August 1 Notebook
August 01, 2006 03:21 PM | General
August 1, 2006
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The Associated Press preseason Top 25 poll will come out later this month and all indications point to West Virginia being ranked anywhere from No. 5 to No. 10. More than likely it will be the highest West Virginia has ever been ranked in the AP preseason poll, exceeding its No. 10 preseason billing in 2004.
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| West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez's Mountaineer team will have to contend with lofty expecations this fall.
Bill Amatucci photo |
Prior to that, the Mountaineers almost cracked the preseason Top 10 in 1998 when they were ranked 11th.
This year should represent the 11th time West Virginia will make an appearance in the preseason rankings since the AP began rating teams in 1936. Unfortunately, preseason rankings have seldom been an accurate judge of the type of teams West Virginia has fielded.
Only four times -- 1953, 1955, 1988 and 1989 – has West Virginia started the season ranked and also finished it ranked.
Coach Art Lewis’ 1953 team began the year No. 17 and finished with and 8-1 regular season record, a meeting against Georgia Tech in the 1954 Sugar Bowl, and a No. 11 final rating.
Two years later, Lewis’ 1955 team was ranked No. 19 in the preseason and finished where it started -- ranked 19th.
In 1988, Don Nehlen’s Mountaineer team came out of the preseason ranked 16th and wound up recording the school’s first-ever undefeated regular season and faced Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship. West Virginia finished that season ranked fifth.
And in 1989, Nehlen’s Mountaineer team behind Heisman Trophy candidate Major Harris had a No. 17 preseason rating and finished the year ranked 21st.
More times than not, however, preseason rankings have proved meaningless. In 1970, Bobby Bowden inherited a large nucleus of Jim Carlen’s 1969 Peach Bowl-champion squad and was rated 20th in the preseason, but lost regular season games to Duke, Pitt and Penn State and finished the year 8-3 and outside the rankings.
A trio of Don Nehlen-coached teams feeding off successful previous campaigns couldn’t capitalize. In 1990, West Virginia was ranked 25th but wound up with a losing 4-7 record. In 1994 and coming off a Sugar Bowl appearance against Florida, West Virginia was ranked 24th in the preseason before losing four of its first five games and finishing with a 7-6 record.
And in 1995, West Virginia turned a No. 23 preseason ranking into a losing 5-6 record.
Most recently, a pair of highly touted Mountaineer teams couldn’t parlay lofty preseason expectations into post-season success. In 1998 West Virginia, behind a large collection of future NFL players, began the year ranked 11th and then lost its home opener to No. 1-rated Ohio State. The Mountaineers then ended the year with a 34-31 belly flopper against Missouri in the 1998 Insight.com bowl.
And Rich Rodriguez’s 2004 team was tabbed No. 10 in the preseason and climbed to as high as sixth before dropping its final three games of the year to Boston College, Pitt and Florida State to completely fall out of the rankings.
So, how will this year’s highly touted team fare in 2006?
Stay tuned.
Briefly:
 Jetavious Best |
 Ed Collington |
 Jason Colson |
Senior Jason Colson has been a steady performer gaining more than 1,000 yards and scoring 10 touchdowns during his three-year career. He is also slated to get work at slot receiver. Fullback Owen Schmitt can tote the leather, too, averaging 7.9 yards per rush last year as a sophomore and ripping off the longest run from scrimmage of any WVU running back (54 yards).
But after that, well, it’s anyone’s guess. The coaching staff is high on Penn Hills High School product Ed Collington who sat out last year to concentrate on academics. But he hasn’t played football in more than a year and rust could be a factor.
Jetavious Best enrolled last January but missed the latter part of spring drills with a broken wrist. And Eddie Davis is a true freshman who only played four games at running back last year at Freedom High School in Tampa, Fla. However, one of those games was a school-record 275-yard rushing performance against Tampa Tech.
Here is the Reader’s Digest version: After the conference champion goes to the BCS (the league lost its anchor status this year meaning it’s a BCS free agent), the remaining Big East schools must then navigate through a series of complex deals and counter deals with its remaining bowl partners.
For instance, the league’s second place team now shares its Gator Bowl spot with the Big 12, meaning the Big East No. 2 team could fall to the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas, if the Gator picks a team from the Big 12. The Big East must also contend with Notre Dame because the Irish are in the mix for those two games should the Domers fail to land a spot at the BCS table.
This year, the Big East No. 3 team is slotted for the Meineke Car Care Bowl but will be bumped if Navy is bowl-eligible. At No. 4 and No. 5 are the Birmingham and Toronto Bowls – both first-year games.
And while this scenario appears bleak, especially for the conference’s No. 3 team, it is only temporary. Here is the background: the Meineke Car Care Bowl wanted to lock up the league’s No. 3 pick, but the Houston Bowl stepped up financially and made a commitment so the conference made that game its No. 3 selection. Soon after that the Houston Bowl ran into financial trouble and had to back off its commitment.
In the meantime, the Meineke Bowl made the one-year deal with Navy. After the 2006 season, the Big East will resume its previous affiliation with the Meineke Bowl and will again send its No. 3 team to Charlotte.
And now you know the rest of the story.
-- Nichols labeled Bloomfield Tech standout Da’Sean Butler as the one freshman possibly best equipped to help the team right away. According to Nichols, the 6-7 forward has been the most impressive in pickup games because “he can guard the 1 through the 5.”
Nichols believes the freshmen that can play the best defense will be the ones who get on the floor the quickest.
-- He said he had second thoughts about playing in the back of the 1-3-1 zone defense. “The first thing I’m thinking playing against Hakim Warrick and all those guys is that I’m going to get dunked on every time,” he said. “But it’s different than you think … you’re well-protected back there.”
-- Nichols maintains that 6-8 sophomore forward Joe Alexander has all of the necessary tools to be a solid college player. A big key for Alexander, according to Nichols, will be how well he picks up the system this year and understands his role on the team.
“I told him that he has all the talent in the world … he could definitely play at the next level,” Nichols admitted. “But he kind of started late and he doesn’t have a great feel for the game yet. He’s starting to get it. He understands how athletic he is and he is starting to slow his game down.”
Nichols explains.
“We were playing one-on-one (recently) and I’ve noticed that he has gotten a lot better with the little things like jab stepping,” Nichols said. “He’s so fast he’ll do a cross-over and cross back over before the defense even has time to react to his first move. I’m like, ‘Joe, you’ve got to slow it down to give the defense time to react.’ Once he did that he got a lot better.’”
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| Kevin Pittsnogle pictured here with Boston Celtics general manager Chris Wallace, a Buckhannon, W.Va., native.
Boston Celtics photo |
Pittsnogle is one of 18 players currently listed on Boston’s team roster. He is probably vying with second-year forward-center Dwayne Jones, third-year center Kendrick Perkins and 11th-year center Theo Ratliff for one of the post spots on the team behind eighth-year NBA veteran Michael Olowokandi.
Fifteen players make up final NBA rosters.
Pittsnogle has been assigned jersey number 51 for training camp.
Gator co-defensive coordinators Charlie Strong and Greg Mattison each got raises of $35,000 to boost their salaries to $225,000. They are the highest-paid coaches on the Florida staff.
The lowest paid members of the Florida staff will each earn $130,000 this year.
In nine combined appearances with the Gulf Coast League Twins, Elizabethtown Twins and now Beloit, the right-hander is a combined 4-0 with a 0.37 earned run average and 23 strikeouts in 24 innings pitched.
Have a great week!
