Football Notebook
November 25, 2007 08:05 PM | General
November 25, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The message Rich Rodriguez delivered to his team after the South Florida loss back in September was that anything can happen in college football. Go back to work, do the things you’ve been taught to do and let’s see where the chips fall.
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| Rich Rodriguez has won 32 of his last 36 games at West Virginia since 2005.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
Rodriguez knows what he’s talking about. The Mountaineers are right in the thick of things with the 100th annual Backyard Brawl looming on Saturday. WVU-Pitt games have always taken on importance in the tri-state area, but this week additional meaning has been placed on one of the oldest continuing rivalries in college football.
On Saturday night Milan Puskar Stadium’s press box will be stuffed with a Who’s Who of college football journalists. Rodriguez, meanwhile, is concentrating solely on the 4-7 Pittsburgh Panthers coming to Morgantown to play the spoiler’s role.
“The fact that it’s a rivalry game and Pitt is just up the road, a lot of our players know their players and we go against them in recruiting,” Rodriguez said. “That in itself makes it a big game. Then you add to the fact that it is our seniors’ last home game and that’s a very emotional moment for us. For our seniors’ last home game to be against Pitt with a lot at stake we should have no problem getting the guys motivated and focused. I’m not worried about the game itself. Their players and our players - everybody is excited when you play a game.”
Rodriguez knows, too, that Pitt will be coming to Morgantown with a chip on their shoulder and a captive national television audience to showcase its program.
“They’ll play us extremely hard. They do every year. They’ve got good players and they’ve got good coaches and we’re going to get their best shot, I guarantee you that,” Rodriguez said.
By design, the Big East Conference has positioned some of the league’s traditional rivalry games at the end of the year with so much at stake. It makes for compelling television and helps build a burgeoning league.
“We don’t schedule the game at the end – the conference does that. They probably scheduled the game with the thought that both teams would be competing for the Big East championship,” Rodriguez said. “It’s always a big game regardless, but the fact that so much more is at stake this year adds to the story line.”
Rodriguez says he will take the same approach this week that he took last week in getting his team prepared to face Connecticut for the Big East championship.
“We have a great opportunity and I told the team before the game yesterday, let’s enjoy the opportunity and let’s not be all tense and tight about it. Let’s go out and play each play for a championship,” Rodriguez said.
It’s hard to find anything wrong with West Virginia’s performance last Saturday against the No. 20-rated Huskies, the Mountaineers rolling up 42 second-half points in a 66-21 runaway victory. It was the most points scored by a West Virginia team since 2001 when the Mountaineers put 80 on Rutgers. This effort, however, came in a championship type atmosphere.
“I thought the guys played pretty hard. I thought (UConn) played hard as well,” Rodriguez said. “Our execution at times was not at a championship level defensively in the first half. Offensively we had a few missed assignments at times in the first half. But the third quarter I was really impressed. Our defense made some nice stops. We executed the offense and we played like we were capable of.
“We were fortunate to get a couple of turnovers and pull away,” Rodriguez said. “We certainly played better than we did in the first half and even then, I thought our guys were trying to put the pressure on them and it was a good win.”
Briefly:
Montoro also said an ESPN television crew was at the Puskar Center Sunday evening in preparation for a future piece that is running on quarterback Patrick White. As is the case with all game weeks any interview requests are filled by Tuesday evening.
“Our scheduling is so far in advance – four, five and six years in advance – and you don’t know what kind of team you are going to be playing,” Rodriguez explained. “You have an idea what kind of program you are playing and you hope your program is going to be at a high level but it really doesn’t factor into the strength of schedule in that regard.
“For us going to Colorado next year and playing Auburn, those are teams that we have not played in the past that are kind of intriguing that are almost made-for-TV type of deals,” Rodriguez said. “As far as the impact on the BCS, our thoughts aren’t on that at all as far as our scheduling.”
West Virginia’s non-conference slate got a big boost this year with the performances put forth by Maryland, East Carolina and Mississippi State. All three are bowl eligible, as are conference foes South Florida, Connecticut and Cincinnati. Louisville could also become bowl eligible with a victory over Rutgers.
“I think that answered some critics earlier in the year before the season even started about our strength of schedule. I said, ‘Wait a minute, I think East Carolina is going to be pretty good. Maryland is always pretty good.’ And we had a feeling that Mississippi State was going to be pretty good,” Rodriguez said. “It’s all turned out that they are and that certainly looks good at the end of the year.”
Perhaps this is a sign of the times?
“The tradition will always be there for certain programs and we’d like to think we have some. We don’t have national championship tradition. It is exciting for the fans, it’s exciting for the programs and this is going to help other programs continue to grow because they can say, hey, we can be that next team that competes for the championship,” Rodriguez said.
“And we hope that’s the case with our program. We hope people say West Virginia has won several Big East championships; we’ve won 10 games three years in a row,” Rodriguez said. “Those Top 10 or 15 programs in the country - we hope we’re in that conversation and that’s always been our goal when we got here seven years ago.”
Being in the BCS hunt will have a direct impact on recruiting, says Rodriguez.
“The biggest thing that you have to overcome if you are at a school that has not won national championships or several national championships is the impact in recruiting,” Rodriguez said. “The recruiting is the lifeblood of any program and a lot of schools will sell their tradition and sell their tradition of playing for championships and that’s one thing that certainly benefits you if you start playing for them and competing for them - or at least getting close to competing for them that it will assist you in recruiting. Particularly at a place like West Virginia where we are a small state, small population, and we have to draw our roster from a whole lot of different areas.”
