April 14-21 Blog
April 14, 2008 11:02 AM | General
We’re changing things up a little bit. For the past four years Campus Connection has kind of been like a weekly blog full of tidbits, notes, commentary, quasi-opinion and weak stabs at humor that have sometimes hit the mark and at other times completely missed. Well, to keep up with the Jones', we’ve decided to turn Campus Connection into a daily blog. If we miss a day then you know we’re struggling.
Hope you enjoy it ...
Strong Turnout
Posted By John Antonik: April 20, 2008 (9:39 am)
The coaching transition to Bill Stewart is going smoothly in the eyes of Mountaineer football fans, if Saturday’s strong turnout for the Gold-Blue Spring Game can be interpreted correctly.
The entire lower level of the press box side was full with fans having to move to the other side of the stadium to get a seat. An estimated crowd of 18,000 showed up for the game but many observers believe the number could have been closer to 25,000.
That makes Saturday’s Gold-Blue Game one of the three most-attended spring games at Milan Puskar Stadium. The other two came in 1989 after West Virginia played Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship and in 2001 when Rich Rodriguez returned to his alma mater.
Outside of Penn State, no other program in the Northeast will have that many fans at its spring game.
ESPN.com senior writer Ivan Maisel was in town Friday and Saturday to write a feature on Mountaineer football. He spent Friday afternoon at the Milan Puskar Center talking to Patrick White, Bill Stewart, Jeff Mullen and others. On Saturday he was at the stadium covering the spring game.
Of course the big winner on Saturday was WVU Children’s Hospital, which gets the gate proceeds from the game.
The Joy of Photoshopping
Posted By John Antonik: April 18, 2008 (2:06 pm)
Sometimes people can be creative. Check out this photoshop’d creation someone made and placed on the Internet depicting West Virginia coach Bill Stewart as the late Bob Ross from the popular PBS Show “The Joy of Painting.”
Coach Stew’s hair is a little off but I love it. It gives him a sort of David Starsky look from the old Seventies TV show Starsky and Hutch.
However, as good as he looks in this depiction I don’t think Mrs. Stewart would be too crazy with the new look.
That handsome guy to the right is an actual picture of Coach Stew as a member of the Fairmont State Fighting Falcons back in the days of shag carpet, eight-track tape players and El Caminos. At first glance I thought it was Boz Scaggs in a neck roll. Thanks to Adam Zundell from Fairmont State for supplying the photo of Coach Stew.
To get some fascinating insight on Stewart's WVU and Fairmont State playing days read Jack Bogaczyk's Thursday afternoon story on Coach Stew in the Charleston Daily Mail.
Match Made in Almost Heaven
Posted By John Antonik: April 16, 2008 (9:58 am)
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| Martin Puskin |
Old coaches never die; they just fade away. Actually, some of them can’t even do that. Take Martin Pushkin for instance. After enjoying seven years of retirement WVU's old track coach got the bug to start helping young kids once again.
Sean Cleary, sensing Pushkin getting bored with his gardening and wine making, asked his old coach to come back over to the track during the afternoons to help with the team’s hurdlers, sprinters and quartermilers. Anytime you can get volunteer help it’s a good thing. When it happens to be Marty Pushkin, well, that’s something you just can’t pass up.
“I don’t travel and I work in the afternoons,” Pushkin said recently.
Having Pushkin work with the multi-events has freed up Cleary to concentrate on his area of expertise: distance running. Cleary is developing a powerful distance program at WVU with a sophomore-dominated team that has already produced a ninth-place finish at cross country nationals last fall.
During the indoor season the Mountaineers finished 29th on the strength of a fourth-place finish by the distance medley relay team and a seventh-place finish by Marie-Louise Asselin in the 3,000.
That success is expected to continue during outdoors.
Meanwhile, Pushkin is cultivating a big-time performer of his own in Buckhannon’s Chelsea Carrier. The freshman has already recorded the fourth-fastest time in school history in the 60-meter hurdles (8.46) to win the ECAC Indoor Championships.
Pushkin says Carrier is further along at this stage of her career than WVU’s other hurdling standouts Pat Itanyi, Stacian Brown and Jessica Czaikowski.
If anyone knows, it’s Martin Pushkin. He’s seen all of the good ones.
“Marty was a head coach for 40 years,” said Cleary. “He’s forgotten more than almost any coach out there knows about what Chelsea does. It’s a match made in heaven.”
More appropriately, a match made in Almost Heaven.
High-Risk High-Reward
Posted By John Antonik: April 14, 2008 (10:46 pm)
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| Bill Stewart |
You may get different opinions from people who do this for a living, but for my money the most difficult pass in football to throw is the 20-yard seam. No. 1, the QB is trying to hit a target that is moving away from him. No. 2, the window to fit that pass in is extremely small. Come up a little short and the ball is in the linebacker’s arms. Overshoot your target and it is heading right for the safety.
It is a high-risk and high-reward play.
Louisville’s Brian Brohm has been the best at making that throw the past three years. When Louisville had all of its weapons and Brohm was hitting those seam passes the Cardinal offense was unstoppable.
West Virginia attacks defenses differently than Louisville but with similar results. Since Pat White became the starting quarterback in 2005 the Mountaineers have successfully run into the teeth of eight - and sometimes nine-man fronts - with near impunity. It’s hard to argue with averages of 456.2 yards per game and 6.6 yards per play in 2007.
Yet as impressive as the Mountaineers were moving the football last year they weren’t completely unstoppable. South Florida and Pitt both proved that.
Both used similar formulas: crowd the line of scrimmage and sell-out the run, pound center Mike Dent on every snap, and don’t worry about the middle third of the football field because West Virginia wasn’t going to throw the ball there for risk of turning it over.
Bill Stewart took a different approach in the Fiesta Bowl and he’s using that same plan this spring: West Virginia will throw to all parts of the football field, including the deep middle.
So far this spring the Mountaineers have been attacking the middle with varying degrees of success. But they will continue to do so because there may come a time next year in a big game when somebody loads the box and dares Pat White to throw the ball between the linebacker and the safety.
When that happens, Bill Stewart and Offensive Coordinator Jeff Mullen want White to be ready to make that throw. One of Stewart’s favorite sayings is you can’t keep a good ship in the harbor.
Translation: Sometimes you’ve got to take some risks to reap the rewards.
Spring Experiments
Posted By John Antonik: April 14, 2008 (11:02 am)
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| Lonnie Galloway |
A major objective of spring football practice is being able to experiment with different players, getting the right ones at the right positions. Because coaches don’t have to game plan and prepare for opponents they can concentrate solely on their personnel.
One such intriguing experiment going on right now at WVU is with backup quarterback Bradley Starks, who is also taking reps at wide receiver. Starks had the only touchdown during last Saturday’s scrimmage (a 49-yard pass from Jarrett Brown) and has also showed an ability to work the middle of the field.
Starks has the size (6-3, 182 pounds) and the speed (sub-4.5 forty) to put pressure on safeties.
“He can run. Just watching him out there playing quarterback you can see him fake and juke and stuff like that. He’s quick,” said wide receivers coach Lonnie Galloway.
The things Starks can do with the football are obvious and the fact that he's 6-3 and not 5-8 makes him a viable pass-catching target. However, it is the things that he does without the ball that will ultimately determine how much playing time he gets at receiver.
“There is stuff he needs to learn: route running, looking at different coverages – not from a quarterback standpoint but as a wide receiver,” Galloway explained. “He’s got to learn blocking and where his keys are but other than that I think Bradley Starks can help us a lot.”
Galloway admits the player groupings he’s using right now are essentially meaningless.
“It’s still up in the air,” he admitted. “We’ve got a couple of guys going with the ones and the twos but right now there are no starters.”
Galloway is looking for players that want to compete on every single snap.
“When we’re running routes the linemen and the backs have got to block,” he said. “When we’re running the ball (the wide receivers) have to block. You’ve got to have an attitude of being a warrior.”
Bradley Starks could wind up working his way into the rotation.
“I think he can come out there and help us as far as if he’s not playing quarterback or in there at all why have a talented kid standing on the sidelines with the coaches?” Galloway said. “He’ll come over there more this week and we’ll see what he can do. He knows the plays - it’s just different running around all the time. I played quarterback so you’re not used to running all of the time.”
