Football Notebook
September 10, 2007 09:27 AM | General
September 10, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Rich Rodriguez was getting an earful from frustrated West Virginia fans that had made the drive down to Huntington to see what they expected was going to be an easy Mountaineer victory against Marshall.
 |
||
| Rich Rodriguez looks down at his play sheet during Saturday's game against Marshall in Huntington.
AP photo |
The fastest offense in the country was looking rather pedestrian in the first half of Saturday’s game against the Herd, a 24-point underdog.
Four of West Virginia’s seven first-half drives lasted just three plays. The team that had scored 62 points just seven days prior had only six on the scoreboard at halftime.
“There were some fans panicking. I have my headsets on during the game so I don’t hear anything else but Coach Magee. I don’t have them on when I’m running off the field at halftime and it was not pretty,” Rodriguez chuckled.
“It’s usually pretty good when you have your fans by your tunnel but it isn’t when you’re losing. That was not fun. I might have to jog a lot faster to get into the locker room or else keep my headsets on until I get into the locker room.”
Sometimes the guys on the other side of the field come up with good plans. Sometimes it takes a while to adjust. Fortunately, Rodriguez and his coaches didn’t panic. They made the necessary adjustments and the Mountaineers scored touchdowns on six of their remaining seven possessions. One hundred eighteen yards at halftime turned into 511 at the end of the game.
“I thought it was critical that we got a couple of drives going early in the third quarter to get some rhythm going offensively,” Rodriguez said.
Gone were the bubble screens and passes at the line of scrimmage that Marshall was baiting West Virginia to throw. Instead, the Mountaineers went back to their base offense with fullback Owen Schmitt in the backfield. Patrick White tried seven second-half passes, completing five of them for 77 yards, but that was more of a diversion than a necessity.
The real work came on the ground where West Virginia churned out 316 yards on 39 carries. Steve Slaton, held to just two first-half yards, finished the afternoon with 146. White had 125 and freshman Noel Devine topped things off nicely with 76 yards on just five fourth-quarter carries.
The Marshall defense, which had played so hard and so well in the first half, was completely out of gas.
“They won the battle of the trenches,” said Marshall coach Mark Snyder.
Emotion, passion and even good strategy can only take you so far. Eventually playmakers take over. Fortunately, West Virginia has a couple of pretty good ones in Patrick White, Steve Slaton, Darius Reynaud and now Noel Devine.
Rich Rodriguez learned a lot about his team after West Virginia’s season-opening home win against Western Michigan. He learned even more about them Saturday afternoon in Huntington.
Briefly:
“We have some things that we think will be good plays and we tried to get those called during the first quarter and a half. Sometimes we don’t get to all of them,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t know how many of our so-called top plays we got that we ran in the first quarter and a half? We always inevitably wind up going back to what our strengths are.”
“Keilen actually went into the game with a little bit of a foot sprain and he played through the first half with it but I think it got worse for him,” Rodriguez said. “We X-rayed it and it’s not broke. He needs to get some treatment on it and we’ll see how it holds up.”
“It was OK at times and not very good at other times,” Rodriguez said. “We did a lot of different pressure packages and at times we put a little pressure on him and at other times we didn’t quite get there the way we wanted to. The defense was kind of like the offense. Sometimes it was really good and at some points it was not as good as we’d like it to be.”
“Yesterday he played very well but he probably wasn’t as good in the first half as he was in the other game or in the second half,” Rodriguez said. “He understands our offense and he does a great job of seeing the entire field.”
