West-Main-121115.jpg
Campus Connection: Weekend Notes
December 11, 2015 12:00 PM | Men's Basketball
There isn’t a person alive today involved with team sports who understands how to win games better than Jerry West.
West played on West Virginia University basketball teams in the late 1950s that won 87 percent of their games and years later in the pros, he was a key member of the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers team that won 69 of 82 games and is considered among the greatest in NBA history.
As general manager of the Lakers, West was responsible for assembling LA’s great “Showtime” teams of the mid-1980s with center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and 6-foot-9-inch point guard Ervin “Magic” Johnson, and he built another Lakers dynasty in the late 1990s when he was able to pair center Shaquille O’Neal with guard Kobe Bryant.
Now, West’s 77 year’s worth of savvy and moxie are rubbing off on a Golden State Warriors franchise that is chasing history. West is serving in an advisory capacity as an executive board member for Golden State, now 23-0 to begin the season after Tuesday night’s eight-point win over Indiana.
Next in line attempting to end the Warriors’ winning streak is the Boston Celtics – West’s old nemesis when he played for the Lakers.
Golden State has the best player in the league right now in guard Stephen Curry – who once dropped 27 on West Virginia with 10 assists in Davidson’s 68-65 victory over the Mountaineers in New York City in 2008 - but West says it’s the Warriors’ unselfishness and ability to pass the basketball that makes them so special.
“What people miss is how well these guys pass the ball,” West told the LA News last month. “It’s really not something you see very often. Most teams have at least one guy who is a ball-stopper on offense, but these guys look for each other. Steph will shoot it, of course, but he shoots it so quick and he shoots it from everywhere. There’s not a place on the floor you can take away.”
I bring up Golden State’s ability to pass the basketball because better passing would have been the antidote to West Virginia’s offensive woes against Virginia in New York City on Tuesday night.
How many times in the second half did the Mountaineers get the ball into areas where Virginia wanted them to, and how many times were they unable to get it out of there?
Bob Huggins has repeatedly talked about the importance of passing the basketball, and we saw Tuesday night against Virginia what can happen to the offense when his players are unable to do so.
***
West Virginia’s last two appearances playing before a national television audience have not gone too well – last year’s 78-39 loss to Kentucky in the NCAA tournament regional semifinals on CBS and Tuesday’s 16-point loss to Virginia on ESPN.
Now, the Mountaineers have about a month to work on things with games coming up against UL Monroe, Marshall, Eastern Kentucky, Virginia Tech, Kansas State, TCU and Oklahoma State before their next major primetime appearance on ESPN2 against Kansas at the Coliseum on January 12.
***
Earlier this week, director of athletics Shane Lyons announced that football coach Dana Holgorsen will be returning for the 2016 season. It will be Holgorsen’s sixth campaign working the sidelines, matching Bobby Bowden and Gene Corum for the fifth-longest coaching tenure in Mountaineer football history.
Of course, Don Nehlen has the longest at 21 seasons, followed by Art Lewis’s 10 years, Ira Rodgers’s nine years spread out over two different periods and Rich Rodriguez’s successful seven-season coaching term from 2001-07.
As far as overall games, Holgorsen’s 63 leading into this year’s Cactus Bowl are the sixth-most of any coach in school history. He will pass Bowden’s 68 games coached at WVU in week five of 2016.
But what is clearly separating Holgorsen’s tenure from the others is the difficulty of the teams he’s now playing in the Big 12 Conference. Holgorsen has already faced 20 nationally ranked opponents, or 32 percent of the total number of games he’s coached at West Virginia.
The next highest percentage of ranked teams played by a Mountaineer coach was the 27 percent Rodriguez went up against in 86 games from 2001-07.
Don Nehlen coached against the most nationally ranked teams, 57, but those were spread out over 246 career games. In fact, Nehlen’s best team in 1988 only met two nationally ranked foes during the regular season – Pitt and Syracuse – and the Panthers failed to remain in the polls at the end of the season. Furthermore, 30 of Nehlen’s 57 games against ranked teams happened after 1991 when West Virginia joined the Big East and Miami, Boston College and Syracuse were still in the league.
During the modern era, the two WVU coaches that played the fewest number of ranked teams were Jim Carlen and Bobby Bowden, when West Virginia was still transitioning from the Southern Conference to Eastern independence.
Here is the full list of WVU coaches and the percentage of ranked teams each one has faced since 1936, when the Associated Press first began ranking college football teams:
- Dana Holgorsen, 63 games, 20 ranked opponents, 32 percent
- Rich Rodriguez, 86 games, 23 ranked opponents, 27 percent
- Don Nehlen, 246 games, 57 ranked opponents, 23 percent
- Frank Cignetti, 44 games, 10 ranked opponents, 23 percent
- Art Lewis, 98 games, 18 ranked opponents, 18 percent
- Dud DeGroot, 23 games, 3 ranked opponents, 13 percent
- Bill Stewart, 40 games, 4 ranked opponents, 10 percent
- Gene Corum, 61 games, 6 ranked opponents, 10 percent
- Bobby Bowden, 68 games, 6 ranked opponents, 9 percent
- Bill Kern, 48 games, 4 ranked opponents, 8 percent
- Jim Carlen, 41 games, 2 ranked opponents, 5 percent
- Marshall Glenn, 29 games, 0 ranked opponents, 0 percent
- Charles Tallman, 10 games, 0 ranked opponents, 0 percent
***
It will be interesting to see how much different Arizona State will be offensively, if at all, in the Cactus Bowl now that offensive coordinator Mike Norvell has accepted the head coaching position at Memphis. Word out of Tempe is that assistant head coach and offensive line coach Chris Thomsen is expected to take over the play calling duties in the bowl game.
Arizona State has a 3,000-yard passer (Mike Bercovici), a 1,000-yard rusher (Demario Richard) and three players with more than 50 catches this year (Devin Lucien, D.J. Foster and Tim White), so moving the ball and scoring points have not been the problem.
Most of the Sun Devils’ red numbers this year have come on defense, where they ranked 126th in passing yards allowed, 103rd in defensive passing efficiency and 102nd in total defense.
The question is: Will West Virginia be tempted to put the ball in the air against the Sun Devils after finishing the regular season ranked 16th in the country in rushing offense?
We saw what happened when the Mountaineers threw it 42 times in their regular-season finale at Kansas State last Saturday.
The one thing the Sun Devil defense has done well this year is stop the run, Arizona State giving up just 124.8 yards per game on the ground.
Perhaps that is a result of Arizona State’s run-stopping ability, or, its inability to stop the pass. We’ll know for sure on January 2.
***
Arizona State’s lopsided pass-run defensive numbers reminds me a little bit of Phil Elmassian’s porous West Virginia defense in 2001, which, ironically, led to Todd Graham becoming the Mountaineers’ co-defensive coordinator in 2002.
If you recall, West Virginia had a miserable time stopping the run that year, which led to the Mountaineers being college football’s No. 1-ranked team in pass defense.
However, that was clearly an example of a team being so bad in one facet of play that, statistically, it was so good in another.
***
Congratulations to Karl Joseph for being named to the CBS Sports All-America second team, announced yesterday. I’m convinced Joseph would have been West Virginia’s 12th consensus All-American had he played a full season.
***
Jeff Merrow
Jeff Merrow wasn’t one of West Virginia’s 11 consensus All-Americans, but he was a good college player for Bobby Bowden in the early 1970s who went on to have a productive professional career with the Atlanta Falcons.
In celebration of Atlanta’s 50th season, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put out a list of the 50 greatest Falcon players of all-time and Merrow came in at No. 39: “Merrow was one of the key components of one of the greatest defense in NFL history. In 1977 he led the ‘The Gritz Blitz,’ a defense that allowed just 9.2 points per game and only 129 points over a 14-game season, the best mark in league history.”
Today, Merrow, 62, lives in Buford, Georgia, and works for a company that sells heavy-duty truck lifts.
***
There is still plenty of time left before Christmas to get your copy of Saturday Snapshots through WVU Press. I am told there are not many left in this print run, however. Remaining copies can be purchased through the Press by clicking this link: http://wvupressonline.com/node/575.
The Backyard Brawl is also still available by clicking this link: http://wvupressonline.com/antonik_the_backyard_brawl_9781935978824
Use this promo code when ordering to save 30 percent: HUMBUG2015
***
Jedd Gyorko
And finally, it will be interesting to see how the St. Louis Cardinals plan on using former Mountaineer All-American Jedd Gyorko in 2016.
Earlier this week, San Diego traded Gyorko for Jon Jay with the Cardinals taking on a significant portion of Gyorko’s $32 million contract he signed two years ago.
Jedd is guaranteed $4 million next season, $6 million in 2017, $9 million in 2018 and $13 million in 2019.
Gyorko’s contract includes a $13-million club option for 2020 with a $1-million buyout.
He hit .247 with 16 home runs and 57 RBI in cavernous Petco Park last season, and his three-year major league totals show 49 career home runs, including a career-best 23 home runs during his rookie season in 2013.
Gyorko is going from one of the worst teams in baseball to one of the best, and he will be surrounded by good hitters in a very formidable Cardinals lineup, meaning the change of scenery could be just what the doctor ordered for Jedd's pro career.
We’ll see.
Have a great weekend!
College Basketball Crown Recap
Thursday, April 16
Ross Hodge, Honor Huff & Brenen Lorient | Oklahoma Postgame
Sunday, April 05
Ross Hodge, Treysen Eaglestaff & Brenen Lorient | Creighton Postgame
Saturday, April 04
Ross Hodge & Honor Huff | Stanford Postgame
Thursday, April 02
