Frequent Myles
March 24, 2006 01:30 PM | General
March 24, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – A lot has been written and discussed about the fabulous seasons freshmen Pat White and Steve Slaton had last year – and deservedly so – but flying under the radar in 2005 was wide receiver Brandon Myles.
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| West Virginia wide receiver Brandon Myles was one of the unsung offensive heroes of 2005, according to Coach Rich Rodriguez.
Brent Kepner photo |
The Goochland, Va., resident had a team-leading 34 catches for 536 yards and three touchdowns. One of those grabs was an athletic reception at Cincinnati in which he tipped an under-thrown pass to himself that was replayed over and over on ESPN.
“After watching the tape from last year’s games, Brandon Myles really came on to become one of our better playmakers and he’s coming back in the best shape of his life right now,” said Rodriguez. “He was one of our most valuable players.”
Rodriguez expects an even more productive season from Myles in 2006.
“He needs to have one of those big, big years that we need from our X,” Rodriguez said.
Myles, forced to sit out a year due to academics, is getting a fourth season of eligibility because he was able to graduate in four years.
“We can no longer take non-qualifiers in our league and Brandon Myles is a perfect example of a non-qualifier that is going to graduate,” Rodriguez said. “He is going to be a great representative of West Virginia University and the Big East Conference but because of the new rule we can’t get anymore Brandon Myles’ and that’s a shame.”
What Rodriguez is referring to is a school vote by Big East member institutions recently to no longer accept academic non-qualifiers. That means a prospective football player with an adequate grade point average that fails to earn a qualifying score on either his ACT or SAT will not be permitted to enroll at a Big East school.
West Virginia hasn’t taken a large number of partial and non-qualifers in the past, but has had great success with the ones presently in the program. In addition to Myles, wide receiver Darius Reynaud and tight end Brandon Tate are now thriving after sitting out a season due to academics.
“I think it was some people sitting up on their ivory tower thinking we’re going to take a stand academically without trusting the individual institutions to stand on their own integrity, which I believe we can and have and will always continue to do,” Rodriguez said. “People who made this decision don’t really understand what a non-qualifier is.
“I can understand limitations but to simply say a kid has a poor test score and he cannot graduate from college to me that’s (wrong),” Rodriguez said. “There are some that can’t but there are a lot of them we’ve taken and other schools have taken that turned out to be pretty productive members of the university and society. To deny them an opportunity because they do poorly on one test – to me it isn’t right but what do I know? I’ve only been recruiting for 21 years.”
What bothers Rodriguez most is that other equally prestigious conferences are not denying prospective student-athletes the opportunity to attend college. Several of them currently allow limitations on the number of non-qualifiers accepted by each school.
“The SEC and Big Ten have pretty good academic reputations and they take them,” he said.
If the present academic standards were in place when Rodriguez was a player at West Virginia University in the early 1980s, he’s not sure how many of his teammates would have been afforded the opportunity to go to college.
“There wasn’t a minimum when I played here as far as eligibility for the NCAA, but there were a lot of guys that I played with who wouldn’t have been at West Virginia or anywhere else,” he said. “And those people I’m talking about are now all successful in their careers: teachers, businessmen and even newspaper writers.”
Briefly:
“I’d prefer to have him just kick but we’ll put the best one out there,” Rodriguez said. “We’re going to work on special teams every day this spring.”
“Those two are in positions of need,” Rodriguez said. “They had pretty good off-season workouts. What gray shirting has allowed them to do is have a fall semester just to work on things and enroll in the spring and kind of learn our system. I’m not going to say they’re going to get into our two-deep, but they’re going to get a pretty good look.”
Another gray shirt, Thor Merrow, is an undersized defensive end right now who can also long snap. He is the son of WVU standout defensive tackle Jeff Merrow.
“He’s about 230 and our defensive ends are about 280, but I’m anxious to see what he can do in there,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said a key factor in the development of the offensive line will be how well tackle Chris Bassler comes back from knee surgery last fall.
“He had a great off-season upper body wise,” Rodriguez said. “I still think he needs to get confidence in his lower body. But he’s one of the better athletes we have up front and we actually need him to be one of the guys we can count on at tackle. It’s a big, big spring for him.”
“That will be some of our guys best shot of getting on national TV,” Rodriguez joked. “As you can imagine, our spring game will be watered down. We may come out in the wishbone because somebody in Huntington may be watching our spring game. What they see there won’t be the true Mountaineer stuff.”
The coach said he is also considering letting fans call some plays again during the spring game this year.
“I like going into the stands and letting them call plays and seeing if the 25-second clock runs down. It does every time so I can get on them about a delay of game.
“I was a little nervous the first time about the mechanics of it but I had a lot of requests and just about everybody wanted to throw the ball to the tight end,” Rodriguez said.
The spring game will take place at Milan Puskar Stadium on Saturday, April 15. Kickoff is scheduled for 12:30 pm.
