Magee Likes His Backs
July 31, 2003 09:54 PM | General
August 4, 2003
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Excuse running backs coach Calvin Magee if he’s wearing an ear-to-ear grin when West Virginia begins fall practice today.
And no it’s not because he likes standing out in the hot sun all afternoon either.
The reason Magee is so happy is because he is welcoming one of West Virginia’s deepest and most talent group of runners since the early 1970s when Coach Bobby Bowden had the likes of Jim Braxton, Bob Gresham, Kerry Marybury, Pete Wood and Eddie Williams prowling the old Mountaineer Field AstroTurf.
Despite losing the Big East’s all-time leading rusher in Avon Cobourne, Magee concedes the group he’s working with this year could rank among the best in the Big East Conference.
“We feel pretty good,” he said. “We have Quincy Wilson who is unbelievable. I don’t know if people are going to be surprised or not but he’s the real deal. Then we’ve got Hikee (Johnson) coming back and we also have some young guys who can step in, get some experience, and keep learning.”
Magee is referring to redshirt freshmen Erick Phillips, Jason Colson and Bryan Wright.
Phillips is a powerful, close-to-the-ground runner who earned first team all-Ohio honors two years ago after rushing for nearly 5,000 yards at Davidson High School, located in the Columbus, Ohio, suburbs.
Colson caught everyone’s attention last fall with his terrific speed and great instincts. Colson is perhaps WVU’s fastest running back and matches that speed with good size (6-foot, 200 pounds). Colson is a native of Rochester, N.Y.
West Virginia also found a gem in tiny 5-foot-6, 185-pound Bryan Wright of Romney, W.Va. All Wright did was score on touchdown runs of 70 and 2 yards in the spring game and finished the scrimmage as the top rusher with 74 yards on just 6 carries.
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| Coach Calvin Magee says having six good running backs is a good problem to have. (All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks) |
Hikee Johnson is a former Virginia recruit who has been in the WVU program now for a couple of seasons. Johnson combines fullback size (5-foot-11, 207 pounds) with tailback speed.
The icing on the cake comes in the form of 6-foot-2, 240-pound Kevin “Kay-Jay” Harris, a 24-year-old transfer from Garden City Community College. Harris was considered one of the top junior college runners last year after returning to the gridiron following a three-year professional baseball career.
Although Magee is anxious to see what Harris can do on the field, he’s reluctant to make any predictions.
“I don’t want to talk about expectations. I know he’s very talented and I plan to see what he can do just like I plan to see what all of our backs can do,” Magee said. “He’s got a lot of the offense to learn and it has helped that he’s been around for a while. We just have to see how he does when we put it all together.”
All six bring different skills to the table. Magee says his job is to make sure that all of them bring everything to the table.
“That’s what they are all working on … working on the areas they need to get better,” he said. “It helps that we’ve got Quincy, who is a senior leader.”
Magee also can’t go without mentioning his man Moe Fofana, a 5-foot-10, 250-pound blocking monster.
“Moe might be the glue to it all,” he said.
Having six good tailbacks could cause Magee some headaches finding playing time for them all. He says that’s a good problem to have.
“The one thing we do as a staff is to make it very clear that the people who give us the best chance to win will be on the field,” he said. “They know that going into it. It’s competitive and that’s the way it should be.
“Naturally you want all of your players to be happy but I don’t give a lot of thought to that,” he added. “I just coach them positively and they all know it’s about competition.”
Making things easier for Magee is the fact that his large group of runners are broken down nicely between classes.
“There’s some separation in the classes, so it’s not like they’re all seniors,” he said. “That’s the best part about it.”
One thing Magee won’t do is shuttle more than three backs into a game, provided everyone stays healthy.
“Typically you want to rotate two to three backs,” he said. “Any more than that and it gets tough for them to get into a rhythm.”
Believe it or not, the coach says the best way for a young runner to catch his attention is not by ripping off an 80-yard touchdown run.
“They should be doing that,” he said. “I get excited about a pickup on a blitz or making a block on the perimeter because that’s what we want them to learn to do.”
Magee admits that the hardest part of his job is making young running backs understand that the there is more to the game than just running the football.
“Most of them in high school, including Quincy Wilson, just carried the football,” he said. “When they didn’t carry the football they kind of watched the game.”
Now, all eyes will be watching them.
