Early Return
November 22, 2006 08:22 PM | General
November 23, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez wouldn’t mind seeing the temperatures in the 30s with a stiff wind and a little snow when South Florida travels to Milan Puskar Stadium for a Big East game this Saturday at noon.
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| Running back Steve Slaton is coming off a career-high 215-yard rushing performance at Pitt.
AP photo |
The three coldest games in Bulls history were 33 degrees against Connecticut last year, 45 degrees at Cincinnati earlier this year and 46 degrees at Memphis in 2003. Two of those three games were South Florida losses.
“You’d kind of hope it would be about 15 degrees and at the end of (Monday’s) practice it was snowing a little bit and it was about 30 degrees. I’d like to see it but I don’t know if our players would,” Rodriguez said. “The guys from down south are used to it but I don’t know if they like it.”
The temperatures for Saturday, however, are expected to be in the high 50s. And while that won’t bother the South Florida Bulls, it is the perfect recipe for having a large and vocal crowd. A limited number of tickets returned by South Florida have already been sold, but a large number of student tickets have not been claimed with West Virginia University on Thanksgiving recess.
As of Tuesday, about 4,000 student tickets have been requested with roughly 8,500 left to be claimed by Saturday. Rodriguez is hopeful as many students as possible will return to campus early to catch an important conference game.
“Our students are off but I’d like to see them come back,” he said. “We’ve averaged close to 60,000 and the reason we’re not at 60,000 for our last game is because we didn’t have our students there. To me, our students need to come back and make that thing 60,000 people.”
Rodriguez says his team feeds off the students.
“I can’t emphasize that enough -- our guys know when the fans are in the game,” he said. “It’s our job to keep them into the game by making plays and doing things that are exciting, but our fans can help us in that regard.”
Having large and supportive crowds are also important for recruiting.
“The atmosphere is good for TV and for recruiting,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve got recruits that come to every game and you want them to see the atmosphere. Obviously compared to the rest of the schools in the Big East we’re averaging 20,000 more than anybody else in the Big East. Of course we’ve got a bigger stadium.
“I think we have one of the best atmospheres in the country and certainly in this part of the country. The students play a big part in that as do our fans,” Rodriguez said. “We want them to be in the game and our players can feel it.
“The empty seats that I saw in the last game were in one corner of the stadium where the students sit. We’ve got great students but to be true, passionate football fans they need to fill those up and I hope they do,” Rodriguez said.
The coach can understand the low student turnout for last year’s Pitt game during Thanksgiving recess when temperatures barely got above freezing.
“I remember this time of the year last year it was miserable,” Rodriguez said. “I can understand them not coming when its 5 degrees but it’s not going to be 5 degrees this weekend.
“The weather is supposed to be nice.”
West Virginia leads the Big East in attendance averaging 59,664 fans per game. The season high was 61,077 for the season opener against Marshall.
Briefly:
“With the starters we’re in pretty good shape,” he said. “Owen Schmitt is still a little banged up but he should be a little better for this game than he was the last game. A couple of our special teams guys – Ovid Goulbourne and Barry Wright are probably both out with hamstrings.
“Phil Plank is another special teams guy that may be out – we’ll know that in a day or two,” Rodriguez said. “Greg Isdaner has a little bit of a shoulder thing but he should be OK.”
“Because most of our players aren’t from within the vicinity we’re going to have a little Thanksgiving dinner (Wednesday) after practice,” Rodriguez. “A lot of our guys I think their families are coming up so they can have dinner with them.
“I feel for the guys that are so far from home and their families aren’t coming up,” Rodriguez said. “They may get hooked up with other guys.”
The team normally wraps up practice around 5 o’clock but Rodriguez said it will conclude at 2:30-3 pm on Thursday.
Because West Virginia has spent the past two Thanksgivings playing football games, Rodriguez says it will be nice enjoying an evening off with his family.
“I don’t think (wife) Rita is going to have a couple of turkeys in the oven with stuffing --not that she couldn’t cook it. We just haven’t been home for Thanksgiving dinner,” Rodriguez said. “We actually got two new ovens -- we remodeled our kitchen – and they’ve not been used yet.
“I’m sure Rita is really excited about using those ovens,” Rodriguez joked. “Another reason we’re ending early is so the coaches can have dinner with their families, too. It should be fun.”
