WVU Most Experienced Big 12 Grid Team
May 15, 2015 02:12 PM | General
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| Karl Joseph |
According to Olson, the Mountaineers have a combined 321 starts among its returning players, breaking that down to 117 combined starts on offense and 204 on defense.
In fact, the 204 combined starts on defense are substantially more than the 171 combined starts the Oklahoma defense has returning for 2015.
Second on this list is Baylor with 314 combined starts while the team with the least experience is Kansas with a combined 126 starts returning.
This falls in line with what coach Dana Holgorsen has been saying all spring about the number of players he has returning for 2015, and how encouraged he is because of it.
“Our defense should be ahead right now,” Holgorsen said earlier this spring. “For one, they’ve got 15-16 guys who have played a lot of football. They have a lot of returning starters, a lot of experience and a lot of veterans and upperclassmen.”
Safety Karl Joseph and TCU offensive lineman Le’Raven Clark are the two most experienced players in the Big 12 with 38 career starts heading into 2015.
“Based on experience alone, West Virginia and Texas Tech would be the teams to keep an eye if you're looking for a bounce-back candidate,” wrote Olson.
Interesting stuff.
More Mountaineer Sports Notes …
* Dale Wolfley informs me that he has a killer two-part segment with defensive coordinator Tony Gibson breaking down the Mountaineer defense on this week’s West Virginia Coaches’ Show airing on West Virginia Media affiliates throughout the state.
The show will air Saturday morning at 9 a.m. and repeats at 11 a.m.
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| Don Barclay |
* Former Mountaineer offensive linemen Don Barclay and four other Green Bay Packers will have a cameo appearance in the movie Pitch Perfect 2, now in theaters.
This came about through the persistence of Packers offensive linemen David Bakhtiari, who is apparently a big fan of the original Pitch Perfect.
As for Barclay, this is a big year for him coming off an idle 2014 while recuperating from a serious knee injury sustained during the preseason.
* The Mountaineer baseball team moved into seventh place in the Big 12 standings following last night’s important 6-4 victory over Texas Tech.
Tonight’s game will begin at 6 p.m. and a live stream of the action can be accessed for free through WVUsports.com, courtesy of Coca-Cola (http://www.wvusports.com/mediaplayer.cfm).
West Virginia’s formula for qualifying for next week’s Big 12 baseball championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is pretty simple - win one of its two remaining games against Texas Tech here in Morgantown and the Mountaineers are in.
If not, then WVU will need help from either Texas, which plays at Baylor this weekend, or from Kansas State, which is playing at Kansas.
West Virginia benefitted greatly from poor weather in Stillwater, Oklahoma, last weekend when the Mountaineers won their only game against the 11th-rated Cowboys on Saturday afternoon before games two and three were washed out.
West Virginia, 26-24 following Friday’s win, is 8-12 in Big 12 play and actually has a better road record in conference play (5-5) than it does at home (3-7) this year.
WVU has just one series win in league play this year, at Kansas State back on April 2-4. A win today or tomorrow against Texas Tech will give West Virginia series win No. 2.
* Speaking of web streams, last night’s Texas Tech web stream had more than 5,000 total views, the third largest total for a WVU baseball game this year. There were more than 7,200 total views for the Monongalia County Ballpark dedication game against Butler on April 10, and there were approximately 5,400 views for the West Virginia-Oklahoma game played on April 18.
In all, there have been nearly 55,000 total views for baseball web streams this year from Monongalia County Ballpark with two dates remaining, proving West Virginia fans do have an interest in WVU baseball.
* I was passed along a note earlier this week that Joe Posch, a member of West Virginia’s 1959 NCAA finals team, has died.
Posch, a 6-foot-7-inch, 205-pound center, appeared in 28 games that season as a sophomore and averaged 2.4 points and 2.8 rebounds per game.
The Riverside, New Jersey, native’s best season came in 1960 when he scored 127 points and grabbed 103 rebounds as a backup center for Coach George King.
Twice Posch scored 14 points in games, against Furman and William & Mary, and he later pulled down a career-best 12 rebounds in an 80-78 win over Penn State on Feb. 14, 1961.
* West Virginia’s Big 12-SEC Challenge matchup against Florida to be played in Gainesville, Florida, on Saturday, January 30 will now pit the Mountaineers against former WVU point guard and current Gators’ assistant coach Darris Nichols, who came to UF from Louisiana Tech with recently hired coach Mike White.
Nichols, 28, has made a meteoric rise in the profession, going from Northern Kentucky to Wofford to Louisiana Tech to Florida in just a matter of a few years.
Darris is a young guy in the coaching profession worth keeping an eye on in the coming years.
* Former Mountaineer NCAA champion and Olympian Web Wright was recently named head coach of U.S. Military Academy’s rifle team, the school announced earlier this week. Wright becomes Army’s 25th rifle coach since the program’s inception in 1919.
Lt. Col. Wright will retire from active service later this summer to lead the Black Knights’ program. He currently serves as Director of Public Affairs at the United States Military Academy following two deployments in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.
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| Reed Sunahara |
* Volleyball coach Reed Sunahara continues to fill out his 2015 roster with the recent additions of TCU transfer Mia Swanegan and North Idaho College transfer Dzeni Hadzisehovic.
West Virginia finished sixth in the Big 12 standings last year with a 6-10 league record and an overall mark of 16-14.
The Mountaineers have shown consistent improvement playing in one of the top volleyball conferences in the country, going from 0-16 in 2012 to five victories in 2013 to six wins last season.
Sunahara took Cincinnati to the NCAA tournament eight times during his 12-season Bearcat coaching tenure.
* While the O’Bannon v. NCAA case is close to being resolved, the next legal case to keep an eye on is Jenkins v. NCAA, which is working its way through the court system right now.
Noted attorney Jeffrey Kessler (recently hired by Tom Brady to represent him in his appeal of a four-game suspension by the NFL for his role in Deflategate) is representing Jenkins in this case, which is different than O’Bannon’s in that Jenkins is essentially seeking no cap on the amount of compensation student-athletes receive from NCAA institutions for their services.
The O’Bannon ruling rendered last fall would require FBS football and Division I men’s basketball players to receive deferred compensation for their name, image and likeness (NLI) that can be capped at no less than $5,000 per year.
Those arguing against a free market approach for student-athlete compensation claim this could adversely affect most Olympic sports programs that are currently subsidized by revenue generated from football and men’s basketball.
Stay tuned.
* Our congratulations go out to Markeisha Everett on her new role as sports marketing director at Georgia Tech. Markeisha spent that last two years here at WVU coordinating the sports marketing efforts for men’s basketball and baseball.
* And finally, they used to say Wil Robinson couldn’t go to his left. Derek Zoolander, too, had trouble going to his left. Well, now it seems after unsuccessfully dodging all of these bomb craters on our local roadways the old Family Truckster is having trouble going to its left as well.
The problem is, while Robinson was so good that he didn’t have to go to his left because nobody could stop him whenever he went right, there are times when the old gas guzzler needs to go left and just can’t.
Oh well, I guess two rights make a left, right?
Or is it three?
Have a great weekend!
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Kansas State Recap
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