Football Notebook: New Coach for KU
September 29, 2014 02:21 PM | General
West Virginia will be in a unique situation on Saturday afternoon when it faces a Kansas team with a new coach.
Following last Saturday’s 23-0 loss to Texas, KU athletic director Sheahon Zenger decided to pull the plug on coach Charlie Weis just four games into his third season at Kansas.
Weis was 6-22 during his time at Lawrence with his lone victory in Big 12 play coming last year against West Virginia.
Longtime Kansas defensive coordinator Clint Bowen has been named interim coach and will serve in that capacity until a successor is named.
Bowen, a Lawrence native, has deep ties to the KU program, playing defensive back for the Jayhawks in the early 1990s and spending the last 16 years on the Kansas staff in some capacity.
Bowen was promoted to defensive coordinator last December after working specifically with the Kansas linebackers in 2013. The 42-year-old coach has worked with the Jayhawk special teams, tight ends, running backs, safeties and linebackers, and has also been co-defensive coordinator twice during his lengthy tenure.
How much Kansas will change in a week’s time is unknown, although West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen doubts very much considering the timing of the coaching change.
“It’s a little trickier actually trying to change things in the middle of the season than you would probably think,” Holgorsen said earlier today on his Big 12 Conference coaches’ teleconference.
Consequently, Holgorsen said his staff is continuing to prepare for Kansas just as they did last week when Weis was still coaching the team.
“We’ve got the film, we know who their players are; we know their personnel,” he said. “Basically the coordinators are intact and will be continuing to do the same things. We’d have to guess in order for it to change (their preparation) and we’re not very good at that so we will continue to attack what we’ve tried to do last week as well.”
What Holgorsen has seen of the four games Kansas has played so far this year, including last Saturday’s loss to the Longhorns, is very similar to what he observed last year from the Jayhawks.
Actually, a large number of players responsible for last year’s 31-19 victory over West Virginia will be back out on the field for Saturday’s game in Morgantown.
“They’ve got a lot of returning guys on both sides of the ball,” noted Holgorsen. “They’ve brought in (offensive coordinator) John Reagan from Rice and that’s changed what they do a little bit. He probably calls it a little bit different. It’s a little bit more of a zone scheme, but it would seem to be a little bit more of what we’ve seen the last couple of years.
“Clint Bowen has been there it seems like forever, but (the defense) looks exactly like it did last year,” Holgorsen added.
Saturday’s game will likely be the first time West Virginia has faced an interim coach in football. Holgorsen said he can’t recall ever facing a coach in that capacity, either.
Regardless, it will not affect what they do or how they will call the game that much, he said.
“We’ve got to worry about what we’re doing here at West Virginia and the way we prepare is by looking at their personnel and looking at their body of work with what they’re doing, the Xs and Os on all three sides of the ball, and that’s what we’ll prepare our guys to face,” he said.
Saturday’s game will kick off at 4 p.m. and will be televised nationally on Fox Sports Net.
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