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

Postseason formula

To succeed in whatever type of madness in which you are embroiled during March, it’s generally accepted you need a few things.

1. Experience
2. Guards
3. Shooting
4. Defense

Well, get to know West Virginia’s women’s team, its seven seniors, its wise backcourt, its plethora of perimeter threats and its don’t-you-dare defense.

With Connecticut and Rutgers playing each other to finish their regular seasons, West Virginia can grab no worse than a tie for second place and match the most regular-season victories in school history by winning out — including matchups against Louisville and No. 24 Syracuse. The Mountaineers never have finished higher than fourth in Big East play.

“We bought into defense. If we can play great defense and we can rebound, we have an opportunity to win,” says coach Mike Carey, whose team is 3-4 when opponents shoot 40% or better. “We’re a blue-collar team. We don’t have All-Americans like these other teams. Our players have bought into working hard.”

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Happy birthday, Pat White

He’s going to be a sophomore, right? Right? Best wishes to the kid who may very well be the best player in the country next year. In honor of No. 5, five top moments at WVU.

It’s a guilty pleasure, but one of my favorite parts about the NFL Combine — besides Mike Mayock’s lisp –is the chance or likelihood a star player blows the Wonderlic test. The details come out gradually and I’ve got a few suspects for this year’s intellectual tank job.

Speaking of Vince Young, I’m reminded of the Sweet 16 game in 2006 between Texas and WVU. Young, of course, played football for Texas and the basketball team had P.J. Tucker, who had his share of trouble with academics. WVU fans produced these signs:

Dear P.J.,
Thanks for helping me study for the Wonderlic.
Sincerely,
Vince

If you can read this
you’re not P.J. Tucker

Anyhoo, teams put a lot of stock into the Wonderlic which kind of baffles me because someone can flunk it and teams will look the other way. Let’s be honest: If you have trouble with this, you’re in trouble.

Combine review

If nothing else, WVU’s four participants in the NFL combine started their weekend by saying some interesting things. Owen Schmitt is, of course, a fascinating story and Johnny Dingle will fill your notebook. Then some of the quieter and more soft-spoken Mountaineers got to talking and Steve Slaton and Darius Reynaud had some provocative things to say.

(By the way, this is borderline maddening because players — and those two in particular — wouldn’t say anything like that to the media covering them on a daily basis. I’d step away from the laptop and do something constructive to cool off right now, like go and get a haircut, but I’ve already pulled most of my hair out.)

Then the players got to, uh, combining and it would seem a few guys did pretty well for themselves.

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Friday Feedback

News of the day, of course, is the pending retirement of Ed Pastilong. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy or scheme in motion here. I just thing Pastilong is 65-years-young, has been the A.D. since 1989 and has been through a whole hell of a lot in recent years. “Everyone,” he said Thursday, “reaches the time when he just needs to go fishing.”   

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, I feel your pain … “turn them cameras off.”

Hey, speaking of “Outside the Lines”…

Karl said:

Mike, per your first point, I had the same reaction toward that woman. My first thought was, will this lady look at herself the way I do now when she watches this segment? My second thought was, low blow showing that clip of Coach Gibson’s sister! I kid, I kid …

And per the UWV thing, I don’t think it will ever get worse than the time they brought out James Earl Jones to fire us up during halftime at a game and he messed that up. I assume he was being paid well for being there, yet he made that mistake over the PA system live in front of 65,000 people. 

I can’t find the OTL clip anywhere online, but I wish I could because that woman still terrifies me. I mean, she knows it was a fake Rodriguez, right? I could understand a similar reaction, say, a week after the resignation, but we’re more than two months in now. Seek help. And I remember the James Earl Jones gaffe. He was getting booed as he walked off the field and helplessly waved and smiled. He had no idea what he’d done.

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Note to Hoosiers: Have him sign the contract

So it seems Kelvin Sampson is finished at Indiana, and presumably in major college basketball as well, because he’s a cheater and maybe even a liar. The Hoosiers will be coached the remainder of the season by an interim coach.

Phew. This all sounds familiar. Coaching change. NCAA violations… Wait for it… Wait for it. Oh, I remember now.

It was worse. Villanova, though, provides proof that life is weird and fates change quickly in the Big East. And to think, Villanova had it going without its best player.

Scottie Reynolds went to the bench with his second foul at 13:27, with all zeros on his stat sheet, aside from those personals. Didn’t matter. Dwayne Anderson, who’s been making a difference since he was inserted into the starting lineup, had 17 points on 5-for-6 shooting from the arc. Until then, he’d been 6-for-26 from that distance. He also had four steals. And Corey Stokes came off the bench to contribute 13 points on eight shots in only 8 minutes.

It was that kind of night. Maybe the best thing about the long college season is that it’s a long season.

You make the call

The one time I will admit ESPN is the go-to source is when Joe Lunardi busts out his Bracketology. He’s just really good — really cool?– and manages to kill the thrill that used to be Selection Sunday. He’s so accurate he generally excites or depresses fan bases well before the brackets are released.

Well, he has WVU in, though with six games to go, and what a season-defining six-game stretch this well be: at Villanova, vs. Providence, at DePaul, at UConn, vs. Pitt, at St. John’s.

So I ask you to consider the remaining schedule and the Big East Tournament to answer these two questions:

1. How does the rest of the season unfold?

2. What will it take for the Mountaineers to make the NCAA Tournament?

Finally!

A while back, we picked up on Bob Huggins’ sideline attire and how the man once known for the pullover was doning designer suits. You’ve by now noticed Huggins no longer wears the suits after the debacle against Cincinnati and is back in pullovers. Anyhow, when researching the initial story I stumbled upon a tribute to the Big East’s fashion icon, Villanova’s well-dressed Jay Wright.

Trouble was, it wasn’t at all timely and needed to wait until WVU played the Wildcats. Well, the Mountaineers travel to Villanova tomorrow for an absolutely enormous game and I now have an excuse to run this. True, there are similar tributes to Chuck Norris, Jack Bauer and even Owen Schmitt, but this has a, um, style of its own.

11. When Jay Wright showers, the soap gets cleaned. 

24. Rudy Gay used to be named Rudy Straight until he met Jay Wright.

What Jeff Mullen likes to do

So much has been said and read about WVU’s new offensive coordinator, Jeff Mullen, that the time has come to show some of the (familiar?) antics provided by Wake Forest’s offenses the past two seasons.

Mullen wasn’t a coordinator, at least by title, but he was involved in multiple facets of the offense, including play-calling. Mullen was the quarterbacks coach, as he is with the Mountaineers, and I find it extremely interesting to see how the quarterbacks were used as throwers, runners, blockers and, yes, receivers. No offense to Riley Skinner, who burst upon the scene when Ben Mauk was hurt in the beginning of the 2006-07 season, but he’s not nearly as athletic as is Pat White. Imagine White doing some of the things you see in the video as Mullen takes the WVU offense and paints it black.