Fagan-Main-12017.jpg
Campus Connection: A Familiar Voice Passes
January 20, 2017 01:46 PM | Football
You may not recognize his face, but you have certainly heard his voice - thick and gravelly like fog rolling through the mountains.
He was Jim Fagan, a backup tackle from Windber, Pennsylvania, who played for the Mountaineers in the early 1960s for coach Gene Corum. (Featured above in this 1995 Mountaineer Jammin' profile).
Injuries may have kept Jim from excelling on the gridiron, but that never kept him quiet.
Thankfully.
He pitched everything from Geico insurance to Alka-Seltzer during a very long and successful career that began in the early 1970s after first taking a stab at acting.
According to a 2010 story in the Charleston Gazette, Fagan said his wife, a successful jingle singer, helped him land his first job as a product pitch-man in New York City.
From there, he eventually caught on with NBC and did voice-over work for the network, most notably for the NBA, Wimbledon and the Olympics.
He was also the voice you heard introducing Mountaineer Sports Network broadcasts for many, many years.
Despite his tremendous success, Jim always remained engaged with his alma mater, serving as the chairman of the WVU Alumni Association Board of Directors. It was during his tenure as chairman of the board when the decision was made to acquire the land where the beautiful new alumni center currently sits.
He also lent his voice to many University promotional and recruiting videos through the years and in 1995 was named to the University’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni.
Jim, in failing health for the past several years, died Thursday at his home in Lagrangeville, New York.
He was 72.
***
A lot has been made of West Virginia’s late-game free throw shooting woes, which were contributing factors in overtime losses to Texas Tech and Oklahoma in Big 12 play so far this year.
Two weeks ago, against the Red Raiders, West Virginia missed 11 of 24 free throws - six of those coming in overtime - in falling 77-76 to Tech in Lubbock.
Then on Wednesday night, WVU clanked 11 of 29, including five in overtime, in losing to the Sooners, 89-87.
If the Mountaineers make less than half of their misses in both games (five) West Virginia’s record is sitting at 17-1 instead of 15-3.
And while free throw shooting will continue to be a cause of concern, an even bigger issue in my opinion is the Mountaineers’ inability to stop dribble-drives to the basket.
We saw Texas Tech ball handlers take advantage of this in Lubbock, and we saw it once again on Wednesday night when the 8-9 Sooners made drive after drive to the hoop.
A wise, old football coach once told me that every great defense ever devised has a vulnerability and I think this also applies to basketball.
No matter how well-schemed a defense is, and no matter how well you play it, there are always vulnerabilities and areas that can be attacked.
Based on my limited knowledge, there are basically three ways to compensate for these vulnerabilities:
1. Athleticism
2. Intelligence
3. Effort
The latter two areas were the ones West Virginia coach Bob Huggins mostly addressed during his postgame news conference.
One of the solutions he hinted at Thursday during his weekly Big 12 coaches’ teleconference was using some different personnel groupings in those critical end-of-game situations when the Mountaineers need defensive stops.
Again, free throw shooting is an easy area to point to with this year’s team. West Virginia’s 64.5-percent success rate from the line is currently ninth out of 10 Big 12 teams.
At the bottom, ironically, is league-leader Kansas at 63.7 percent, which demonstrates that poor free throw shooting can be overcome by other means.
You can shoot one free throw, 100 or a 1,000 a day, but unless you are going to resort to Dick Cheney methods and torture the players whenever they miss them during practice, good free throw shooters in late-game, high-pressure situations are born, not made.
But good defense, however, with defenders intelligent enough to identify who should or shouldn’t have the basketball in key situations, where they can force them to go on the floor when they do get the ball and exerting the maximum effort needed to make this happen are all things that can be coached.
And I’m sure Huggs is drilling that into his players’ heads as I write this.
***
West Virginia is currently entering a critical stretch of Big 12 games beginning on Saturday at Kansas State.
The Wildcats are 14-4, 3-3 in the Big 12 with two of their three league losses coming on the road at Kansas and Texas Tech. K-State is 9-1 at Bramlage Coliseum this year and is traditionally tough at home.
But West Virginia has won the last two times it has played there- - 87-83 in double overtime in 2016 and 65-59 in 2015. Both were hard, tough, physical basketball games in which the Mountaineers managed to make the critical plays down the stretch to earn key road victories.
WVU is going to need a similar effort on Saturday to come out on top once again in Manhattan.
***
So far this season, West Virginia has avoided one loss becoming two. When WVU dropped a disappointing, four-point decision in Brooklyn to Temple back on November 25, the Mountaineers rebounded with a 47-point victory over Manhattan and a 66-57 win at then-sixth-ranked Virginia in Charlottesville.
Then, following the Texas Tech defeat, West Virginia recovered to top TCU (now 14-4) by 12 at the Coliseum before knocking off No. 1-ranked Baylor by 21 three days later.
Now, we’ll see if a similar pattern takes hold with Kansas State coming up on Saturday leading into Tuesday night’s game against Kansas, which will be No. 1 in the coaches’ poll once more if it beats Texas as expected on Saturday.
After that, the Mountaineers will get to experience “Hilton Magic” at Iowa State following their final out-of-conference game against struggling Texas A&M.
It’s certainly not a make-or-break point of the season, but if West Virginia wants to keep within sight of the undefeated Jayhawks, it’s going to have to perform well against some outstanding basketball teams in the coming days.
***
Lanay Montgomery
Mike Carey’s 24th-ranked women’s basketball team defeated Kansas, 62-51, Wednesday night to snap a two-game conference losing streak. The 3-4 Mountaineers are currently sixth in the conference standings and will face league leader Baylor on Saturday in Waco.
A lack of depth because of preseason injuries has been a major concern for Carey since the start of the season, and the minutes from some of his key players are beginning to add up.
Leading scorer Tynice Martin is averaging 34.5 minutes per game while starting point guard Chania Ray is averaging 33.5 minutes per contest.
The bulk of the minutes are coming from eight players, but only two - Ray and Alexis Brewer - are the team’s primary ball handlers.
Martin can also handle the ball in emergency situations but doing so comes at the expense of her offense, and she is currently second in the league averaging 17.8 points per game.
Carey, like Huggins, is going to have to lean on his many years of experience to navigate the remaining minefield of conference games his team is facing.
Speaking of the women, senior center Lanay Montgomery’s 70.6 percent field goal percentage continues to lead the country. She has converted an amazing 101-of-143 field goal attempts so far this year, and if she can maintain this accuracy throughout the remainder of the season, it will be the eighth-best shooting performance in NCAA history.
Keep dropping them in, Lanay!
***
I was sad to see the passing of legendary Miami Herald sports columnist Edwin Pope. He was one of the best of his generation, perhaps not quite to Jim Murray’s level, but really close.
***
Dana Holgorsen
Dana Holgorsen and his Mountaineer football staff have two big recruiting weekends left before signing day arrives on Wednesday, Feb. 1.
Our fifth-annual signing day show will once again be streamed live from the Milan Puskar Center beginning at 8 a.m. and continuing until 1 p.m. We will take a short break and then stream Holgorsen’s news conference announcing this year’s class at 3:30 p.m.
Tony Caridi, Jed Drenning, Dale Wolfley and Dan Zangrilli will be on the set to break down the newest Mountaineers and how they fit into the future plans.
Holgorsen, assistant coaches and staff, an early visit from Director of Athletics Shane Lyons and some special features are on the menu for this year’s web stream, presented by BrickStreet Insurance.
***
And finally, I must admit I was one of the 40,000 people watching Steelers receiver Antonio Brown’s Facebook Live stream from the locker room at Arrowhead Stadium following Pittsburgh’s 18-16 victory over Kansas City last Sunday night.
The locker room has always been a sacred place in sports and what goes on inside the locker room usually remains there - but not always.
During Vince Lombardi’s final game coaching the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl II, offensive lineman Jerry Kramer famously recorded Lombardi’s speech to the team and from that came his famous book Instant Replay, co-written with Dick Schaap.
But the most controversial locker-room look at professional sports was Jim Bouton’s ground-breaking book, Ball Four, which depicted the petty jealousies, tomcatting, drug usage and the typical Alpha Male, behind-the-scenes happenings that occurred with Major League baseball's most popular franchise, the New York Yankees.
When his book was published in 1970, Bouton was considered either a prophet or a pariah depending upon one’s viewpoint.
In the coming days, it will be interesting to see how Brown is treated by a very traditional, old-fashioned Pittsburgh Steelers organization that prides itself on steering clear of these types of controversies.
One thing is certain: you can bet every professional - and collegiate - sports organization in America is now reviewing and updating its social media policies regarding locker room access.
Fan access is great and has been very beneficial to the popularization of collegiate and professional sports in recent years, but it can also come at considerable expense.
Antonio Brown’s Facebook Live video demonstrated some of the pitfalls when access is unlimited, and uncensored.
Have a great weekend!
Rich Rodriguez | Dec. 3
Wednesday, December 03
Reid Carrico | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
Jeff Weimer | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
Rich Rodriguez | Nov. 29
Saturday, November 29
