Coach Rod's Review
September 06, 2004 09:48 AM | General
September 6, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – After reviewing the game tape Sunday morning West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez was pleased with his team’s effort and execution, but was upset with the large number of penalties accumulated during Saturday’s 56-23 win over East Carolina.
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| Pac-Man Jones returned this punt 76 yards for a touchdown during the second quarter of West Virginia's 56-23 win over East Carolina Saturday.
(All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks) |
West Virginia was flagged an astonishing 14 times for 141 yards, or nearly three times as many yards as East Carolina managed to gain running the football.
“It was really embarrassing to have that many penalties,” he said. “You expect maybe some in the first game but not from some veterans.”
Rodriguez says he will take a pretty harsh approach to addressing the penalty situation this week in practice.
“It was a point after the game, it was a point during the game and it will be a major point (today) when we discuss it,” he said. “A lot of guys will be put under the gun and it won’t be tolerated in the future.
“Some penalties are what we call borderline and some are just plain stupid and the stupid ones are the ones that we have to get corrected immediately,” Rodriguez said.
Injury wise, the coach says his team came out of the game pretty well.
“Ben Lynch strained his shoulder and we don’t know if he’s going to be available this week or not and Ryan Thomas sprained an ankle and he will be questionable for this week as well. Everybody else is okay,” he said.
If both Lynch and Thomas can’t go this Saturday at Central Florida, backups at nose guard and tight end will simply move up into their spots.
“Craig Wilson is the backup nose guard and he has been solid and Josh Bailey has played a lot of games at tight end but we do use two tight ends so that is a concern with Ryan,” Rodriguez said. “And obviously we think Ben Lynch is one of the better nose guards in the Big East so we’re hoping he gets back pretty quick.”
Other than those two possible changes, Rodriguez says competition is still going on for the third and fourth wide receiver spots and he will also take a close look at the punters this week.
“(Punting) is another good question,” he said. “We don’t know if we’re going to go with (Phil) Brady or (Eric) Daugherty yet. We’re going to put them under a little pressure in practice again this week and we’ll see who comes out of there. But we did not kick the ball well or punt the ball well and that was pretty obvious.”
West Virginia had a tough time converting third downs going 1 of 11 Saturday.
“There were poor decisions, poor execution, a couple of times we came up a yard or two short on a route, a couple of times the quarterback made a poor decision and we had a couple of bad techniques up front on the o-line so it was a combination of things,” he said. “I noticed right after the game that it was really, really bad and it’s something we’ve got to work hard on this week.”
On a positive note, the coach was pleased with Kay-Jay Harris’ record setting rushing performance against the Pirates. Rodriguez spent all fall camp trying to get Harris to consistently play the position the way he was capable of playing it.
“He’s a talented guy and he made some really nice cuts and some nice reads but he missed a couple, too,” said the coach. “We felt we had about a 100 and some more yards out there rushing had everything gone the right way. Of course we had some called back because of penalties.
“Obviously Kay-Jay had a great game and he played really well, but we think he can play even better,” Rodriguez added.
That is a frightening prospect, considering Harris ran for a school and Big East record 337 yards and scored four touchdowns. Harris’ 337 yards were the 24th most in a single game in NCAA history. Harris was honored Sunday as the Walter Camp national offensive player of the week.
“That’s a nice honor but I know Kay-Jay will be the first to admit that the big five guys up front did a pretty good job of getting him down to the second level,” Rodriguez said. “But he played well; he played hard and he was very deserving of that.”
Backup Jason Colson added 64 yards and two touchdowns on 13 carries and third-team running back Bryan Wright managed to carry the ball seven times for 28 yards. Wright was questionable for the game with a sprained ankle and had also been nursing a tender hamstring during fall camp.
“He started practicing toward the end of last week and he made a couple of nice runs,” Rodriguez said. “We’re hoping he can be the third guy because he knows our system and he brings something a little different than the other two.”
West Virginia was able to hold out true freshman Pernell Williams on Saturday and will try to keep his redshirt year intact unless something happens to either Harris, Colson or Wright.
“I told him we haven’t decided on the redshirt year yet,” Rodriguez said.
The coach admits Williams’ situation is dependant upon sophomores Erick Phillips and Bryan Wright. Phillips has been sidelined for nearly a year with a left knee injury and could be back in a couple of weeks if he gets full clearance from team doctors.
“(Erick) gets another strength test on his knee (Monday) to see how his knee will hold up so we’ll know a little more then,” Rodriguez said.
Briefly: Central Florida was forced to spend an extra day in Wisconsin due to Hurricane Frances and is not expected to return to Orlando until sometime today. “It’s unfortunate and you feel for all of the people in the state of Florida to get hit twice with another hurricane is just awful and certainly our thoughts and prayers are with them,” said Rodriguez. “They’ve got an experienced coaching staff and they’ll know how to deal with that so whenever they do get back there we’ll see what happens …” Rodriguez said he saw some of the first half of the Wisconsin-UCF game and was impressed with Central Florida’s effort, “I thought they played hard and they looked athletic,” he said. “They gave us trouble last year and it looked like they were an improved team this year so we’re going to have to play a lot better this weekend …” Central Florida played Saturday’s game without head coach George O’Leary, who was in New York attending his mother’s funeral … with classes off due to Labor Day, West Virginia will move it’s Monday afternoon workout up a couple of hours.
