Holding the Rope
June 18, 2007 03:48 PM | General
June 18, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Junior wide receiver Tito Gonzales has no reservations whatsoever with West Virginia being ranked so highly in the preseason. To him it’s really not that big a deal.
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| Tito Gonzales scores on this 57-yard reception against Georgia Tech in the 2007 Toyota Gator Bowl.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
“We’ve been in this position for the last two years going into the season. I think the notoriety is good but at the same time we’ve got to go out there and prove it,” Gonzales said recently.
As one of the older players on the team, Gonzales is getting used to dealing with the heavy burden of lofty preseason expectations. He was in the program when West Virginia beat Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl and was around last year when people were labeling WVU as one of the favorites to reach the national championship game. That kind of talk has continued this summer.
“The recognition is a good thing because we’ve got an opportunity if we go undefeated to play for a national championship,” Gonzales explained. “That’s why we’re working so hard to prove that we can win all 13 games.”
Gonzales has been a hard-worker from the time he was a late-blooming college prospect from Blake High School in Tampa, Fla. The all-county and all-conference player didn’t have eye opening stats and his high school team didn’t sport a winning record his senior season, but he did enough to catch the attention of West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez.
“Tito was under the radar recruiting wise and kind of popped up late,” Rodriguez said of Gonzales when he announced West Virginia’s 2004 recruiting class. “When people saw his senior film they really started recruiting him.”
The 6-foot-2-inch, 210-pounder has continued to grow on Rodriguez. Last year he had a productive spring and that led to playing time last fall.
This summer, Gonzales is among a large turnout of players in Morgantown taking part in summer school and working out in the Mike Barwis-supervised summer strength and conditioning program. After weight training, Gonzales says the players organize their own passing league.
“That’s where we get to know each other the best,” Gonzales said. “We learn a lot of things from each other through trial and error. The summer is very important for our success during the season.
“We meet four days a week,” Gonzales said. “On Monday we kind of get together and watch films. The other three days we go out and run routes with the quarterbacks. On Tuesdays some of the DBs will go out against us as well.”
The passing game is one area Rodriguez wants his offense to improve – specifically the play of his wide receivers. The Mountaineers have been predominantly a run-first team the last four or five years and Rodriguez would like that to become a little more balanced. In order to do so, he must have reliable and capable receivers he is confident with. Gonzales believes the wide receivers are getting there.
“I think we’ve got a lot of guys who have shown in the past that they can step up and I think we’ve got a lot of guys that need to step up,” he said. “Coach Dews and Bo White our GA have given us a lot of drills to work on over the summer to get better. We’re working seven-on-seven passing on our own, fine-tuning our routes and getting our timing right with the quarterbacks.”
Gonzales explains that summer is a very important time for quarterbacks and receivers to get to know each other and develop a rapport without the stress of the coaches being around.
“Just going out there working with those guys, learning some of their drop steps and what they read first on certain routes in certain coverages, yes, the summer is very important,” he said.
So far Gonzales has been known more as a punishing blocker than as a game-breaking receiver but he did have a game-changing 57-yard touchdown catch against Georgia Tech in the 2007 Toyota Gator Bowl. He finished the year catching six passes for 152 yards. Gonzales is hopeful that his bowl game performance is a prelude to even bigger things in 2007.
“I had the catch in the Gator Bowl and that was good but that was the past. I’m just looking forward to stepping up and being more of a contributor this year catching the ball,” he said. “Last year I did a real good job blocking and I want to get even better blocking while also having more balls thrown to me – just getting that trust from Pat and the other quarterbacks.”
Of course all wide receivers like to catch passes and you can count Tito Gonzales among them. But Gonzales isn’t interest in padding his stats at the expense of the team.
“Catching the ball is a plus but at the end of the day it’s all about winning. If you have a 100-yard receiving game but you lose … I’d rather have no catches and win the game,” he said.
Gonzales believe that unselfish attitude is what has made West Virginia’s program so formidable the last three or four years.
“(Coach Rodriguez) always talks about holding the rope and when it comes to holding the rope we’re only as strong as our weakest link and we’re trying to get everyone stronger from our weakest link all the way up,” Gonzales explained.
