Nov. 25-30 Blog
November 25, 2007 10:26 AM | General
We’re changing things up a little bit. For the past four years Campus Connection has kind of been like a weekly blog full of tidbits, notes, commentary, quasi-opinion and weak stabs at humor that have sometimes hit the mark and at other times completely missed. Well, to keep up with the Jones', we’ve decided to turn Campus Connection into a daily blog. If we miss a day then you know we’re struggling.
Hope you enjoy it ...
Thursday Thoughts
Posted By John Antonik: November 29, 2007 (10:47 pm)
Now that should be a lot of fun watching him talk on his cell phone, work on his computer, make copies, eat lunch and go to the bathroom.
Sign me up for that one.
Don’t laugh, in 20 years this guy will be working as the senior college football writer for ESPN.com.
West Virginia’s non-conference home game against Duquesne on Dec. 8 is also going to be a root canal. Coach Ron Everhart has the Dukes off to a 5-0 start with a game coming up Friday night against Cal-Northridge. The Dukes then face No. 11 Pitt in the battle of Pittsburgh before heading to Morgantown.
Think about it.
Rich Rodriguez’s football team is one game away from the BCS championship game and has already sewn up a BCS bowl berth as the Big East champion for the second time in three years, the two soccers are still alive in NCAA tournament play – one in the Elite Eight this Friday in Morgantown and the other in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1981, and the women’s cross country team finished ninth at nationals with predominantly sophomores. They will be national title contenders the next two years.
The discussion hasn’t even turned to basketball, where the women are ranked for the first time in 15 years and the men have Bob Huggins on the sidelines. He’s now six wins shy of 600.
With all due respect to the accomplishments put forth in the 1950s, that period doesn’t come close to matching what athletics is achieving on a department wide basis today. The student-athletes and coaches here right now on campus are among the very best in the country.
Even more remarkably, the success today has been sustained.
Had there been a 3-point goal when Jerry West played he may have scored 5,000 points for his career.
Random Midweek Thoughts
Posted By John Antonik: November 28, 2007 (12:58 pm)
Some random midweek thoughts as we prepare to entertain our friends from up North this weekend …
Peak declined the request until after this weekend – which is probably a smart move.
Barrett has a vault full of stories to tell and it usually doesn’t take much to get him going. One I hadn’t heard happened in 1952 after West Virginia had upset 18th-ranked Pitt, 16-0, at Pitt Stadium.
As the clock neared zero the West Virginia fans were all revved up to rush the goal posts. Pittsburgh city police resisted. Sensing his policemen were vastly out numbered, the chief cop finally said, “OK boys let ‘em have it.”
One of the dumber ones thought he meant that it was OK to whack a fan over the head with his billy club. According to Barrett, the West Virginia fan never felt a thing.
Think about it, today that person would have been at least $5 million richer.
Along those same lines another former WVU SID buddy of mine, Dick Polen, remembers a humorous story involving the debacle that took place in Pittsburgh in 1970.
The Mountaineers blew a 27-point halftime lead and lost the game, 36-35, to the Panthers in one of the most humiliating losses of Bobby Bowden’s coaching career. In the first half West Virginia reporters were having the time of their lives. On several occasions Pitt SID Dean Billick felt obligated to remind them that they were occupying a working press box and that no cheering would be tolerated.
Growing more irritated as West Virginia’s lead swelled, he finally grabbed the microphone from the press box announcer and issued the following command: “There will be no more cheering in the press box!”
In the fourth quarter when Pitt was on its miraculous comeback, some Pittsburgh sportswriters began whooping it up and giving it back to their West Virginia counterparts.
“Billick just stood there as silent as a tree,” Polen laughed. “He never said a word to them.”
Pitt held on for a closer-than-expected 24-16 victory over the fired-up Mountaineers – the only single-digit victory the Panthers recorded that year on the way to a perfect 12-0 record and the school's last national championship.
The Breaks
Posted By John Antonik: November 27, 2007 (10:04 am)
Sometimes you make your breaks and sometimes the breaks are handed to you. The No. 10-rated West Virginia University women’s soccer team got a little of both last weekend.
First, the Mountaineers took care of business at State College, Pa., proving their early season victory over the No. 1-seeded Lions wasn’t a fluke when West Virginia eliminated Penn State from the tournament, 1-0, on a Krystle Kallman header. The Mountaineers pressed the action, putting a lot of defensive pressure on Penn State’s scorers.
“We talked about, before the game, how they we were going to see more pressure than they had seen all season,” Penn State coach Erica Walsh said. “The way that West Virginia defends is all out, all over the field. I don’t think the team expected the type of pressure that they saw.”
Now, the No. 4-seeded Mountaineers got an even bigger break when higher seeded USC’s bid to host the Elite Eight match on its campus was denied. It’s normal for the higher seed to be named the host site but the Trojans have facility issues without adequate accommodations, and the 92,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum where USC knocked off Florida last weekend is not really suited for a women’s college soccer match that typically attracts a couple thousand spectators at most.
Therefore, West Virginia was notified late Sunday evening that Dick Dlesk Soccer Stadium will be a host venue Friday night’s match that will determine one of the four participants at this year’s Women’s College Cup in College Station, Texas.
USC must travel across the country and play in an unfamiliar climate in Morgantown, W.Va., on Friday night. The long term forecast is predicting temperatures in the high 30s by kickoff with a wind-chill factor right around zero. Today’s the expected temperature in Los Angeles is 70 degrees.
West Virginia has also been tough to beat at home, going 29-2-2 in its last 33 games at Dick Dlesk Soccer since 2005.
Heisman Trophy Candidate
Posted By John Antonik: November 26, 2007 (1:26 pm)
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Some have already handed this year’s Heisman Trophy to Florida’s Tim Tebow who has accounted for an incredible 51 touchdowns in 12 regular season games. Others believe Arkansas’ Darren McFadden is back in the race after his 206-yard, 3-touchdown performance in Arkansas’ 50-48 upset victory over LSU.
Missouri’s Chase McDaniel passed for 361 yards in the Tigers’ 36-28 win over Kansas to put Missouri into the national title picture. McDaniel has put together a fabulous season, passing for 3,951 yards and 33 touchdowns in 12 games.
Hawaii’s Colt Brennen is once again putting up monster numbers in leading Hawaii to an undefeated record. Brennen threw 58 touchdown passes last year as a junior and has passed for 3,732 yards and 33 scores so far this year with two games remaining.
West Virginia’s Patrick White must also be included in the discussion. The junior has accounted for 26 touchdowns and has rushed for a team best 1,144 yards, including 100-yard rushing performances in WVU’s last four wins against Rutgers, Louisville, Cincinnati and Connecticut.
White is averaging 240.2 yards per game in total offense.
“I don’t know what defines a Heisman Trophy contender,” Rodriguez said. “Is it the best player in college football or the most valuable player in college football? I don’t know. It’s going to be a guy that has a tremendous impact on each and every game that he plays.
“If that’s the criteria then Pat should be one because he always has a tremendous impact on the game through his running, throwing and leadership abilities,” Rodriguez said.
White’s performance against Connecticut was nothing short of Heisman like in one of the biggest games of the year. The junior ran for 186 yards and two touchdowns and passed for another. In his last four conference wins he has been responsible for 10 touchdowns.
Rodriguez believes White’s performance against Connecticut was one of his best this year.
“He had probably as much of an impact on this game as any game but he does that every game,” Rodriguez said. “I have to look at the notes but maybe East Carolina was as efficient as he’s been his entire career. He graded out pretty well (against Connecticut) but there are still things that he can do better.”
At the very least, White deserves to be in the Heisman discussion and should be among those invited to New York for the award presentation.
Expecting the Unexpected
Posted By John Antonik: November 25, 2007 (10:26 am)
On paper this year’s Backyard Brawl in Morgantown appears to be a mismatch. The 4-7 Pitt Panthers are coming off a 48-37 loss to South Florida and have not won a road game this year. West Virginia clinched the Big East championship on Saturday with a 66-21 victory over No. 20-rated Connecticut. All it seems West Virginia has to do is make sure the bus driver doesn’t get a flat on the way to Milan Puskar Stadium.
Just don’t tell that to Fred Wyant, Bobby Bowden, Mike Sherwood, Johnny Majors, Don Nehlen, Rich Rodriguez or anyone else associated with this football game. Thinking otherwise would be very foolish. Anyone with any comprehension of history knows that anything less than West Virginia’s undivided attention this week against the Pittsburgh Panthers would be a colossal mistake.
There are plenty of examples to cite.
West Virginia’s first great field general Fred Wyant led the Mountaineers to back-to-back victories over Pitt in 1952 and 1953. His last two games against the Panthers when West Virginia was favored and the stakes were much higher didn’t turn out as well. WVU blew its chances at an Orange Bowl bid in 1954 by losing, 13-10, to an underdog Panther team on homecoming in Morgantown.
A year later, Sugar Bowl scouts went up to Pittsburgh to scout an undefeated West Virginia team. They wound up selecting Pitt instead when the Panthers completely dominated the Mountaineers, 26-7, in what Pitt historians assert is one of the Panthers’ biggest victories in the series.
West Virginia has given Pitt problems, too. In 1976 Pitt’s most difficult game on the way to the national title came against West Virginia in Pittsburgh, a 24-16 Panther victory.
“When Majors won the national championship West Virginia almost beat them and West Virginia probably shouldn’t have been on the same field talent wise,” former Pitt coach Foge Fazio once told me.
In 1979, a heavily favored Pitt team got out of Morgantown with a 24-17 victory against a Mountaineer team that was on their way to a fourth consecutive losing season.
Fazio says when it comes to the Backyard Brawl, expect the unexpected.
“I don’t care what the team’s record is because there were times when West Virginia was a big favorite and Pitt won and there were times when Pitt was a big favorite and West Virginia won,” Fazio said.
“The intensity in the Backyard Brawl was such … all of the coaches know each other very well and a lot of the players know each other having played at the same high schools.
“I’m glad to see that it is at the end of the year,” Fazio said. “It brings more meaning to it and I know (in 2004) West Virginia was supposed to win and Pitt won. The year before that Pitt was supposed to win and West Virginia won. There goes my theory.”
