WEDNESDAY PRACTICE REPORT
April 13, 2011 11:29 AM | General
West Virginia has considerable experience in some areas and not so much experience in others. Safeties coach Steve Dunlap is overseeing one of those areas with inexperienced players and it really showed during today’s practice, particularly toward the end during red zone.
“We’re a long way off,” said Dunlap. “We’re not anywhere close to where we need to be. There are just way too many mistakes and it’s just not good enough right now all the way across the board: fundamentals, technique, keys, just everything in general. It’s like I told the kids, we’re going to have to play through spring ball to get it going.”
Dunlap does not have senior Eain Smith, who is recovering from off-season shoulder surgery, nor does he have Robert Sands or Sidney Glover. Sands left school a year early to enter the NFL draft while Glover graduated. That means young guys like Travis Bell at free safety and Darwin Cook at bandit safety are getting most of the reps.
“What I’m looking for more than anything is intensity,” Dunlap said. “I don’t want guys going out there making the same mistakes over and over. Like I told them, I set the standard and the standard is not good enough right now and it’s not even close. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
“You’ve got to have fundamentals or you can’t go any further,” Dunlap added. “If you watch, we don’t have a lot of our defense in right now because we just can’t. I always tell the players that they are the ones that will dictate what we do and how much we do by how much they can handle. Obviously we’re tippy toeing right now. We are going to take baby steps before we start to run.”
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