Short week and maybe a long weekend. Let’s begin with some visual aid. You surely remember Mortty Ivy’s fumble recovery and return. Well, do you remember this from preseason camp?
Practice!
And since it’s ECU week, you definitely remember this, right?
…from the weekend that was. For your use in elevator rides, trips to the water cooler and other awkward moments on a Monday. Wait, today’s Labor Day. What am I doing at work? Let’s make this brief.
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– Oh, Schmitt!
– Hey, it’s in the past. Kudos, by the way, to WVU for not flaunting the score throughout its own game Saturday.
– I shook Ed Pastilong’s hand as we began a conversation saturday afternoon. A moment later, we were watching East Carolina beat Virginia Tech. the conversation ended, I shook his hand again and I noted a sweaty palm. No wonder.
– The talk about Pitt can stop now.
– Reed Williams did not play — neither did Brantwon Bowser — and he might play Saturday at ECU. The big date is the Colorado game because there are 12 days between ECU and CU. If he’s not playing at Boulder, the fourth game is the medical redshirt deadline.
– The scoreboard was up and running and the press box consensus was … so what? It’s not appreciably bigger or better than the one before it and whatever audio upgrades have been made must be hard to notice among some 60,000 people. That said, at least it was finished and looked nice. There was one ribbon board above the visiting sideline. Pastilong said a second should be up above the home sideline before the Marshall game. Yet with all the additions, there were no live stats on display during the game and the only connection to the outside world was a scoreboard in the opposite end zone that attempted to flash other scores from around the nation, but appeared to be on crack as it flicked through the scores way too fast.
Anyhow, a fairly ordinary season-opener highlighted by Pat White’s passing. The offensive line was pretty solid and the receivers had to have eased a lot of worries, if not for the drops. Defensively, there are concerns, particularly with tacking, and the linebackers really need Williams.
Your thoughts?
Welcome to a baton-down-the-hatches, head-for-the-hills version of the Friday Feedback. The RVs are already rolling into town, couches seem more nervous than usual and the collective sound of undergrads ditching school for beer pong has me particularly delighted this morning. Hard to believe, but all that’s happened since Dec. 1 is about to become a memory in the most official way possible. There will be events written atop of that chapter of our history and it begins with a good old home opener. WVU gets out early, shows a little to build a big lead and then plays coy the rest of the way, so don’t be disappointed if the second half resembles a scrimmage. Villanova seems like a veteran team with a good coach and a good plan and the Wildcats will try hard, but it won’t be enough.
Some prediction, huh?
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, some of you haven’t met the spaghetti cat.
Alli said:
I just hope Reed really is ready and he’s not just telling the coaches/trainers what they want to hear. He’s too good of a player and teammate to lose to further injury if he comes back to early.
However, this is great to hear.
Best news of the week … if not for Brantwon Bowser. I’m still having a hard time believing Reed made it back, but I just can’t wrap my mind around Bowser’s recovery. And you know he’s going to do something big in the game, too. That stuff always happens.
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So the college football season is actually here with 14 games tonight (No idea why, but Wake Forest v. Baylor intrigues me; Hoffstra will give UConn more than an opponent; Stanford and Oregon State play in a rare intraconference opener). All of the preseason coverage is now done and everythingeveryone has written, read and fretted is about to be played out with all the appropriate pomp and circumstance of the college game. The only thing we know about what happens next as that we really don’t know what happens next.
Which brings me to today’s topic: What’s got you worried about this season? Depth at running back? Finishing at Pitt and against South Florida? The fact the offensive coordinator has never called plays? The altitude of Boulder, Colo.? That I keep stringing questions together in a narrative series?
Go a step beyond the simple prediction — not that there’s anything wrong with that — and share your concerns for 2008. I’ll begin.
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I know what you’re thinking and the answer is “Yes.” They’re all right academically.
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From the sports information department:
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. ( August 27, 2008 ) — ESPN and the BIG EAST have announced that ESPN College GameDay will broadcast live at the WVU Coliseum on Saturday, March 7, when the WVU men’s basketball team plays host to Louisville.
The popular college basketball television show will be making its first-ever appearance at the WVU Coliseum. The show is scheduled to broadcast live twice that day, both for one hour at 11 a.m. and at 8 p.m. West Virginia and Louisville will be televised by ESPN and tip at 9 p.m.
The WVU-Louisville game will be played on the final regular season weekend for college basketball in 2008-09. The BIG EAST is the only conference that will have more than one league school host GameDay this season (Connecticut at Notre Dame on Jan. 24 is the other league contest).
“We are certainly excited about ESPN College GameDay coming to our campus,” says Head Coach Bob Huggins. “It will be a day that we will be able to showcase our great fans, our great University and the great state of West Virginia.”
The BIG EAST will announce the rest of the conference schedule in early September.
No need for pictures today because the scoreboard doesn’t look much different. However, people from Panasonic were testing the videoboard Tuesday night at player/coach interviews. At one point they were spotted engaging in a brief fist-pump. The skeleton for the ribbon is up above the visitor’s sideline, but needs work. I asked eight of the 42 media people in attendance what they thought and five said there was no way it’d be done. Two said they were hopeful. One used an expression I cannot reproduce here.
There appear to be other upgrades, as well, as revealed by — gasp! — Chuck Finder’s blog.
Those giant gold-on-blue letters sat on a tractor trailer outside Mountaineer Field tonight, part of the finishing touches to the new, $5 million scoreboard still being tested before its debut Saturday for Villanova-West Virginia. After practice, Panasonic types opened up a long banquet table and sat at the doorstep to the south end zone, trying out the electronic sucker that’s three times wider than the previous scoreboard. A crane remained in front of the adjoining football facility, awaiting to adorn the gizmo with such final pieces as advertising and the stadium name.
You betcha, those letters are supposed to spell out Milan Puskar Stadium. If you noticed — no master’s-degree jokes just yet, please — missing from the truck was a KA.
… more commonly known as the medical redshirt. An explanation from WVU’s compliance office follows as to how it might relate to Reed Williams and/or Brantwon Bowser … which still seems too good to be true (I’m not sure which I like more: the part where Stew’s confirmation isn’t quite solid enough or the part where I’m accused of stealing from a chat room. I swear, I have an alibi).
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More good recovery news for WVU: Cornerback Brantwon Bowser — my bad — Cornerback Brantwon Bowser, who tore his right ACL in spring practice and was expected to miss the entire season, is practicing with the team and will likely play Saturday against Villanova.
“He’s way ahead of schedule,” Coach Bill Stewart said Tuesday. “He’s going to play he’s so far ahead of schedule.”
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I definitely don’t want to make this P-Rod day at the Daily Mail, but I have to say I couldn’t believe this when I read it … for the millionth time.
Too much for Rodriguez to wrap his mind around the fact that the last six Michigan coaches, going back 70 years, won in their first try against Ohio State.
“I can see people bringing that up, especially since this is my first one,” he said. “But did you see ‘The Lion King?’ A monkey hits a lion over the head and the lion says, ‘What did you do that for?’ And the monkey says, ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past.’
“The past doesn’t matter. What happened 20 years ago isn’t going to get a first down today.”
