Eastern Washington Preview
September 07, 2006 04:43 PM | General
September 7, 2006
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| Rich Rodriguez |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – No. 5-ranked West Virginia makes its second appearance this season at Milan Puskar Stadium on Saturday facing I-AA Eastern Washington in a 1 pm non-conference match up. Eastern Washington was a late replacement for Buffalo, which pulled out of the game last February and will instead play Bowling Green this weekend.
“We had to scramble to find anyone and we’re lucky we found them,” said West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez. “Most Division I football schedules are made years in advance: usually five to six years minimum. If a team drops you in February with six months to go, who are you going to find? You can call up Notre Dame and see if they’ll agree to a home and home but I don’t think they’ll do it.
“We needed a home game.”
Eastern Washington of the Big Sky Conference is making just its fourth trip east of the Mississippi River to play a football game. The last time was in 2001 when the Eagles upset Connecticut 35-17 when UConn was a I-A independent.
Saturday’s game at sold-out Milan Puskar Stadium will be the largest crowd Eastern Washington has ever played in front of by more than 20,000 (Eastern lost 38-2 at Arizona State in 2002 before 39,581). And Eastern Washington’s last game against a nationally ranked I-A team came in 1990 when the Eagles lost 84-21 at No. 10 Houston.
“Playing a program at that level will provide a great environment and experience for our team,” said Eastern Washington coach Paul Wulff. “The atmosphere will be a lot different than what we are accustomed to, but it will be a good test of where our players see themselves against a team at the highest level of college football. We fully expect to do well and play good football, and are excited for the challenge.”
Rodriguez says his team’s approach for Saturday’s game won’t be any different than it was a week before playing Marshall.
“We’re going to try and do everything we can to win the game,” he said. “They all count as one. When they make a rule change that this game is worth two or three and that game is worth a half, then we’ll change our approach.”
Eastern Washington (0-1) is coming off a 56-17 loss at Oregon State last weekend in which the Eagles turned the football over three times in Beaver territory, setting up easy Oregon State scores.
“The first three times they had the ball they turned it over and Oregon State had it inside the 20,” Rodriguez said. “They were behind so fast and so early that just deflated any hopes they had.”
Eastern Washington also lost its starting quarterback Chris Peerboom to a concussion and starting center Chris Carlsen to a knee injury. Both won’t make the trip to Morgantown. Starting in place of Peerboom is freshman Matt Nichols, who completed 9 of 18 passes for 117 yards against Oregon State. Eastern Washington had 126 yards of total offense against the Beavers.
“We want to get better from our first game and there is a lot of room for improvement,” Wulff said. “We need to correct the things that are correctable from that first game.”
Rodriguez, having coached at the Division II level at Glenville State, was once in Wulff’s shoes taking teams up a level facing I-AA programs like Indiana State and Georgia Southern. Rodriguez didn’t pull any punches with his players.
“I told them this is for the money,” Rodriguez said. “They were excited because they thought they were getting a new t-shirt. I said, ‘Guys we’re not doing this for notoriety or anything like that, we’re doing this so we can pay the bills.’ Those guys looked forward to it because on those trips we took a Greyhound with the TVs and we got to stay in a nice hotel and we got to eat at those all-you-can-eat steakhouses.
“From a competitive standpoint those guys loved to compete with the schools at a higher level,” Rodriguez continued. “They weren’t intimidated and they all felt they had something to prove.
“I know they are going to be fired up coming here: it’s not like we’re playing with 24-year-old men against 16-year-old kids. Those guys will get jacked up and they’ve got athletes and coaches that work hard so you’ve got to play.”
All Rodriguez has to do is remind his team of last year’s game against I-AA Wofford -- a hard-fought 35-0 WVU victory.
“Wofford battled us around a little bit last year,” Rodriguez said.
Game time is 1 pm and there is no live television. Fans can follow the radio broadcast on the Mountaineer Sports Network. The MSN broadcast is on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 153 and can also be accessed through the Internet at CSTV All Access.
Briefly:
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| Damien Crissey |
“That’s a tough blow for him and for us,” said Rodriguez.
The coach listed tight end Mike Villagrana as doubtful for Eastern Washington with a bad back, and he says safety Ridwan Malik (shoulder) and defensive lineman Doug Slavonic (foot) will once again not dress.
“The thing we see defensively is some of their fronts are the same but their coverages are different,” he said. “We don’t know whether that was a coverage particularly for Oregon State or if it was a philosophy change because they replaced both corners. I don’t think we’ll know for sure until we play them.”
“We’re going to take a look at Eddie and let him get some reps because he’s a fast guy,” Rodriguez said. “We’re looking for another tailback. We know what we have with Jason Colson, Owen Schmitt and Steve Slaton, but we’re looking for another young guy to step up. This week it’s going to be Collington battling Davis.”
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| Eddie Davis |
Rodriguez says the only other true freshmen that could lose their redshirts are Davis and backup left tackle Derek Hayes.
“We’re taking Derek Hayes and giving him a few reps to teach him like we did with Dan Mozes when he was a freshman,” Rodriguez said. “But our plan is still to try and redshirt him.”
The coach also mentioned that Lyons will continue to get more work at wide receiver.
“The biggest thing that has held Wes back is he had a small fracture in his finger,” Rodriguez said. “Even though he was practicing he wasn’t going to be 100 percent catching the ball. He’s still got a splint on it but that will come off hopefully in a week or so. We see improvement everyday and we’re real excited about Wes.”
Of the five, Dervil’s appearance was the most surprising since his eligibility status wasn’t resolved until three days before the game.
“He got eligible on Wednesday and he missed a week of practice getting all that worked out,” Rodriguez said. “Now that he has a full week of practice; we’ve got him inserted on some special teams and I think he will get a little more confidence there. We’ll see how he progresses in the nickel and the dime packages.”
