Back to the Drawing Board
October 31, 2009 11:29 AM | General
October 31, 2009
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Sometimes you never know what you’re going to get when you’re dealing with 18, 19, and 20-year-olds. Earlier this week, South Florida Coach Jim Leavitt was talking about changing personnel after watching his Bulls get whacked over the head by Pitt, 41-14.
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| Senior Alric Arnett is deep in thought on the bench in the fourth quarter of West Virginia's 30-19 loss to South Florida Friday night at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
He pulled his freshman quarterback, B.J. Daniels, in the second half of the Pitt loss in favor of Evan Landi. He also talked about replacing players in the secondary.
Well last night Daniels looked like Michael Vick, completing 13 of 26 passes for 232 yards and three touchdowns. He also ran 14 times for 104 yards in a 30-19 victory over West Virginia.
“We haven’t played a guy like that and I guess that will be better for us in the long run,” said defensive end Julian Miller.
Daniels’ performance caught everyone by surprise.
“What surprised me is we lost contain,” said West Virginia coach Bill Stewart. “You chase the up-field shoulder of the deepest back - quarterback or tailback. It’s basic, elementary football. We didn’t do that as well as we should have.”
Daniels made six plays of 20 yards or longer, including passes of 69, 49 and 45 yards.
“In two years, how many times has someone flat out thrown the ball over our head? It doesn’t happen too much,” said secondary coach David Lockwood.
Jim Leavitt showed right away that he meant business. After West Virginia drove the length of the field on the game’s opening possession, USF was confronted with a fourth and 1 on its side of the field. Leavitt gambled and went for it.
Two plays later, Carlton Mitchell got behind Keith Tandy for a 49-yard touchdown.
“They caught us in a situation where we had one on one on the outside and the receiver made a good catch and the quarterback made a good throw,” said safety Robert Sands.
Later, Daniels and Mitchell hooked up once again for a 69-yard pass play that took the football to the West Virginia 9. On third and goal at the 11, Daniels broke contain and hit a wide open A.J. Love in the corner of the end zone to give South Florida a 17-9 lead.
“Any time you get one, and then two, your confidence goes down. It’s my job to get his confidence back up,” said Lockwood of Tandy. “I could have very easily pulled the kid out but I’m not going to pull the kid out because he gets the ball thrown over his head. That just completely kills confidence. We’ve just got to do a better job of playing better defense.”
A disturbing trend is the number of big plays the defense has surrendered this year. Heading into the South Florida game, West Virginia’s secondary has allowed 26 pass plays of 20 yards or longer. Daniels hit three more on Friday night to go with three scrambles of 20 yards or longer.
“It’s as tough as it is to cover a guy with him in the pocket, but with him running around - a guy like that - they’ve got some athletes out there running around and it makes it tougher,” said Lockwood. “We’ve got to do a better job of containing the quarterback and not giving up the big play.”
There were problems offensively as well. West Virginia finished the game with just 118 yards rushing and an average of 3.4 yards per carry. Noel Devine was bottled up all night, managing only 42 yards on 17 carries.
“The lack of running game was not good,” said Stewart. “Once you get down two scores like that you have to throw the ball. You want to throw the ball when you want to, not when you have to.”
Quarterback Jarrett Brown was constantly under pressure, spending as much time trying to locate South Florida defensive ends George Selvie and Jason Pierre-Paul as he was scanning the secondary for open receivers.
And twice West Virginia squandered good scoring opportunities. The first was the result of a tremendous play by middle linebacker Kion Wilson, who jumped up and snagged a Brown pass that was intended for Jock Sanders at the USF 10.
The second missed opportunity late in the game was the result of the Mountaineers shooting themselves in the foot with a holding penalty and an ineligible man downfield on consecutive plays that took the ball from the USF 14 all the way back to the 35.
“When you get the ball inside the 50 you’ve got to get points. That’s not intelligent football. We’ve got to make plays,” said Stewart. “You know they are going to blitz you, you know they are going to rush you, but you have to make plays.”
Now it’s back to the drawing board for West Virginia. The Mountaineers have Louisville next Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium in what is shaping up to be an important Big East game for WVU’s season – much like last night’s game was to South Florida’s season.
“It’s a four-game season and it all starts with Louisville,” said Stewart. “We had a chance to really shine tonight and we didn’t.”
“A loss like this, yeah, it hurts but you’ve got to bounce back,” added Miller. “The will of a team is shown after a loss. Next week, we’ve got to prepare hard and come out and try and get a win.”
