Mid-Week Notes
October 21, 2008 05:11 PM | General
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| Bill Stewart |
On Monday afternoon, West Virginia coach Bill Stewart looked like a man who spent most of the previous night watching movies.
Well, as a matter of fact that is exactly what Stewart did. Stewart coordinates West Virginia’s special teams and watching Auburn’s return game on tape was about like watching Chiller Theatre – pretty scary.
“Their number three, Robert Dunn, can take a punt like the young man Smith out in Colorado. He certainly has our team’s attention,” Stewart said. “He’s taken three back. The interesting thing about Davis is that not only is he on the kickoff return team and takes them back for touchdowns, he’s on the field trying to tackle you when you’re trying to take them back.”
Auburn’s offensive struggles have been well documented. What impresses Stewart most about the Tigers is that they can still score points without their offense moving the ball.
“You look up at the scoreboard and at the end of three quarters you see 78 yards,” said Stewart after watching the Arkansas tape. “You look up a little later in the game and I saw 83 yards and they are up 20-16 at that point so they can score a lot of ways.”
Stewart is not the least bit worried about Pat White being too hyped up to face home-state Auburn on Thursday night.
“The last thing I’m going to do is tell him how to play,” Stewart said. “He’ll have fun. Pat is a sharp individual and he’s mentally on top of the game – unlike very few you’ve ever been around. That being said, he has emotions just like everyone else. I’m sure he wants to look good. It’s a national TV game. I won’t say anything to him except to play within the framework of the offense, go have some fun and good luck. That’s all I have ever told him.”
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| Bob Huggins |
Big East media day for men’s basketball will be held Wednesday morning at Madison Square Garden in New York City. When the preseason poll is released, expect the Mountaineers to be somewhere in the middle of the pack around No. 8 or No. 9.
West Virginia coach Bob Huggins was asked his thoughts about the low expectations, despite returning several key players from last year’s Sweet 16 to go with one of the best recruiting classes in the conference.
“I’d rather be good enough where everyone knows we’re going to win,” Huggins said. “I just saw something the other day that for the last four or five years we have finished higher than predicted. I just worry about getting us better at this point in time.”
Despite lacking the size to match up with some of the bigger teams in the conference, Huggins likes his team.
“We had a guy in yesterday who saw Connecticut and Syracuse practice and said that we are going to have to play so hard, something we already knew because we’re so small and they are so big and strong,” Huggins said.
Huggins has added three New York City players to this year’s roster giving the Mountaineers a total of five players from the New York metropolitan area. Huggins was asked on Monday if he thought New York City players are tougher than players from other areas.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I had Dallas guys that were pretty tough and Cleveland guys who were real tough. We got nice guys; they are going to play hard and they’re going to get tougher and stronger. I don’t necessarily know if being from New York makes you tough. It makes you talk faster, though.”
Women’s coach Mike Carey admits this year’s assignment may be his most difficult working with a team that has just three players returning with any game experience.
“My first year we had a lot more players that had gone through the Big East than we have this year,” Carey said. “In my 20-some years of coaching I’ve never had this happen before. We lost seven seniors, a couple which graduated early, we brought in people and it’s just one of those years.”
Carey, however, expects his team to be successful this season.
“That is something I emphasize with the girls – we expect to win,” he said. “We expect to go hard and we expect to do well. If we’re not doing that then we have to do a better job as coaches and players.”
Carey does have some Big East-read players coming into the program this year. The veteran coach is high on 6-foot junior college transfer Madina Ali and Virginia transfer Takisha Granberry, who played 62 games for the Cavaliers. The guard also made 31 career starts.
Carey believes he has assembled the strongest coaching staff since he’s been at West Virginia, and he is confident that it will pay big dividends in recruiting.
“Our ’09 class, we’re excited about if we get everyone that has given us a verbal then we’re going to have a great class,” Carey mentioned. “We’re already starting on 2010 and we are very excited about the future.”
Joanna Bernabei returns to WVU after spending four years at Maryland including the Terps' 2006 national championship team and George Porcha comes to WVU with strong credentials after serving one season on Virginia Tech’s staff.
Chester Nichols has been on Carey’s staff for six years now.
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| Nikki Izzo-Brown |
The West Virginia women’s soccer team can clinch its third straight Big East American Division title with a victory at Marquette on Friday night. West Virginia can also wrap up a first round bye if Georgetown can beat St. John’s this afternoon.
Also, West Virginia coach Nikki Izzo-Brown recently recorded her 175th career victory with the Mountaineers’ 2-1 overtime win over Villanova last Sunday.
Wasn’t it Herman Edwards who once said, “We play to win the game?” Well sometimes neither team wins. Consider the case of West Virginia’s two soccer teams. The Mountaineer men and women have played a combined 10 ties so far this year with 14 matches going into overtime.
The women’s cross country team continues to climb in the polls. The Mountaineers moved up two spots to No. 5 this week after winning the Penn State National Open in State College, Pa. WVU is one of four Big East teams ranked in the Top 25 this week. The Mountaineers also remain No. 2 in the Mid-Atlantic Region behind No. 4-ranked Princeton. The Tigers will serve as the host school for this year’s NCAA regionals on Nov. 15. The top two teams from each region qualify for nationals.
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| Joe Alexander |
As expected, former Mountaineer forward Joe Alexander is becoming a big star in China. The Milwaukee Bucks recently toured the country and Alexander’s fluency in Mandarin has added to his popularity.
When the Bucks and the Golden State Warriors were invited to an NBA-sponsored reception Milwaukee coach Scott Skiles asked Alexander to say a few words to the audience in Mandarin.
“As soon as he started to speak people applauded out of excitement,” Bucks director of public relations Dan Smyczek told the Milwaukee Journal.
Alexander has scored 13 points in three preseason games.
I stumbled across a column in the Detroit Free Press by Michael Rosenberg discussing John Beilein’s ability to recruit players that nobody else wanted who he later turned into outstanding college players. Rosenberg brought up the fact that Beilein was one of the few coaches to offer Joe Alexander a scholarship when he played at Hargrave Military Academy. Alexander went on to become the eighth player taken in the draft.
All of this is certainly true.
What I take exception to is this passage: And the best part -- the biggest reason he left West Virginia for U-M -- is that in time, he'll be able to mix his kind of guys with some of the nation's top recruits.
"Sometimes you're going to be into this thing and you're going to beat out UCLA or Indiana or Michigan State for people," Beilein said.
What Rosenberg is inferring is that it was West Virginia University that was holding Beilein back.
Well, I walked out into the Coliseum a little bit ago and took a quick look at the players running around on the court and I can assure you, West Virginia University is certainly not holding back Bob Huggins, that’s for sure.
