Pro Notes
November 17, 2008 04:13 PM | General
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So it was no big deal that West Virginia lost two-thirds of last year’s starting backfield, huh? Well have you taken a close look at what those two players are doing in the NFL this year?
Steve Slaton ran for 156 yards and a touchdown in Houston’s 33-27 loss against Indianapolis yesterday and is now ranked 12th in the NFL in rushing with 701 yards. Among the league’s top 15 ball carriers Slaton is tied for sixth with eight runs of 20 yards or longer; he has the most runs of 40 yards or longer (three) among the top 15 rushers in the league.
Slaton’s 5.1 yards-per-carry average is tied with Carolina’s DeAngelo Williams for the second-most among the league’s top rushers behind New York’s Brandon Jacobs, who is averaging 5.4 yards per carry.
As for Owen Schmitt, he’s once again breaking face masks. Schmitt is also seeing increasingly more playing time for the Seahawks, carrying five times for 21 yards and catching six passes for 29 yards.
One more NFL note: Marc Bulger reached the 20,000-yard mark in career passing in St. Louis’ 35-16 loss to San Francisco and now shows 20,293 yards for his career. Bulger passed Aaron Brooks for 87th in NFL history in career passing yards and is poised to jump four more – Billy Kilmer (20,495), Trent Dilfer (20,518), Richard Todd (20,610) and Earl Morrall (20,809) – in the coming weeks.
Former WVU quarterback Jeff Hostetler is also on the list at 108 with 16,430 career passing yards.
ROBINSON OUT AT SYRACUSE
Syracuse announced yesterday that Greg Robinson will not return for a fifth season with the Orange but he will coach the remaining two games of this year. Robinson is 9-36 with Syracuse after Saturday’s 39-14 loss to Connecticut.
With the firing of Robinson, that means half of the teams in the Big East will have experienced coaching changes since 2006. The other schools going through coaching changes include West Virginia (Bill Stewart), Louisville (Steve Kragthorpe) and Cincinnati (Brian Kelly).
Can you guess the elder statesmen among Big East coaches? It’s Greg Schiano, now in his eighth season at Rutgers.
LOUISVILLE KICKOFF RETURN AVERAGE
When you begin to study another team’s season stats the first place you usually look is at the team’s offensive leaders. Do they have a prolific passer? Is there a big difference between their No. 1 and No. 2 rushers? Do they have a lot of guys catching a lot of passes? On defense you look at how many turnovers they have created or who leads the team in sacks.
Well, with West Virginia’s rough time on kickoffs this year the first thing the eyes train on is how well the other team does returning kicks.
This weekend’s opponent Louisville is averaging 19.6 yards per return, although Trent Guy has returned one kick 95 yards for a touchdown and is averaging 24.9 yards per return.
As the late Jack Fleming used to say, hold onto your hats!
LOTS OF POINTS
The last three times West Virginia has faced Louisville the two teams have scored at least 31 points and have combined to average 68 points per game.
West Virginia defeated Louisville, 46-44 in triple overtime in Morgantown in 2005, Louisville knocked off West Virginia, 44-34 in Louisville in 2006 and West Virginia needed a late touchdown to beat the Cardinals 38-31 last year.
This year, West Virginia’s defense is giving up just 16 points per game while Louisville is permitting 26 points per contest.
One area on defense that Louisville has been significantly better than West Virginia is against the run where the Cardinals are giving up just 95.4 yards per game compared to West Virginia’s 118.1 yards per game.
HUGGS EXPERIMENTING WITH BUTLER AT GUARD
Bob Huggins said after Saturday’s blowout victory against Elon that 6-7 junior Da’Sean Butler is beginning to get some work at two-guard. Huggins believes Butler has the knowledge and the skills to play on the perimeter and he could be extremely effective against teams with smaller guards.
MSN basketball analyst Jay Jacobs astutely referred to Butler “as the queen on the chess board” because Butler can go just about anywhere. He’s right. Butler can play all five positions on the floor and it is my opinion that Da’Sean might be the most underrated player in the Big East Conference this year.
TRUCK SURPRISES
Fans watching Truck Bryant’s 12-point, six-assist performance coming off the bench against Elon in the season opener weren’t the only ones surprised. Those close to the WVU program said his Elon game was by far the best Bryant has looked so far this year, including the practices and the closed scrimmage against Virginia leading up to the opener.
If Bryant continues to play the way he did last Saturday against Elon, look out! Did you happen to catch that full-speed-crossover-dribble-and-no-look-pass-for-a-dunk that Bryant made in the second half of Saturday’s win? Wow.
COACHES’ POLL
West Virginia earned 15 points in this week’s USA Today/ESPN men’s basketball poll. Eight opponents comprising 10 games this year will be against teams ranked this week: No. 2 Connecticut, No. 3 Louisville, No. 6 Pitt, No. 9 Notre Dame, No. 17 Marquette, No. 18 Georgetown, No. 21 Davidson and No. 23 Villanova.
Also, Ohio State and Syracuse are also receiving votes.
ROOTING FOR PITT
As hard as it is to say this, West Virginia fans are going to have to root for Pitt this Saturday when the Panthers travel to Cincinnati to face the Bearcats in a 7 p.m. game that will be televised on ESPN2. A Cincinnati victory over Pitt puts UC in the driver’s seat with one conference game remaining against Syracuse.
Cincinnati winds up the regular season with a trip to Hawaii on Dec. 6.
