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

Looks like the cat’s out of the bag

December 4, 2016 by Mike Casazza

WVU v. Baylor: Almost 11, West Virginia?

December 3, 2016 by Mike Casazza
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You are looking live at a senior day tradition here at Mountaineer Field.

Ordinarily, the Mountaineer Mantrip takes the players from a parking lot and through a gate into the stadium and then down that stairway onto the field. Today, much of the team arrived in a different manner, coming out of a tunnel at field level and then working their way over to where they assembled to greet the seniors. They made the trip down the stairway for the last time, and a congratulatory gauntlet was there to welcome them. Warms the heart on a chilly day.

There were, of course, tomes to be written about the many seniors this week, and we in the media were allowed to choose from a menu of four choices. Some picked Justin Arndt, an erstwhile walk-on linebacker from Martinsville. Others selected Daikiel Shorts, the 2008 Spottswoode Cabernet Sauvignon of this offense. Others opted for Tyler Orlosky, the honorably ornery center who puts himself in the middle of so many things West Virginia does.

And then there’s Noble Nwachukwu, famously reserved among his teammates, a model for performance and improvement that is achieved by deeds and not by words. His father passed away unexpectedly the morning of the TCU game, and he played and played well.

“It was very hard to focus on the game leading up to the game,” he said. “When I got to the game, I was focused, but for the whole day, it was impossible to think about football. I was playing with a heavy heart out there. I left it all on the field, really.”

In the estimation of his coaches, Nwachukwu had played perhaps his best game. He’d later be named the team’s defensive player of the week.

“I was broken up,” Tall said. “I had a hard time keeping my composure. He’s just a special young man.”

His mother, his younger brother and two of his three sisters are expected to be here today, and the first time they see him play a home game is the last time Nwachukwu plays at Mountaineer Field. WVU’s playing for a lot today, and not just a 10-win season.

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Friday Feedback

December 2, 2016 by Mike Casazza

Welcome to the Friday Feedback. Long week but we … made it.

Oh, man. The replies are gruesome. That’s the “pinned” tweet atop Skyler Howard’s Twitter page. I don’t follow Howard, so I don’t know how long it’s been there — how great would it be if he resurrected it this week amid all the other things going on around him? — but I had someone point it out to me a few days ago specifically so I’d see the replies.  I’ve heard some other stories and been told some other anecdotes this week. Like, did you know Howard sometimes asks a manager to boo him in practice so he feels comfortable? That’s a heck of a way to go through college.

For what it’s worth, I happened to catch a portion of Dana Holgorsen’s radio show last night, and Holgorsen, who didn’t address Howard’s postgame comments Tuesday, perhaps because he wasn’t asked about them, took to Howard’s defense. It wasn’t a universal acceptance or condemnation. It was just sort of addressed. Holgorsen said, in essence, Howard has feelings and is emotional and sometimes dabbles in the extremes, but he added that Howard has been going about his life this way for a long time. He is motivated, and he conjured up this approach to get from high school to WVU by way of stops at Stephen F. Austin and Riverside College.

This is the story of Howard’s three seasons: He is who he is, and some things about him can’t be changed.

Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, take the seasick crocodile.

CC Team said:

WV has maybe two guys that are maybe legitimate All American type players this year; Orlosky and Douglas. Every other starter they have are players who can fit into a machine that runs pretty good, but by themselves are not good enough to lift their team to another level of play. Howard is just one of those guys. But because he is quarterback, his play is much more visible to the common fan than the linebacker or left tackle. So he gets singled out for more often. You can argue that it is the nature of his position and part of what comes with it, and I can’t dispute that. Nor will I defend his public reaction to the boos and criticism he has received. He would have been better off just refusing to react in a public way. But booing him because he isn’t talented enough to fulfill a fantasy of what WV football should be is wrong headed and the root cause of the problem. There are some who choose to emphasize only the negative in him now. That is ridiculous and unfair to him. I think Orlosky’s take says it all. I am a fan of Skyler Howard and am pleased that he chose to bring his talents (quite sizable if not extraordinary) and fight and hustle to the Mountaineers. Unfortunately I will not be at Mountaineer Field to show my appreciation in person when he walks out on the field Saturday, but I stand in support and respect for what he has done for the football team I choose to cheer for.

And we’re off!

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Seth Russell broke WVU, then WVU fixed him

December 1, 2016 by Mike Casazza

 

Last October, Seth Russell had 380 yards passing and 160 yards rushing in Baylor’s 62-38 win at home over West Virginia. No Mountaineers opponent had ever passed for 300 yards and run for 100 yards in a game. No one has since then.

But 13 days later, Russell was in Morgantown on an operating table. He broke a vertabrae in his neck against Iowa State and needed a specific surgery. He found what he wanted at WVU Medicine, where is brother is a resident and where one of the very best orthopaedic surgeons was ready to get him back on the field.

Russell won’t play this week. He broke his left ankle against Oklahoma a few weeks ago — don’t Google it — but he might not have played this season if not for help from WVU.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for him,” WVU coach Dana Holgorsen said. “I think he’s a great kid. He’s overcome a lot. It’s unfortunate that he got hurt a couple of weeks ago. I wish him the very best moving forward.”

Russell is nevertheless grateful for what WVU Medicine gave him last October. His older brother, Joshua, is a resident in WVU’s department of orthopaedics, and it was Joshua who took an interest in Seth’s initial diagnosis and subsequent options.

“When he heard about my injury, he did a lot of research about who are the best doctors in the nation to do this type of surgery,” Seth said. “There were only three who did my type of surgery, and one happened to be in Morgantown at WVU.”

The first wave of opinions and possibilities before that weren’t entirely encouraging for Russell. One doctor told him to consider giving up football. Another insisted. Others presented alternatives to a two-level fusion, which might have been more complicated and would have required a longer recovery. Joshua began looking into single-level fusion. He found assistance down the hall in Dr. Sanford Emery, the department chairman who is the president of the American Orthopaedic Association.

“My brother always tells me you want to make sure your patient is comfortable with you and knows everything is going to go well,” Seth said. “They can’t promise you anything, and you can’t promise anything with surgery, but [Emery] is one of the best in the business.

“I trusted my brother and the research he did, because he’s been through it and done years of medical school. He loves me and wouldn’t put me in a situation that wasn’t going to benefit me the most.”

Bouncing Bob counsels Kicking Nikki

by Mike Casazza

 

West Virginia’s top-ranked women’s soccer team, the lone No. 1 seed remaining in the field of four, makes its first appearance in the College Cup tomorrow evening — and the game is on ESPNU. This is new territory for the Mountaineers and for Nikki Izzo-Brown. Bob Huggins has been to his sport’s equivalent twice.

Huggins also happens to be a fan and supporter of what women’s soccer has done, so of course he had advice for Izzo-Brown, who has solicited wisdom from people who’ve been where she is, and of course what Huggins had to say was concise and indisputable.

“Win,” he said Monday night, after his 25th-ranked team pummeled Manhattan, 108-61. “It’s no fun coming home after losing.”

It’s simple advice, but that’s fitting. Izzo-Brown, who lost Elite Eight matches in 2007 and 2015, is trying to simplify the program’s first trip to the College Cup.

The No. 1-ranked team in the country and the lone remaining No. 1 seed, WVU plays No. 2 seed and seventh-ranked North Carolina, a 21-time NCAA champion, at 5 p.m. Friday at Avaya Stadium, in San Jose, Calif.

That match and the second semifinal between Georgetown and USC will be televised by ESPNU.

“I think it’s a game,” she said. “I’m not going to put any more into it than that. What we’ve done all year long, we’ve had such a great routine and we’ve made sure we’re attuned to what we’re doing and staying focused on what we need to do.”

The one a lot of people don’t want to read

by Mike Casazza

 

I’ve no idea what to expect on senior day when Bill Nevin clears his throat and announces Skyler Howard to the crowd one last time. I’m ready for anything. I suspect Howard is, too.

For what it’s worth, Howard wasn’t available for reporters this week, and I wouldn’t make a meal out of that. West Virginia instead named four permanent captains for the 2016 season, and those fifth-year seniors — Justin Arndt, Tyler Orlosky, Noble Nwachukwu and Daikiel Shorts — were the ones with whom we spoke.

Orlosky, as you might imagine, was asked what he thought.

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The Good and the Bad of WVU v. Iowa State

November 30, 2016 by Mike Casazza

I’d like to welcome Martell Pettaway to the They’ll Never Spell Your Name Right Club. The Hall of Fame committee will meet at the Richwood Avenue Fishbowl next Friday. More importantly, welcome to college football, big fella. That’s running backs coach JaJuan Seider and then running backs Rushel Shell and Justin Crawford greeting the debuting true freshman on the sideline after his first career touchdown.

I think this has to be one of the most surprising individual performances in a long time, at least since Dustin Garrison’s 291-yard game against Bowling Green back in 2011. I welcome other suggestions, and I might even come back around and say this is more surprising. Garrison was at least playing early in his true freshman season. Pettaway hadn’t played at all in the first 10 games. He was the third running back to get a carry Saturday. So, yeah, he was in uniform and he was there for a road game and he had been practicing with the regulars for a few weeks, but this wasn’t supposed to happen.

Thirty carries, too. Thirty. I guess he was fresh? And for a guy with 180 yards, his longest was just 23 yards. He was robbed of one long run, a 35-yard gain that a holding penalty on Daikiel Shorts turned into a 4-yard gain, but everything else was in pretty healthy chunks. He looked more Shell than Crawford/Kennedy McKoy but he looked a little like all of them, too. (Aside: I think Quincy Wilson is a fair comparison, but am I crazy to think of fellow TNSYNRC member Avon Cobourne?) I think more than anything else, he looked like his own player, someone who could hammer away with inside zone plays but someone who could see the corner and get himself ready to hit it at the right speed and angle.

Three plays that proved he was ready to go.

  1. Here’s his debut.

It’s a power play for quarterback Skyler Howard, but Pettaway gets his face in a defender’s face and just does his job. Nothing too amazing, but that got him settled and involved from the jump.

2. Third-and-15, and you’ll find a lot of players who know the odds are long and are happy to get down and get off the field.

Not this guy. He’s 5-foot-10 and 205 pounds, and though I’m not sure about either of those, he’s not a huge kid. But he does run low and lean forward, and he likes to use his legs to thunder through contact or to keep firing away with his feet. That’s how he scored in the fourth quarter.

3. Haven’t seen many traditional screen passes this season, have we?

Near as anyone could tell, Pettaway had never run this play before. I can’t imagine that’s true, but say he has practiced it. He hasn’t practiced it often, because WVU doesn’t do this all that often with the other running backs. It relies on precision and timing, which is to say rehearsal, so I’m not sure anyone was expecting this. It’s the first play of the fourth quarter, and Howard and Dana Holgorsen coached Pettaway up during the break on the sideline to make sure he understood the machinations. Quick study, this one. Big 12 newcomer of the week, and that’s two in a row for the Mountaineers. Crawford had it the week before.

Think of how much trouble WVU used to have when one or two backs were hurt and how different the offense had to behave. The Mountaineers were down three backs Saturday and went past 600 yards with a bunch of backups on the field late in a game in which they had more points and touchdowns than they had in any of the first 10 games. Depth matters, and WVU wasn’t flexing it solely on offense Saturday in the 49-19 win on the road against Iowa State.

How did we get here? Let’s find out by taking a look at the Good and the Bad of WVU v. Iowa State.

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Dana Holgorsen: His favorite week

November 29, 2016 by Mike Casazza

More importantly, I’d like you to meet Tyler Orlosky, film buff.

On if he actually watches the film
No, I don’t. I don’t watch the film, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t see the need for me to sit there and watch a defense. Someone asked me that the other day and I just said, “Once you start 40 games and have played close to 50, if someone throws something at me that I have never seen before than they have reinvented the game of football or something has to be wrong.” There is only so much you can do and odds are in my time here playing against the teams that we have, odds are I have seen it and I know what to expect. I think that takes away from having to watch film to sit there and study and study and study.

Tuesday Haiku

by Mike Casazza

Meanwhile, Rasul Douglas gets a second shot at Baylor and Rasul Douglas sees Baylor for the first time.

“The only thing I do remember was not being me out there,” Douglas said. “Honestly, it wasn’t Rasul out there.”