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Rewarding Day for WVU's Barber
November 15, 2015 11:39 AM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – College football can be cruel, unkind, unforgiving and yet so rewarding all at the same time.
Nobody knows this better than West Virginia University’s fifth-year senior linebacker Jared Barber, who is playing a fifth season of college football because of what happened to him in a game against Texas at Milan Puskar Stadium on Saturday, November 9, 2013.
Barber, the team’s top tackler that season, was having a great game against the Longhorns right up until the final play when he tore his ACL on the Longhorns’ game-winning score in overtime. Barber’s knee injury, and what happened afterward took him down a path of uncertainty, disappointment and great concern – concern about not just his football career, but more importantly, if he was going to continue to have use of his leg.
Following offseason knee surgery to repair his damaged knee, a very serious MRSA infection set in that had doctors puzzled about how to effectively treat it. Eventually, the right antibiotics were prescribed to get the infection under control, but the lengthy time off caused Barber to miss the entire 2014 football season.
Now, hit the fast-forward button to yesterday’s 38-20 victory over the Longhorns when Barber played a key role in that triumph, and you can understand why he was wearing an ear-to-ear grin in the media room afterward.
It was Barber’s 42-yard fumble return in the first quarter that really jump started Saturday’s victory for the Mountaineers.
“It was big,” said West Virginia defensive coordinator Tony Gibson. “Any time you can score a defensive touchdown it’s huge, especially for Jared, to start this game off like that. Everybody knew what it meant to him and what this game means to him – the Texas game – that’s when he got injured two years ago. He wanted to have a big game. I thought he did some really good things and I’m happy for him.”
“It was good for me personally – I don’t want to say payback, but I guess that’s the word to use,” added Barber. “For me, towards the end of the game, I felt more excited – not for myself because they took last season away from me because I tore my ACL – but more so because we haven’t won in three years against those guys.”
Interestingly enough, Barber’s No. 1 concern when he got over to the sideline after his touchdown return was how slow he looked running the 42 yards to get into the end zone.
“The first thing he told me when he got back over, ‘Coach, how slow did I look?’” said Gibson. “I didn’t know who had the ball. It was a mad scramble over there and I didn’t pick him up until about the 10 yard line. I was very happy for him.”
Barber was running toward the north end of the stadium away from the big video board, so he didn’t have the benefit of looking up to see who was chasing him.
“I felt pretty slow and I saw the shadow behind me getting bigger and bigger and I thought somebody was going to catch me, but thank goodness I scored,” he said.
Barber’s scoop and score happened early in the game, but it had a big impact on the outcome because Texas was controlling things up front with its big, physical offensive line and an attacking defense that was smothering West Virginia’s offense.
“Any time you get points on the board, whether it’s offense or defense, it gets the offense rolling,” said Barber. “That was the biggest thing for us: get points on the board, take away that zero on the board, and give the offense some confidence.”
What makes this victory so special to Barber is that this was the first time since West Virginia joined the Big 12 four years ago that the Mountaineers were able to defeat one of the league’s smash-mouth teams.
West Virginia is 0-4 against Oklahoma facing this style of offense; the Mountaineers are 0-3 against Kansas State and lost last year’s game at Texas 33-16.
“We knew they were going to come in here and big-boy us, power football, that’s what they are built for, obviously they’re a big team, big kids, good-looking kids, but we just flew to the ball today and I think that’s what made the difference,” explained Barber. “They are big and they were strong and fast and all that stuff, but just the effort we played with to get to the ball and create turnovers was the difference.”
Gibson agrees.
“Give these kids credit. We’ve had five straight weeks of spread offenses and all that and then we had to get back into the run,” he said. “We schemed it up, had a nice package to it and they popped the long touchdown run and I got scared of the game plan and started changing some calls up and I wished I wouldn’t have now.
“If we don’t have turnovers I don’t know what the final score is because they were pounding us,” added Gibson. “They did the same thing to Oklahoma and I knew that was going to be their game plan against us. We defended more third and short than we had in a long time.”
Barber said Saturday’s performance was a matter of West Virginia’s veteran defense playing its heart out against a team that it wanted to defeat in the worst way.
“I think it comes down to if you run to the ball with relentless pursuit and bad intentions, good things happen for you. I think that’s what we did,” he said.
Indeed, that did happen, and for Jared Barber, it turned out to be a very rewarding afternoon - for many reasons.
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