West Virginia is in the midst of one of the most difficult stretches of football games in school history.
In succession, the Mountaineers have faced 15th-ranked Oklahoma, 21st-ranked Oklahoma State and second-ranked Baylor so far, with one more top-five team on the horizon next Thursday night at No. 3 TCU.
Adding a degree of difficulty to this year’s October schedule is the fact that three of the four are on the road.
So, is this the most difficult span of games the Mountaineers have ever faced?
The quick answer is it’s certainly among the hardest.
In 1992, West Virginia also had a similar four-game October stretch against nationally ranked teams featuring No. 21 Boston College, No. 14 Syracuse, No. 14 Penn State and No. 3 Miami during a 28-day period.
Yet three of those four games were at Mountaineer Field and in the case of Penn State, the Nittany Lions dropped consecutive contests to BYU and Notre Dame after beating WVU to finish the season with a mediocre 7-5 record – mediocre, that is, for Penn State standards at the time.
In 1994, West Virginia faced five nationally ranked teams but those games were stretched out over a four-month period from August 28 to November 24. And, two of the five teams finished the regular season outside of the top 25 in Virginia Tech and Syracuse.
Therefore, I’m not sure those two seasons are really comparable to this year.
However, there is a football schedule West Virginia once faced that does compare: 1983.
The mother of all West Virginia football schedules happened that year when the Mountaineers faced what was then called Murderer’s Row, featuring an 8-4 Maryland team that played in the Citrus Bowl, a 9-3 Boston College team that played in the Liberty Bowl, an 11-1 Miami squad that defeated Nebraska in the Orange Bowl for the national championship, an 8-4-1 Penn State club that beat Washington in the Aloha Bowl and an 8-3-1 Pitt team that played in the Fiesta Bowl.
Then there was a 9-2 Virginia Tech team with the No. 1-ranked defense in the country with a guy named Bruce Smith manning the defensive line, and a pretty fair Syracuse team with a 6-5 record and a four-game winning streak to end the season under up-and-coming coach Dick MacPherson.
The two late-season cupcakes, Temple and Rutgers, were actually pretty formidable compared to other teams those two schools fielded in the past. The Owls had a guy named Bruce Arians coaching them at the time and a running back named Paul Palmer leading their offense, while Rutgers was under the guidance of coach Frank Burns, who won 35 more games than he lost during his 11-year coaching career in Piscataway – which has to go down as one of the great achievements in college football history considering the black hole Rutgers has been for grid coaches through the years.
And the quarterbacks West Virginia’s defense had to contend with that season?
How about Maryland’s Boomer Esiason, Boston College’s Doug Flutie and Miami’s Bernie Kosar – not too bad, huh?
Indeed, this year’s schedule, particularly the current stretch of games featuring four ranked teams with a combined record of 24-1 so far is difficult, but will it measure up to what Don Nehlen’s Mountaineers faced in 1983?
Will there be a national champion on it as there was in 1983?
Will there be the caliber of quarterbacks similar to what West Virginia faced that year or a defensive lineman as good as Bruce Smith was?
Pitt that season was beginning its long decline, but the Panthers were still good enough to have six players drafted off of that team, including first-rounder Bill Maas.
Baylor’s Andrew Billings is good, but is he Bill Maas good?
Penn State was coming off a national championship in 1982 and was rebuilding its roster toward another national championship run in 1986.
Do Oklahoma, TCU or Oklahoma State have a roster full of players that can compare with what Joe Paterno was regularly putting out on the field in Happy Valley during the mid-1980s?
We’ll see.
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Speaking of tough schedules, men’s basketball coach Bob Huggins has another difficult docket with which to contend. West Virginia is facing seven games against preseason top 10 teams this year, and potentially eight against top-15 teams if the Mountaineers and Cal meet on Friday, November 27 out in Las Vegas.
Throw in two more games against No. 21 Baylor and a couple of contests against Texas, which received preseason votes, and you are looking at one of the more difficult slates a West Virginia men’s basketball team has ever played.
I imagine Huggins would like to hang around long enough to get 1,000 career coaching victories, but scheduling these guys won’t make it easy, that’s for sure.
Also …
How often does a team that is ranked 23rd in the country in the preseason end up being picked to finish sixth in its own conference?
Well, it’s happened this year with West Virginia in the Big 12, which speaks to just how difficult the conference is shaping up to be once again this season.
However, the Mountaineers were only four poll points shy of fourth place, two poll points shy of fifth and 14 points ahead of seventh-place Oklahoma State.
In case you were wondering, West Virginia has equaled or finished higher to its predicted preseason finish in 10 out of the last 13 years.
I have a sneaky suspicion Huggs will make it 11 out of 14 years after this season.
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Construction work continues on the football practice field and the word I am getting is that the facility could be available for the team to use by Thanksgiving, if the weather continues to cooperate. Work crews are scheduled to lay the new FieldTurf surface in early November and that should allow enough time to have it ready for the team to utilize by late November.
Getting the practice field ready to go is the critical link to beginning work on the removal of the crown and installing the new playing surface at Milan Puskar Stadium in time for the 2016 football season.
Of course, the key months will be January and February when cold weather conditions will slow work, meaning those extra few days in November could turn out to be invaluable.
Our Grant Dovey is working on a micro website highlighting all of the construction projects going on throughout the department that he tells me should be ready to go by the end of November.
Stay tuned.
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Submitted photo
Folks involved with this year’s Mountaineer Intercollegiate golf tournament at Pete Dye Golf Club in Bridgeport couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out earlier this week.
I am told every factor that could be controlled was done so in an A-plus fashion.
The only hiccup was Mother Nature, which presented golfers with frost delays on Monday and Tuesday morning that briefly delayed the start of action.
“This tournament couldn’t have gone any better,” said West Virginia coach Sean Covich, who added that he would like to move next year’s tournament up a week in hopes of taking advantage of a little warmer weather.
Covich admitted that when he first put this tournament together he was hopeful of finding enough teams to fill out the field.
Next year, he said he already has a waiting list of teams.
Sounds to me like a great start for Mountaineer golf, wouldn’t you?
And, kudos to Pete Dye for putting on such a great collegiate event.
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Our women’s basketball SID Russell Luna is great about sending preseason notes my way, some I remember and some I forget.
Here is what I can remember:
- West Virginia has 11 newcomers on this year’s roster, making Mike Carey’s crew the sixth-youngest team in women’s college basketball. The five teams younger than West Virginia this season are Marquette, Louisiana Tech, Arkansas, Portland State and Stetson.
Broken down by percentage of scholarships, 67 percent of West Virginia’s roster this year is comprised of newcomers.
However, of the five scholarship players returning, one of them happens to be preseason All-America candidate Bria Holmes, who was recently listed seventh on one WNBA Mock Draft I saw posted online.
West Virginia, picked to finish sixth in the Big 12, is hoping for a big year from Holmes and the other four returners this winter.
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I know very little about soccer, and even less about high school girl’s soccer, but I am one proud father today after the way my daughter Sydney’s team performed yesterday evening in capturing its second straight sectional championship.
Earlier this year, it also won the first Ohio Valley Athletic Conference title in school history and is currently ranked No. 1 in AAA heading into the playoffs.
Way to go girls!
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And finally, sticking with soccer, which I know very little about (just ask my daughter), Nikki Izzo-Brown’s powerhouse Mountaineers can clinch a share of another Big 12 regular season title tonight with a victory at Oklahoma State.
The only two teams left in contention are Texas and Baylor, who the Mountaineers play next Friday night in Waco.
Izzo-Brown’s No. 2-ranked Mountaineers have been one of the most dominant teams in the Big 12 in any sport at any time, accumulating a 26-1-3 record in conference play since joining the league in 2012.
West Virginia became only the second team in Big 12 women’s soccer history to capture three consecutive regular season titles last year and can match Texas A&M’s run of supremacy in conference play with another title this season.
The Aggies won four straight Big 12 crowns from 2004-07.
To illustrate just how dominant West Virginia has been in league play, the Mountaineers have allowed only ONE goal in a road match over the last two seasons.
And this year, the Mountaineers have the offensive firepower to match their great defensive play. West Virginia has scored four or more goals in a game six times so far this season, including its last three matches against No. 16 Texas Tech, Kansas and Iowa State.
The Mountaineers are just 11 goals shy of establishing a school record for goals in a season, and with two regular season games remaining and postseason play still on the horizon, that mark is well within reach.
By the way, do you know what West Virginia’s record is over the last two seasons when scoring two or more goals in a game?
How about 25-0, which ain’t too bad if you pardon the poor grammar.
Not too bad, indeed.
Have a great weekend!
