Friday's Notes

Posted by John Antonik on Friday, December 5, 2008 (11:15 am)

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	Carl Roberts

Our condolences go out to the Roberts family after the passing yesterday of longtime WVU equipment manager Carl Roberts. Roberts, 90, died at Preston Memorial Hospital in Kingwood.

Carl served 32 years as West Virginia’s athletic equipment manager until his retirement in 1979. Prior to that, he worked three years from 1944-47 for the WVU buildings and grounds department. Roberts, a Martinsburg native, has one son, Mike, still living in Morgantown. Roberts’ wife Lucille died in 1999.

I did a quick Google search on how this year’s first-year coaches performed at BCS conference schools and the results are interesting. Only four of the 11 BCS schools that made coaching changes last year presently have winning records and are going to bowl games. Those four schools are: Georgia Tech (Paul Johnson), Ole Miss (Houston Nutt), Nebraska (Bo Pelini) and West Virginia (Bill Stewart).

Here is the complete list:

Arkansas, Bobby Petrino (5-7)

Baylor, Art Briles (4-8)

Duke, David Cutcliffe (4-8)

Georgia Tech, Paul Johnson (9-3)

Michigan, Rich Rodriguez (3-9)

Mississippi, Houston Nutt (8-4)

Nebraska, Bo Pelini (8-4)

Texas A&M, Mike Sherman (4-8)

UCLA, Rick Neuheisel (4-7) *

Washington State, Paul Wulff (2-11)

West Virginia, Bill Stewart (7-4) *

* One regular season game remaining

Ironically of the seven teams not going to bowl games, five of them fared worse this year with their new coaches.

Arkansas (5-7), 8-5 last year

Michigan (3-9), 9-4 last year

Texas A&M (4-8), 7-6 last year

UCLA (4-7), 6-7 last year

Washington State (2-11), 5-7 last year

The hottest team in the Big East right now finished its season with a 7-5 record and is hopeful of sneaking into the Sun Bowl if Pitt and West Virginia loses this weekend. That team of course is Rutgers, which put 63 points on Louisville last night. Rutgers becomes just the seventh team in NCAA history to qualify for a bowl game after starting the year 1-5.

One possible destination for Rutgers is the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, Ala., where the Scarlet Knights could face Arkansas State from the Sun Belt Conference. Arkansas State gets the nod because the SEC this year cannot fulfill all of its bowl slots.

Here is how the rest of the Big East bowl slots could go, according to CBS Sports. Sun Bowl (Pitt), Meineke Car Care (West Virginia), International (Connecticut) and St. Petersburg (USF).

Including Cincinnati, which earned the conference’s automatic BCS berth, six of the eight Big East schools will be going bowling this year.

Maryland is still holding out hope of a possible match up against West Virginia in the Meineke Car Care Bowl. According to the Baltimore Sun, Terp officials are pushing for the Charlotte bowl if Virginia Tech loses to Boston College in the ACC Championship Game.

That could slide Tech down to the Champs Sports Bowl and possibly move North Carolina over to the Music City Bowl, according to some thinking inside the Terp athletic department.

Maryland is supposedly promoting the rival angle against West Virginia and the school’s close proximity to Charlotte in an effort to avoid the long trip out to Boise to face Nevada.

The guess here is that the Meineke Bowl will not let North Carolina go without a fight.

Here is how far the Gator Bowl has slipped in prestige. Yesterday, it officially pulled the trigger on 7-5 Clemson instead of Florida State to face 8-4 Nebraska. It is the first time in the history of the bowl that a five-loss team has been invited.

The reason?

Both schools historically travel well to bowl games. After taking a bath on the ACC Championship Game, the Gator Bowl is looking to rebuild its cash reserves with an anticipated match up between two schools that traditionally travel well to bowl games.

The Gator is also undoubtedly trying to capitalize on Clemson’s recent hiring of Dabo Sweeney.

Tom Lucci of the Newark Star-Ledger has a story in today’s online edition discussing the Big East’s need to rework its present bowl lineup. The conference is looking to strengthen its position in two areas: location and quality of opponent. The conference has frequently expressed an interest in facing bowl foes from other BCS conferences, specifically the SEC, Big Ten and the Big 12.

Talk about meaningless games, why in the Hawaii Five-O is Cincinnati making a worthless trip out to Hawaii to play the 7-5 Rainbows with a BCS berth already wrapped up?

Of course that game was scheduled long before Brian Kelly got there and changed the outlook of the Bearcat program. The Hawaii game is a losing proposition on so many levels for UC, yet at least Cincinnati was wise enough to schedule the game at the end of the season.

West Virginia went to Hawaii once in 1980 right smack in the middle of the season with disastrous consequences. The Mountaineers wound up losing the game when quarterback Oliver Luck suffered a concussion. Then, it lost two days of prep on the trip back to the mainland before facing No. 11 Pitt in Pittsburgh. Don Nehlen was able to get many things changed during his first year at West Virginia, but getting out of that Hawaii trip was not one of them.

I don’t have a vote but if I did Steve Slaton would get mine for NFL rookie of the year. Slaton ranks first among all rookie running backs in rushing touchdowns (eight) and yards per carry (5.0), and he’s third in rushing (904) and fifth in total yards per game (75.3).

Slaton has run for more than 100 yards in two of his last three games against Indianapolis and Jacksonville with games remaining against Green Bay, Tennessee, Oakland and Chicago.

Houston also is still in the hunt for a playoff berth with a 5-7 record.


	Mike Carey

You’ve got to feel for West Virginia women’s coach Mike Carey. Before the season one of Carey’s top recruits was lost for the year with a knee injury sustained in a high school all-star game. Then his top inside player, Madina Ali, chose to have season-ending shoulder surgery after the second game of the year and will take a medical redshirt.

Now, it looks like Vanessa House could be sidelined for the season with a knee injury sustained against Mercyhurst. House was averaging 16.1 minutes and 6.6 points per game through the team’s first seven games.

West Virginia presently has nine players available to dress for games.

Despite that, Carey has navigated the Mountaineers to a 6-1 record so far but the road gets considerably tougher. On Sunday, the Mountaineers face 6-2 Duquesne at the Coliseum and then take on 4-2 Indiana from the Big Ten Conference the following Saturday.

ESPN’s Chad Ford has put out his list of possible NBA draft lottery picks for next summer and three of his top 10 players West Virginia will face this year in Connecticut’s Hasheem Thabeet (No. 3), Davidson’s Stephen Curry (No. 5) and Ohio State’s B.J. Mullens (No. 6).


	Bob Huggins

It looks like Bob Huggins has come up with an interesting solution to his team’s free throw shooting woes. During Wednesday night’s 80-78 victory over Mississippi, Huggins inserted Josh Sowards and Jonnie West into the game with eight seconds remaining to help preserve West Virginia’s one-point lead.

Sowards wound up making one of two and West Virginia won the game 80-78.

I can think of two positives right off the bat with this move. One, it removes the poor free throw shooters from the game and, two, it provides a critical role for a couple of players that have not seen much action up to this point. The more players a coach can involve in the total team effort the better, as far as I am concerned.

That’s probably why Huggins has won more than 600 games during his successful coaching career.

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