March 1 Notebook
March 01, 2006 04:19 PM | General
March 1, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – When you’ve got 49 returning lettermen from a football team that went 11-1 and beat Georgia in the Nokia Sugar Bowl, naturally people are going to have good things to say about you. Depending upon which pundit you have already read, West Virginia could be ranked anywhere from Top 10 to being one of the favorites to win the national championship (so writes ESPN.com’s Pat Forde).
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| Running back Seve Slaton is coming off an 1,128-yard, 17-touchdown freshman season in 2005. He was named MVP of the Sugar Bowl after rushing for a record 204 yards against Georgia.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez has been in this position before in 2004, and then his defending Big East co-champs produced a somewhat ordinary 8-4 record that included season ending losses to Boston College, Pitt and Florida State.
This year, the circumstances may be similar but Rodriguez believes he’s got different players capable of handling the intense pressure of being put under the microscope.
“To handle the pressure and the hype, our players will have to show a level of maturity,” Rodriguez said. “But even as a young team they showed maturity all last year. I have confidence that we will represent Mountaineer football well, whatever the predictions are.
“We have a lot of players coming back from what was an excellent team last season, so it’s natural that people know about us,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve had the favorite label on us before, but those were different players, and it will be something new for our current players.”
The two players getting the most attention are Sugar Bowl MVP Steve Slaton and dynamic quarterback Pat White. Slaton ran for a Sugar Bowl-record 204 yards against Georgia’s nationally ranked defense, scoring three touchdowns. And White had the best rushing performance by any Mountaineer runner in 2005, piling up 220 yards on Pitt in the regular season home finale.
According to Joe Starkey of ESPN.com, White may be just as effective a runner as Michael Vick was at Virginia Tech. At least Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano thinks so.
“It’s very, very similar preparing for him,” Schiano told Starkey. “They’re awful lot alike as far as the things you have to concern yourself with. He is going to give this league fits for a long time. He’s special.”
Fullback Owen Schmitt, who completes West Virginia’s backfield trifecta with a rare blend of power and speed, is also a special player.
Schmitt was recently listed by Bruce Feldman as one of college football’s top workout freaks; the 250-pound Schmitt had the team’s best yards-per-carry average (7.9) and also had the team’s second-longest run (54 yards) from scrimmage.
If West Virginia can get continued improvement from returning wide receivers Brandon Myles and Darius Reynaud, and top-rated prospects Wes Lyons and John Maddox are as good as advertised, then Rich Rodriguez’ spread offense is going to be extremely difficult to defend.
Speaking of the spread, Rodriguez has spent the last couple of weeks hosting several prominent coaching staffs interested in learning more about his offensive system. Several members of Jim Tressel’s Ohio State coaching staff were in Morgantown recently to go over Rodriguez’ offensive philosophies and Rodriguez has also exchanged ideas over the telephone with Texas coach Mack Brown.
Also making a recent return visit to the Milan Puskar Center was former WVU offensive coordinator Dan Simrell, now head coach at Findlay College in Findlay, Ohio. So goes the spoils of having one of college football’s most innovative offenses.
Spring practice begins March 20.
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| Mike Gansey |
It is interesting that the web site picked Dixon as its coach of the year, not so much because he doesn’t deserve it by taking a very young Pitt team with only two seniors and winning 21 of 26 games, but because of the lukewarm response Dixon has gotten for his coaching abilities – even from some ardent Pitt supporters.
I’m not going to get on a soap box about Jamie Dixon, but to be indifferent about the coaching job he’s done at Pitt or to say that the jury is still out on him as a coach (as some I’ve talked to have said) makes no sense to me.
His courtside demeanor aside, Dixon has a 72-19 record in three seasons at Pitt including a 33-14 record in Big East play. The same people that say the jury is still out on him argue that he plays a soft non-conference schedule and that he inherited Ben Howland’s players. Well, he was on Howland’s staff when all those players were being recruited to Pitt and his 33-14 record in the toughest conference in the country speaks for itself. His teams are known around the league for playing extremely hard and he's going to be 3 for 3 in NCAA tournament appearances later this month.
The guy can coach and I hope he hangs around at Pitt for a while because I think Pitt and West Virginia will continue to give college basketball fans in this area many more great games like the one we saw at the Coliseum on Monday night.
The way the two teams battled on just one day’s rest is a testament to the level of basketball both schools are playing at right now.
Cincinnati takes on West Virginia Saturday afternoon at Fifth Third Arena with its NCAA hopes probably hanging in the balance despite having an excellent RPI (27th as of Tuesday according to CollegeRPI.com).
The Bearcats played the remaining 2:49 of the Seton Hall game without 6-foot-6-inch, 245-pound bruiser Eric Hicks, who went down with an ankle injury. After the game Hicks told reporters he would be OK for West Virginia on Saturday.
Syracuse and Seton Hall have probably done enough now to get in with Cincinnati and Louisville still needing some work to do – especially Louisville. For Louisville to have a chance, it will have to win its final two games against Marquette and Connecticut and probably still need to win at least one Big East tournament game to overcome its soft non-conference schedule.
Waters, 16-12 this year, has a 76-73 overall record at Rutgers in five seasons. He will coach the team through the remainder of the year. Waters, who led Kent State to a pair of NCAA tournament appearances before taking the Rutgers job, could never quite get the Scarlet Knights to that level, making just one NIT appearance in 2004.
I recall Waters issuing a warning to other Big East schools that Rutgers was going to be a force to be reckoned with after his team’s 77-59 win over an 8-20 West Virginia team at the Coliseum in 2002. As it turned out, that victory over a very bad West Virginia team was one of the few Big East road wins Waters was able to produce at Rutgers.
In his last game, Bawinkel scored 51 points including 32 straight during one stretch to help Winnebago to a 72-68 victory over Rockford Lutheran High School.
Six-seven forward Desean Butler helped his No. 1-ranked Bloomfield Tech High School team to their first-ever Essex County championship last weekend by scoring a game-high 25 points and collecting nine rebounds to earn game MVP honors. Butler is averaging about 17 points and nine rebounds per game. Bloomfield Tech (24-1) plays in the New Jersey Group 1 quarterfinals Thursday night.
Six-nine, 205-pound center Jacob Green recently scored a season-high 22 points in a playoff victory over Paul VI Catholic High School before his Gonzaga High School team was knocked out a day later by St. John’s High School. Green finished the season averaging 10.2 points per game and shooting 70 percent from the free throw line.
Have a great week!
