By John Antonik for MSNsportsNET.com
September 6, 2003
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez can strike another first from his to-do list. The third-year coach was winless in his first two road openers coming into this season. Saturday night Rodriguez snapped that streak with an impressive 48-7 victory over East Carolina in Greenville.
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Chris Henry's first two collegiate catches resulted in touchdowns. (AP photo) |
In 2001, West Virginia dropped a 34-10 game at Boston College in Rodriguez’ coaching debut, and last year the Mountaineers fell 34-17 at Wisconsin in West Virginia’s 2002 road opener.
Here are more notes from Saturday’s victory:
West Virginia’s 41-point win Saturday over East Carolina was the widest margin of victory since the Mountaineers opened the 2002 season with a 56-7 pasting of Division I-AA Tennessee-Chattanooga. Saturday’s result was the third highest margin of victory of the Rodriguez era behind a 73-point win over Rutgers in 2001 and the 49-point win over UTC.
Quarterback Rasheed Marshall’s 11 of 18, 194-yard, four-touchdown performance Saturday was his third-most effective passing game of his career. Marshall, who set a career-high with four TD passes against ECU Saturday, threw for a career-high 219 yards at Wisconsin last year, and passed for 215 yards in WVU’s loss to Virginia in the Continental Tire Bowl.
Marshall’s 194 yards passing were the most he’s thrown in a winning effort.
“Sometimes people say he can’t throw but he really can,” said Rodriguez. “We just haven’t asked him to do much. But we’ve got to start opening it up. East Carolina came in here and put everybody in the box and played man coverage and just basically dared us to throw the ball down the field. We had to do that in order to move the ball.”
Running back Quincy Wilson’s 147 yards Saturday against East Carolina was the fifth time for his career that he has rushed for more than 100 yards in a game. Wilson’s career-high of 198 yards came on 14 carries last year against ECU in Morgantown. Wilson has gained 345 yards on just 33 carries in his last two games against East Carolina.
“Quincy really ran hard,” said Rodriguez. “He’s a little banged up. He had a bruise on his knee and he stayed in there and competed and made some big, big runs for us in the first half.”
Wide receiver Chris Henry’s first two collegiate receptions both resulted in touchdowns. Henry’s first grab went for a 37-yard score and his second TD catch covered 32 yards. Henry finished the game with two catches for 69 yards.
“He’s a big guy and he has the ability to go get the ball, which is what you want in your wide outs,” said Rodriguez. “He’s has a special quality and he’s just a puppy, but we think he’s going to keep getting better and hopefully tonight will give him some confidence.”
West Virginia showed its impressive running back depth Saturday against East Carolina, using six different tailbacks to roll up 361 rushing yards against a Pirate defense determined to stop it. Junior Kay-Jay Harris reached the end zone on his very first collegiate carry – a six-yard run. Harris finished the game with 78 yards on just eight carries, an average of 9.8 yards per carry.
Harris had a long run of 43 yards.
“I knew we had a lot of them run the ball and we wanted to give all of them some carries,” said Rodriguez. “I think we can ever create competition at all of the positions like we have at tailback then we know our program has arrived. That’s the one position were we think it’s going to keep getting better because there’s so much competition there.”
West Virginia’s 555 yards of total offense was more impressive when considering the fact that the Mountaineers used a revamped offensive line consisting of a redshirt freshman (Dan Mozes) and two sophomores (Garin Justice and Travis Garrett).
“We had some new starters in there. We started Travis Garrett on the right side and I thought they competed well. East Carolina came out in a little different defense than we thought but it was something we had seen in the past. Once they got adjusted to it I thought they did pretty well,” said Rodriguez.
After getting no turnovers last Saturday against Wisconsin, West Virginia produced five turnovers against East Carolina (three fumbles and two interceptions) Saturday night. Linebacker Adam Lehnortt had a fumble recovery and an interception, Lance Frazier made an interception and Jason Hardee and Ernest Hunter had fumble recoveries.
“We got some turnovers early and that was the key,” said Rodriguez. “We capitalized on those and it kind of snowballed on them.”
Sophomore safety Mike Lorello was the unofficial leader in tackles with seven. Brian King, Scott Gyorko and Grant Wiley had six tackles each. A total of 24 different players were credited with tackles Saturday against East Carolina.
Despite limiting East Carolina to just one late touchdown and winning rather easily, the West Virginia defense is still searching for its first sack of the season.
West Virginia ran 66 offensive plays and averaged 8.4 yards per game. East Carolina had 74 plays and averaged 4.4 yards per play.
There were just seven penalties called on both teams for the game; ECU was penalized five times for 39 yards and WVU was called for three penalties for 30 yards.
West Virginia punter Todd James had a much better game Saturday than in the opener, averaging 45.0 yards on two kicks. He had a long of 49 yards.
The Mountaineers have yet to commit a turnover in eight quarters of play in 2003. Last year West Virginia ranked among the nation’s best in turnover margin.
After converting just four of 14 third-down conversions in the opener against Wisconsin, West Virginia made six of 10 third-down conversions against East Carolina.
