Saturday, November 4
Morgantown, W.Va.
3:30 p.m.
West Virginia University
vs
Iowa State
Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
United Bank Playbook: Iowa State
November 01, 2017 01:57 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Tony Gibson was sick to his stomach on Monday morning after pouring through all of Iowa State's game tape in preparation for this Saturday's 3:30 p.m. meeting with the rapidly-ascending Cyclones at Milan Puskar Stadium.
West Virginia's defensive coordinator wasn't just sick because of how good 14th-ranked Iowa State is - which they are - it was because what he saw on tape reminded him how West Virginia played last year, and the year before, and the year before, and the year before and so on and on …
This year's Iowa State team is hard-working, disciplined and tough. Very tough.
Toughness was something West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen brought up repeatedly after his team's disappointing 50-39 loss to Oklahoma State last Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium.
He continued to discuss it during his Tuesday afternoon news conference inside the Milan Puskar Center team room.
"The first thing back there is toughness," Holgorsen said, pointing to a sign on the back of the wall behind the group of reporters he was talking to. "I don't care what program you're talking about - and it probably doesn't matter what sport you're talking about - if you don't have that then you're going to have a hard time being successful."
Hearing this from Holgorsen so late in the season is somewhat alarming. It's also something that is rarely ever uttered around here about West Virginia's football teams.
You might come in here and beat us, but you're not leaving here without a couple of bruises for your efforts.
After all, this is the school that produced Hall of Famer "Jumbo" Joe Stydahar, one of the last guys in pro football to play without a helmet. Later, when he was the coach of the Los Angeles Rams, Stydahar used to instruct his guys to dive in face first whenever tackling ball carriers.
"You many lose a lot of your teeth," Stydahar used to say, "but you also make a lot of tackles that way."
Then there was Hall of Famer Sam Huff, one of the few men on the planet who was capable of bringing down Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown in the open field. It was Huff who once said, "You might beat us, but you're not going to get out of town!"
Or linebacker Darryl Talley, who used to walk around campus wearing a black Members Only jacket with the word "assassin" stitched on the front. When Talley played at West Virginia, they used to say it wasn't considered a good football practice unless the coaching staff was constantly breaking up fist fights.
Do you remember 190-pound safety Mike Collins trying to fight the entire Syracuse football team in 1992 when his teammate Tommy Orr was ambushed by a bunch of thugs and their coaches along the Orange sideline?
Walk into WVU director of sports publications Joe Swan's office here at the Coliseum and you will see a 24-year-old framed picture on his wall of WVU linebacker Tim Brown knocking Miami wide receiver Marcus Wimberly into Marion County with a crack-back block during Collins' interception return in a 1993 victory over those big, bad Hurricanes.
Two-hundred-pound linebacker Scotty Gyorko? I'm convinced the character Bobby Boucher in the Adam Sandler football movie The Waterboy was Gyorko's biopic.
Safety Karl Joseph? How could anyone ever forget all those big hits he used to deliver, especially the little kiss he once sent to Oklahoma's DeDe Westbrook along the Sooner sidelines?
Or, how about the way linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski used to sic those ball carriers like a German Shepherd chasing down the mailman?
Hell, even West Virginia's kickers were tough. Todd Sauerbrun once got into a fight with a teammate over a cough drop. A cough drop!
Yes, West Virginia football players have always been tough. Toughness is one of the first boxes the coaches check before players arrive on campus.
Take a look at some of West Virginia's other teams on campus. There isn't a tougher team in the country than Bob Huggins' Mountaineers. Same deal with Mike Carey's women's team. And women's soccer coach Nikki Izzo-Brown is as tough as they come.
Toughness is what this state was built on. It's in our DNA. West Virginians will excuse a lot of things, but lack of toughness is not one of them.
"I don't like being around soft people," Gibson admitted, "and we had way too much of that on Saturday."
Indeed, Oklahoma State came in to Milan Puskar Stadium last Saturday afternoon and pushed the Mountaineers around like a school-yard bully demanding their lunch money.
In fact, it came so leisurely for the Cowboys last weekend that their quarterback was well enough to tweet this afterward:
"You can look at everything that happened from blocking to tackling to sustaining blocks to getting off blocks to running hard and not running hard, all that stuff - we didn't play as hard as we needed to. Bottom line," Holgorsen said.
"I thought Oklahoma State got up in our face and we had trouble getting off press coverage and we couldn't get any separation," offensive coordinator Jake Spavital added. "That's definitely something that needs to be addressed this week, making sure we have the proper physicality in terms of our route running and our blocking."
So, how does it get addressed in one week's time?
"I don't know," Holgorsen said. "Go out and practice. That's the only way I know how to. Things have been addressed with the staff with expectations of each and every one of their players and it all starts with me. I've got to be in the right frame of mind of how we teach and go outside and prepare. There is no easy way to do it. Roll the sleeves up and get out there and practice your tail off."
Holgorsen cast a wide net when analyzing the current state of toughness on his football team.
"The point of attack is important, but then there is the aspect of the running backs understanding things the right way and hitting it hard. It's okay to break a tackle every now and then. Then there are receivers involved that once the back kind of gets out into the open it's okay for those guys to run fast, put their hands on people and block them," Holgorsen said.
"We can get to the defense if you want. I can say the same thing about basically everyone on that side of the ball as well," he added. "We've got some young kids up front that need to not be young any more. We need those guys to play tough, be physical and man-up; grow up.
"All of this is 100 percent on my shoulders the way we approach practice and the way that we go through practice it needs to get better."
Holgorsen said these guys have it in them. He's seen it from them before.
"We've had that mentality around here for the last three or four years, and we did earlier in the year as well," he said. "We've got to get it back now."
The coach ominously remarked after Saturday's loss to Oklahoma State that "things were going to get uncomfortable around here."
They are.
Now, we'll see if his football team can respond this weekend and make things a little uncomfortable for Iowa State.
If not, then two makes a trend.
West Virginia's defensive coordinator wasn't just sick because of how good 14th-ranked Iowa State is - which they are - it was because what he saw on tape reminded him how West Virginia played last year, and the year before, and the year before, and the year before and so on and on …
This year's Iowa State team is hard-working, disciplined and tough. Very tough.
Toughness was something West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen brought up repeatedly after his team's disappointing 50-39 loss to Oklahoma State last Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium.
He continued to discuss it during his Tuesday afternoon news conference inside the Milan Puskar Center team room.
"The first thing back there is toughness," Holgorsen said, pointing to a sign on the back of the wall behind the group of reporters he was talking to. "I don't care what program you're talking about - and it probably doesn't matter what sport you're talking about - if you don't have that then you're going to have a hard time being successful."
Hearing this from Holgorsen so late in the season is somewhat alarming. It's also something that is rarely ever uttered around here about West Virginia's football teams.
You might come in here and beat us, but you're not leaving here without a couple of bruises for your efforts.
After all, this is the school that produced Hall of Famer "Jumbo" Joe Stydahar, one of the last guys in pro football to play without a helmet. Later, when he was the coach of the Los Angeles Rams, Stydahar used to instruct his guys to dive in face first whenever tackling ball carriers.
"You many lose a lot of your teeth," Stydahar used to say, "but you also make a lot of tackles that way."
Then there was Hall of Famer Sam Huff, one of the few men on the planet who was capable of bringing down Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown in the open field. It was Huff who once said, "You might beat us, but you're not going to get out of town!"
Or linebacker Darryl Talley, who used to walk around campus wearing a black Members Only jacket with the word "assassin" stitched on the front. When Talley played at West Virginia, they used to say it wasn't considered a good football practice unless the coaching staff was constantly breaking up fist fights.
Do you remember 190-pound safety Mike Collins trying to fight the entire Syracuse football team in 1992 when his teammate Tommy Orr was ambushed by a bunch of thugs and their coaches along the Orange sideline?
Walk into WVU director of sports publications Joe Swan's office here at the Coliseum and you will see a 24-year-old framed picture on his wall of WVU linebacker Tim Brown knocking Miami wide receiver Marcus Wimberly into Marion County with a crack-back block during Collins' interception return in a 1993 victory over those big, bad Hurricanes.
Two-hundred-pound linebacker Scotty Gyorko? I'm convinced the character Bobby Boucher in the Adam Sandler football movie The Waterboy was Gyorko's biopic.
Safety Karl Joseph? How could anyone ever forget all those big hits he used to deliver, especially the little kiss he once sent to Oklahoma's DeDe Westbrook along the Sooner sidelines?
Or, how about the way linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski used to sic those ball carriers like a German Shepherd chasing down the mailman?
Hell, even West Virginia's kickers were tough. Todd Sauerbrun once got into a fight with a teammate over a cough drop. A cough drop!
Yes, West Virginia football players have always been tough. Toughness is one of the first boxes the coaches check before players arrive on campus.
Take a look at some of West Virginia's other teams on campus. There isn't a tougher team in the country than Bob Huggins' Mountaineers. Same deal with Mike Carey's women's team. And women's soccer coach Nikki Izzo-Brown is as tough as they come.
Toughness is what this state was built on. It's in our DNA. West Virginians will excuse a lot of things, but lack of toughness is not one of them.
"I don't like being around soft people," Gibson admitted, "and we had way too much of that on Saturday."
Indeed, Oklahoma State came in to Milan Puskar Stadium last Saturday afternoon and pushed the Mountaineers around like a school-yard bully demanding their lunch money.
In fact, it came so leisurely for the Cowboys last weekend that their quarterback was well enough to tweet this afterward:
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong...STILLWATER take me Home #justwin
— Mason Rudolph (@Rudolph2Mason) October 28, 2017
"You can look at everything that happened from blocking to tackling to sustaining blocks to getting off blocks to running hard and not running hard, all that stuff - we didn't play as hard as we needed to. Bottom line," Holgorsen said.
"I thought Oklahoma State got up in our face and we had trouble getting off press coverage and we couldn't get any separation," offensive coordinator Jake Spavital added. "That's definitely something that needs to be addressed this week, making sure we have the proper physicality in terms of our route running and our blocking."
So, how does it get addressed in one week's time?
"I don't know," Holgorsen said. "Go out and practice. That's the only way I know how to. Things have been addressed with the staff with expectations of each and every one of their players and it all starts with me. I've got to be in the right frame of mind of how we teach and go outside and prepare. There is no easy way to do it. Roll the sleeves up and get out there and practice your tail off."
Holgorsen cast a wide net when analyzing the current state of toughness on his football team.
"The point of attack is important, but then there is the aspect of the running backs understanding things the right way and hitting it hard. It's okay to break a tackle every now and then. Then there are receivers involved that once the back kind of gets out into the open it's okay for those guys to run fast, put their hands on people and block them," Holgorsen said.
"We can get to the defense if you want. I can say the same thing about basically everyone on that side of the ball as well," he added. "We've got some young kids up front that need to not be young any more. We need those guys to play tough, be physical and man-up; grow up.
"All of this is 100 percent on my shoulders the way we approach practice and the way that we go through practice it needs to get better."
Holgorsen said these guys have it in them. He's seen it from them before.
"We've had that mentality around here for the last three or four years, and we did earlier in the year as well," he said. "We've got to get it back now."
The coach ominously remarked after Saturday's loss to Oklahoma State that "things were going to get uncomfortable around here."
They are.
Now, we'll see if his football team can respond this weekend and make things a little uncomfortable for Iowa State.
If not, then two makes a trend.
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