Back to Work
December 15, 2004 10:31 AM | General
December 15, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia University football team has three more days of final examinations before beginning serious preparation for 2005 Toyota Gator Bowl opponent Florida State.
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| West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez will put his team through a workout Friday evening following finals.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
Mountaineer coach Rich Rodriguez says his team will get a Friday night practice in after finals and will have six drills including a two-a-day workout Monday before excusing his team for Christmas break. The team will return to Morgantown Christmas day and will fly to Jacksonville in time for a morning practice on the 26th.
“This is a big week for our guys because it’s finals week,” Rodriguez said. “We’re not doing much football wise. They have a couple of workouts they’re doing in the weight room in between finals. Then Friday evening we have a practice scheduled for 6 o’clock. Saturday to next Wednesday the 22nd we’re going to practice them.”
The coach noted that he has been encouraged by academic reports he’s received so far but he won’t know for certain how his team fared academically until the end of the week.
“You have to pass six credit hours if you post the grades before the bowl game. That’s been our standard rule anyway before the NCAA passed that,” he said.
According to Rodriguez, most of the players hobbled at the end of the year have returned to form during the three previous workouts Rodriguez has already put them through. Only wide receiver Eddie Jackson and defensive end Ernest Hunter have been limited in practices.
“The three practices we’ve had they seemed to have gotten their legs back,” Rodriguez said. “They seemed pretty spirited. (Sunday) was a short practice inside and they seemed to have moved around pretty good. We had a pretty physical practice on Friday in full pads. I thought it was a pretty crisp practice.”
Running back Kay-Jay Harris, who opened the season with 337 yards against East Carolina, seemingly lost his breakaway burst as the season wore on. Rodriguez says it appears the Tampa native has regained his step.
“Judging from watching him run around in practice he didn’t limp at all,” he said. “He looked pretty good.”
The coach admits some of Harris’ problems this year can simply be attributed to bad luck.
“He got off to a great start and then he took a really good shot against Boston College,” the coach said. “He got a helmet right on the knee and he tried to come back after that. It’s just been bad luck from his standpoint.”
For a player like Harris who is anxious to see where he stands with the NFL draft, Rodriguez believes Florida State’s defense will present him with a pretty good idea just where he stacks up against the nation’s best players.
“He knows he’ll get challenged and I’ve talked to a lot of them individually. If you want to see where you stand athletic ability wise this is a pretty good measuring stick, especially against their defense,” Rodriguez said.
Because Harris is effective catching the football out of the backfield, Rodriguez has used him some as a slot receiver this year. The coach said that may also be a possibility for the Gator Bowl depending upon how practices in Morgantown go.
“It really depends on how much he can learn and grasp when we get into our heavy practices,” Rodriguez said. “The last practices we’ve had were to basically shake the rust off of them and get them loose again. When finals are over this week then we’ll really start getting into it and we’ll see how much he picks up.”
Rodriguez admits his team will have to come up with a good plan to attack Florida State’s nationally ranked defense. The problem is just about every team Florida State plays has to come up with something unusual to attack its defense.
“It’s funny because you watch people you now offensively and when they play Florida State they will come out with some different wrinkles,” Rodriguez said. “That means they are really racking their heads together thinking, ‘Okay we’ve got to change the formations up and change the tempo up.’ They’re probably getting everybody’s most unique plan every week so even though we’ve got to do some different things for the bowl it isn’t like it’s something they’re not used to.”
The coach says a good performance in the Gator Bowl can go a long way in erasing the memory of his team’s back to back losses to Boston College and Pitt to end the regular season.
“We need to renew some of our confidence. This is not going to be an easy team to do it against because this is going to be the most talented team we’ve played all year,” he said. “But it’s a way for us to feel good about the off-season and for our seniors to feel good about the way their careers ended.”
