Big Expectations
July 01, 2010 01:43 PM | General
(1:47 p.m.)
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| Bill Kirelawich |
All you Bruce Irvin fans out there can get some sleep tonight. The juco All-American defensive end is enrolled in summer school and is taking part in summer workouts, according to longtime defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich.
"He's working out so everything is good there," Kirelawich said earlier this week. "I think he's a terrific athlete but with any newcomer I don't like to put the hat on them and expect too much too early and make the bar so high that they do nothing but frustrate themselves.
"To me, I believe in taking it a day at a time. Then we'll see where they are after the first week, after the second week, so on and so forth."
Kirlav may treat the new guys that way, but the older players have a much higher bar to reach.
"They know what is expected of them," he said. "They will either deliver or have to live with it for the rest of their lives because this is their year."
What makes the usually cautious coach a little more optimistic than usual is that he's assembled a pretty good group of linemen behind his top three returning players Chris Neild, Scooter Berry and Julian Miller.
"Last year we had three guys and didn't have anything behind them of any consequence. We had bodies there but inexperienced bodies," Kirelawich said. "This year we will have guys that are game ready and can go in and give me 25-30 snaps a game, which is what we lacked last year. Hopefully, Scooter, Neild and Julian don't get as beat up and then that makes them better players."
In hindsight, Kirelawich says Berry should have probably undergone season-ending shoulder surgery last year, but the team simply couldn't afford to have him off the field.
"Scooter should have been operated on at the beginning of the season or about the middle of the season when he got hurt. He had a tear in the front and tear in the back," said Kirelawich. "I said, 'Scooter you can't get operated on, you can't give up the season. Hang in there and go a little longer until the end of the season.' So he basically played injured all year long.
"Then he gets the knee and they were taking fluid off of that. This guy, in my mind, was a warrior. Anybody can play healthy. But at one point or another they all play busted up," Kirelawich added.
Thursday's Tidbits ...
"Too long," Kirelawich deadpanned. "It's been over 40 years. If there were term limits my (behind) would have been gone a long time ago!"
That is precisely why reporters always seem to stick around Kirelawich whenever he's in the interview room. The man is a quote machine.
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| Nicco Campriani |
Congratulations Nicco!
Next Friday, June 9, Bland will compete in the NACAC Under 23 Track & Field Championships held in Miramar, Fla. Bland will be competing in the 1,500, which is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 10.
Former West Virginia University sports information director Shelly Poe, now publicizing the Ohio State Buckeyes football program, wrote the foreword. Caskey teaches a media relations class at WVU when he is not promoting the women's basketball program.
"This guy, he's a Caron Butler-type, a Udonis Haslem," Riley said last week of Butler. "I've seen him play a lot - just loved him."
To give you an idea of the type of person Butler is, on the day of the draft he visited a 12-year-old leukemia patient at Ruby Hospital.
They used to say the Jerry Wests of this world don't come in pairs, but I'm not so sure that also doesn't apply to Mr. Butler.
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| Noel Devine |
Two weeks ago when the media was invited to the Puskar Center to interview WVU players, Devine could be seen spending a good portion of his morning posing for pictures with the campers that stopped by to tour the facility.
Wrote McMurphy: "West Virginia has been the nation's most successful school when playing against teams with bigger budgets. The Mountaineers' success rate against schools with a greater financial commitment is unprecedented.
"In the past five seasons, the Mountaineers played 17 games against schools that they were outspent by and West Virginia was an impressive 14-3 in those contests.
"In fact, West Virginia actually fared better in games against schools that spent more than money (.823 percent) than against schools that spent less money (33-10, .767) than the Mountaineers.
"Following West Virginia as the most successful when playing against schools that spent more money were Florida (9-4, .692 percent), LSU (13-6, .684), Oregon (19-9, .678), Texas Tech (18-10, .642) and Oregon State (27-16, .627)."
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| Ed Pastilong |
When guys like me begin digging through the clip files and do the research on the Pastilong period some 50 years from now, they are going to realize what a remarkable job Ed did transforming West Virginia University from a regional program into a national one.
Have a great weekend!
