-point lead ever.”
You know what happened. Question is, are you seeing it happen again? What you have right now is a WVU football team with unquestioned offensive talent, but also questionable fundamentals. The Mountaineers have 14 turnovers in three games. Fourteen. I thought after Auburn it was somewhat flukish — whoops — but I’m now sure the Mountaineers have a problem, one that also transcends turnovers and extends to so many other critical areas — kickoff return defense, kickoff return blocking, this thing called pass blocking, pass defense, etc. It has to be treated as a problem, too. If it isn’t, either in practice or in punishment, they deserve whatever fate awaits them.
What’s troubling is this is three games in a row now where the errors have persisted and in key spots in the game and on the field. You just can’t say it’s gotten any better even though it’s been a major point for three weeks now. They should consider themselves lucky to be 3-1 and to have played two teams that just weren’t good enough to take advantage of WVU’s many, many errors. Play those ECU or Colorado games on the road, like they did against Auburn, and the Mountaineers are certainly not 3-1. Guess what! WVU plays at Syracuse, at South Florida, at Cincinnati and at Rutgers still. If they don’t correct this, they’re in for a painful reminder of the past.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, think things through.
Homer said:
Sometimes when you try to do everything, you do nothing well.
That’s not even funny. It’s 100 percent accurate. Last night we didn’t see shovel pass or double pass or any of the triple option — if we did, it was simply given to Noel. There was one reverse and it was a bizarre call when WVU needed only to run the clock against a retreating defense asking to be scored upon again, but instead decided to give Brad Starks a whirl, which lost eight yards. When the Mountaineers got real serious they ran 13 times on a 14-play drive and called maybe four different run plays. The potential for error is much smaller when you limit the possibilities and do what you do best.
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