July 20-25 Blog
July 22, 2008 11:14 AM | General
End of Week Notes
Posted By John Antonik: July 25, 2008 (10:08 am)
A couple of long-time department personnel are moving on. Today is the last day for Brad Cox, assistant athletic director in charge of compliance, who is taking a job downtown as the assistant director of admissions for the University.
Cox, a Newell, W.Va., native and a West Liberty graduate, first began working in the WVU compliance office in 1992 as a compliance assistant. He was promoted to compliance director in 1996.
I have known Brad since our graduate school days in the WVU Sport Management Program and I am certain he will be a great asset in the admissions office.
Also, Assistant Baseball Coach Bruce Cameron is taking a similar job at Shenandoah College. Cameron was an 11-year member of Greg Van Zant’s Mountaineer staff. Bruce and his wife Lisa have a 1-year-old son, Bruce, Jr., and Cameron has expressed a desire to spend more time with his family.
I got to know Bruce really well when I was still involved with baseball working on the sports information side. Bruce has a great knowledge of the game and an uncanny ability of relating to players. He will be a great addition to the Shenandoah baseball program.
Van Zant indicated in Thursday’s Charleston Daily Mail that he will immediately begin a national search for Cameron’s replacement.
Our best wishes to both Brad and Bruce.
With Detroit now just ½-game ahead of Connecticut in the Eastern Conference standings, Shock coach Bill Laimbeer is looking for a little shock therapy by coaxing 50-year-old Nancy Lieberman out of retirement.
Lieberman played nine minutes last night and failed to score.
As for Sanni, she boosted her season scoring average to 2.9 points per game following last night’s performance against Houston.
Freemyer is one of 14 recruits Mountaineer coach Marlon LeBlanc will welcome to Morgantown when camp opens in August.
Doughty, who covers Virginia football recruiting for the Times, referenced a number of schools pursuing a top high school prospect from Virginia. He listed the programs he considered “big-time” while also mentioning West Virginia with the caveat, “I don’t know if you put West Virginia in the same category as those schools, but the Mountaineers have offered too.”
Doughty then took time to answer some of the West Virginia hate mail he received.
The simple fact that Doughty wrote about a football program he doesn’t cover, working for a paper that doesn’t request credentials for its home football games - and with a readership of mostly Virginia Tech and Virginia fans - is a pretty good indicator of where West Virginia is at right now.
In fact, in less than 1,000 words Doughty answered his own question.
There is an old political saying that is probably apt here: When you’re explaining you’re losing.
For those of us old enough to remember the days when West Virginia was constantly fighting the never-ending battle for respect, the biggest obstacle wasn’t columns like the one Doughty wrote today.
Rather, it was getting columnists to write about WVU at all.
Have a great weekend!
Checking My Mail
Posted By John Antonik: July 23, 2008 (11:11 am)
Well, I’ve finally done it. After taking a month off I hit the receive button on the company email to get reconnected with what some of you are thinking about our beloved Mountaineers.
I’m back out of the cocoon, baby.
The first thing I’ve come to realize is just how popular MSNsportsNET.com is in the Sudan. We must have received at least 50 emails last month from a guy who says I can net $6 million by donating just $100 to help his sick cousin get out of the country. All he needs is the routing number to my checking account.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me but since I’ve been told you can’t trust anyone on the Internet, I think I will give him my wife’s routing number just in case. Come to think of it, I will probably stick with mine because she’s got all of the money anyway.
Living in Morgantown, heaven knows we need more traffic.
Can one pill really do all of that?
Anonymous also wants to get rid of the big, blue inflatable helmet. However, he wants to hold on to the smoke that comes out of it until the fourth quarter when teams are behind and need to pass to catch up.
Now that’s a pretty good strategy.
I’m going to say Amos. No, come to think of it, it might be Noel. Does that help?
I can’t help you much with that one. That’s way above my pay grade.
And now, it’s on to more serious things:
The knee injury also kept him from qualifying for the Olympics.
Herber plans on playing again next year after having his contract with Berlin renewed for two more years. In the meantime, he’s working on a master’s degree in international relations.
The school expects to complete phase one of the stadium renovation this year in time for the season opener, but phase two which includes the addition of 14,000 seats is presently $18 million over budget.
The Scarlet Knights are paying Schiano more than $2 million per season. His career record heading into this year is 38-46, including a 15-33 record in Big East play.
38, Antonio Daniels, Bowling Green, March 12, 1997
37, John Hempel, Massachusetts, Feb. 12, 1983
35, Darrell Griffith, Louisville, Feb. 14, 1980
33, Ryan Gomes, Providence, Feb. 9, 2005
33, John Wallace, Syracuse, Jan. 16, 1996
Summer League Notebook
Posted By John Antonik: July 22, 2008 (11:16 am)
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| Joe Mazzulla |
Count Joe Mazzulla among those impressed with Bob Huggins’ first full recruiting class at West Virginia. However, Mazzulla says pure talent alone will not get them over the top.
“We have a great recruiting class coming in and I think their biggest weakness is they know it,” Mazzulla said. “When we talk about how bad those three hours a day with Huggs are they kind of throw it aside because every high school player thinks it’s easy because of their success. We’ll let them get a taste of it. I can’t wait.
“The most talented guys just don’t grasp it sometimes,” Mazzulla said. “I think the biggest key for these three is to just shut up and listen.”
Word has been filtered down from the coaching staff to the veteran players to put the newcomers on notice: Things are not going to be easy when individual workouts begin in August.
“Al (Ruoff) and I had a 20-minute conversation with Huggs and it was mostly him talking and us listening,” Mazzulla said. “What he told us was that we have to get these guys in line.”
Three of the freshmen are playing in the Pittsburgh Summer League that is wrapping up this week. The league is comprised of players from Pitt, Duquesne, West Virginia, Penn State, Robert Morris and other local colleges. Mazzulla is having another outstanding summer and could capture the league MVP award for the second straight year.
However, Mazzulla said don’t read too much into what is being reported in the papers about the performances of the players in the league.
“I was the MVP of this summer league and I had the worst first half of a season of my career,” he explained. “This means nothing and that’s what I try to tell (the freshmen).
Mazzulla said the games are up-and-down affairs with very little defense being played.
“There is no game planning. There are no scouting reports. There is no having to look for a second or third option because the first one is not there,” he said. “I’m a perfect example of that because people may have thought I was going to have a great year because of the summer and it’s just not the same. It takes experience and it takes time.”
Those are some interesting observations by a pretty savvy basketball player.
A couple of baseball notes passed down from upstairs …
Cummings found out yesterday that he will be a member of Team USA. Davey Johnson will coach the team. Cummings, 32, told the Charleston Gazette that he planned to retire after this season. Now he said he may reconsider.
Cummings also recently pitched in the Triple-A all-star game. The former Mountaineer was drafted in the 21st round by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1999.
Parks is currently sixth in the league with a .340 batting average with seven doubles, three home runs and 27 RBI playing for the Wilson Tobs.
In 54 games for the Mountaineers last spring, Parks batted .378 with five home runs and 43 RBI. Parks will be a senior for West Virginia in 2009.
The answer: Austin Carr’s 47 points scored against the Mountaineers on Feb. 20, 1971 in Notre Dame's 107-98 victory.
There were two honorable mention performances: Walt Szczerbiak’s 41 scored in George Washington’s 105-96 loss to the Mountaineers on Jan. 30, 1971, and Gary Trent’s 41 put up against West Virginia in Ohio’s 90-81 loss on Dec. 18, 1993.
Lewis, a midfielder from Naperville, Ill., plays on the club team Eclipse Select North which is one of four teams that won their respective regional championship in the Under 18 division. Her team advanced to the national finals by defeating St. Louis Soccer Club, which has a pair of Mountaineer freshmen in Morgan Betscher and Blake Miller.
Lewis’ Eclipse Select North will face the Dallas Sting soccer club in an opening round game on Wednesday morning.
The Coliseum lighting and sound system upgrades are nearly complete. There will be a noticeable difference when fans watch games at the Coliseum this year. With only a third of the lights on, the Coliseum is already brighter than when all of the lights were on before.
Framework for the Coliseum scoreboard is finished and it is currently hanging from the Coliseum rings. The scoreboard will be assembled inside the arena and will be ready by late August. In the meantime, work crews are on the floor stripping off the old paint in preparation for a new, updated look.
