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Campus Connection: Known Unknowns
June 27, 2015 04:06 PM | General
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In the world of college football, most coaches can live with unknown unknowns (call it blissful ignorance, if you like) but what gnaws at them more than anything are the known unknowns they encounter on a weekly basis: How is the other team going to attack us? How will the weather conditions affect what we want to do? Can our guys hold up in the fourth quarter? Can our players make the adjustments we need to make on the fly? If we do A, how does that affect B? When do we use that special play we worked on all week and can our players run it?
You can go on and on with this.
However, what makes coaches feel a lot better about dealing with these known unknowns is having a bunch of veteran players upon whom to rely – guys who can relate to what it’s like trying to tackle Samaje Perine in the fourth quarter (not easy), or how fast those Baylor wide receivers can get downfield, or how big defensive end Shawn Oakman really is, or how elusive Trevone Boykin can be when he gets out of the pocket, or how aggressive Texas has become on defense with Charlie Strong running the show, or how clever Bill Snyder can be at any point in the game, or how hot it is in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in late October, or, how you must conserve your energy when you have to defend 60-some pass attempts against Texas Tech.
It’s one thing to be told these things when players arrive on campus, but it’s something entirely different when it actually happens to them – like the time those young West Virginia DBs were still looking over to the sideline to get the defensive call when Baylor had already snapped the football. When that happens the other team is liable to put 73 points on the scoreboard and 864 yards on the stat sheet as Baylor did to the Mountaineers in Waco back in 2013.
Now, when coaches bring these things up it registers to the veteran players and that makes the entire process more efficient, beginning with summer conditioning.
“I really do feel like we’re, by far and away, as advanced and as ahead from any of the previous teams that I’ve had here,” Coach Dana Holgorsen said last Thursday. “Our team is in a good place. We’ve got so many seniors and juniors and upperclassmen. The leadership that I see out there when things got hard during the spring, when things get hard now doing agilities, running the hill – all that stuff – we’ve got a whole bunch of guys that step up and get things right.”
Just as importantly as doing things the right way is the example the older players are now providing the younger players.
Good coaching and good instruction are important, for sure, but just as important are the good coaching and good instruction players get from their peers. These guys are around each other far longer than the coaches and creating a winning culture takes everyone, starting with the coaches and continuing on down to the players, specifically the veteran players.
A quick count of the spring depth chart shows 39 juniors and seniors listed on this year’s two-deep roster, with many of those older players in key spots. Because of that, when a younger player is asked to step in and play this season, he’s got several experienced guys around him to help him along.
Don’t discount for a minute the importance and value of that, especially in a sport as physically and as emotionally demanding as college football.
“The senior leadership this year is crazy, honestly,” admitted fifth-year senior defensive tackle Kyle Rose. “It went by fast and we’re all here and we’re fifth-year seniors and our class has kind of stuck together. We want our freshman to feel the way we feel and we want them to want a championship the way we want a championship. If we can get to them early and make a freshman understand where a senior is coming from, that raises the bar that much more and it brings our team up.”
Senior tackle Marquis Lucas said the biggest thing about having a veteran team is how much more efficiently things run when the coaches are not around.
“It cuts out a lot of the little things that you have to do because the coaches don’t really have to get into it. It’s really up to us because at the end of the day it’s our team,” he said.
Rose agreed.
“It doesn’t take you five years to actually understand what you’re doing now,” he said. “The more experience the better because you just have people who know what they’re doing now.”
The coaches are limited in their daily interactions with the players during the summertime, but they have been around them enough to see how advanced this group has become as they get prepared for training camp in August.
“Talking to our strength guys and just watching them run, you can see guys that get it now,” said defensive coordinator Tony Gibson. “Maybe a year ago they were leaning over, bending over, and worried about how tired they were and now you have guys who understand and understand what it takes to win.
“With so many guys back that have played football for us you’re starting to create leadership,” he continued. “You see different guys picking it up and the majority of the time the coaches don’t have to say anything. Before we get to them somebody else is already on them explaining to the young guys how we do things. That’s how you want your program and I think it’s rolling pretty smooth right now.”
Make no mistake, having a lot of experienced players does not guarantee success, but lacking experience can be a recipe for failure, especially when things are not going as planned.
The Mountaineers this year are still going to need to develop playmakers at key positions and find guys who are willing to do the things required to stop Oklahoma’s power running game, or move the ball against those stout Texas and Kansas State defenses, or figure out a way to slow down TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech – teams that can score at a moment’s notice.
Having older guys around certainly helps, particularly if the leadership is coming from the right players, and, once again, there is really no substitute for having a bunch of veteran players around when things are not going well.
As they say, that’s when the men are separated from the boys, which brings me to something Lucas said the other day.
“We’re all grown men now.”
That’s certainly something to keep in the back of your mind, especially when the calendar flips from October to November this season and those known unknowns become even more difficult to manage.
Have a great Fourth of July weekend!
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