MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - You see the picture above?
It's the West Virginia University football players proudly carrying the state flag onto the field for its season-opening game against Tennessee at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The state flag has always been a great source of pride for Mountaineers from Weirton to Welch, Martinsburg to Matewan and all points in between, but I bet your pride swells when you learn that there is a backstory to this particular flag.
It holds a very special story.
Evan Chaney, a U.S. Army Flight Paramedic when he was stationed in Afghanistan, wore this flag inside his body armor on all life-saving aeromedical evacuation (MEDEVAC) missions in northern Afghanistan during his most recent tour there.
He was part of a 12-member crew that conducted these critical excursions for nine months in the war-torn country earlier this year.
"This flag is important to me and has sentimental value," Chaney wrote in an email to WVU director of football operations
Robert Glowacky, "but I bequeath it to the team because of my love and pride for my home state, WVU and Mountaineer football.
"It is my hope that the team will carry it forward to remember that Mountaineers are all over the world, a diaspora with many ardent fans in uniform."
He concluded, "Freedom isn't free, but as long as we live in this great nation and state, Mountaineers are always free!"
Chaney is a native of Charleston. Billy Raines from Vienna, West Virginia, is also a member of his platoon.
Pictured above is Chaney proudly holding the state flag in front of an Apache helicopter. He is wearing the sunglasses.
Great stuff!
And now, some more Mountaineer sports notes to take you into homecoming weekend …
* Last year in Lawrence, West Virginia couldn't stop Kansas running back Khalil Herbert, who ran for 291 yards – the most yards ever gained by an opposing back.
That's more than Kevan Barlow's 272 yards in 2000, Samaje Perine's 242 yards in 2014, Wally Triplett's 219 yards in 1948 and Larry Csonka's 216 yards in 1965.
Well, guess what? Herbert is still around, but he only carried the football three times in last Saturday's loss to Oklahoma State.
Why?
Because of Pooka.
No, not Polka but Pooka, as in Pooka Williams, Kansas' dynamic, true freshman running back from New Orleans. He's not very big, standing 5-feet-10 and weighing just 170 pounds, but he's elusive and very, very fast.
"He'll get 2, 3, 4 and then 80 (yards)," West Virginia defensive coordinator
Tony Gibson said. "He can move and he's tough. He's not real big, but he runs angry."
Pooka is the leading rusher in the Big 12 this week with an average of 118.5 yards per game.
"He's done it to everybody," Gibson said. "He did it to Rutgers. He did it to Central Michigan. He did it to Baylor, and he just did it to Oklahoma State."
Hopefully, he doesn't do it to West Virginia on Saturday, however.
* One more victory for West Virginia coach
Dana Holgorsen will tie him with Art Lewis for third place on the school's career win list with 58.
Holgorsen is currently three wins shy of Rich Rodriguez for second with 60. Hall of Fame coach Don Nehlen has the most victories in school history with 149 in 21 seasons.
By the way, that list includes four Hall of Fame coaches: Nehlen, Clarence Spears, Bobby Bowden and Frank Cignetti. Another ex-West Virginia coach, Jim Carlen, is on this year's Hall of Fame ballot.
I brought up the 57 wins to Holgorsen during his weekly Tuesday afternoon news conference and he batted it away just like cornerback
Keith Washington Jr. did to all of those Texas Tech passes last weekend.
"I said this on the radio show to Tony (Caridi)," Holgorsen said. "If Mike (Montoro) brings that up to me, I throw him out of my office. Now, I couldn't throw Tony off the radio show, and I can't throw you out of the media room right now, but we would prefer to talk about the team aspect of everything.
"It's an honor to be here, period. And I'm sure at some point we'll look back at it and maybe throw a party about it or something like that, but right now I do not care about that.
"I care about 5-0 and 3-0 in the Big 12, period," he said.
If the Mountaineers can knock off Kansas this Saturday, will anybody afterward ask the coach about win No. 58?
Maybe Bob Hertzel might.
* Do you know which Power 5 men's basketball team has the toughest schedule in the country this year?
Kentucky?
North Carolina?
Kansas?
Michigan State?
Duke?
No, no, no, no and no.
It's West Virginia, and it will always be West Virginia because it plays in the Big 12 Conference.
What makes the Mountaineers' schedule so difficult is not just the tough teams and tough venues in which they play, but also the number of times they switch time zones to play league games.
Last year, it was eight because West Virginia was able to double-up its first two conference games during the winter semester recess and stay on the road. However, this year it's nine because there are no back-to-back Big 12 road games on this year's schedule.
That's nine trips to a different time zone, which means nine times West Virginia is losing an hour when it returns to the East Coast.
"(The Big 12 coaches) talk about how hard it is to come to Morgantown and here we are going nine times out there," West Virginia coach
Bob Huggins said. "There is no other way to look at it – it's rough.
"I have invited (the other Big 12 coaches) to fly with us, but none of them have taken me up on it," Huggins joked.
There is no major conference men's basketball team that contends with anything close to that during its conference season.
What makes things doubly difficult for West Virginia is the team has to fly out of Clarksburg, meaning an additional hour-long bus ride to and from campus. WVU is one of just a handful of Big 12 schools that doesn't have an airport near its campus with a runway long enough to support charter flights.
So, when West Virginia plays a 9 p.m. game on a Monday night in Lubbock, Texas, for instance, that means the team doesn't leave until midnight and loses an hour during the three-hour flight back to Morgantown.
That puts the team in Clarksburg at approximately 4 a.m., which means the hour-long bus ride back to campus gets the players in town just in time for their Tuesday morning classes, which they are required to attend.
That can take its toll, particularly late in the season.
"The wear and tear on them is rough," Huggins admitted. "There is a better chance of injury for a lot of reasons. It's a lot harder than people think it is, not to mention you're 6-foot-8, 6-foot-9 and 260 pounds and think about those guys sitting in those seats. I can't get my behind in those seats, and they're way wider than I am."
Who knows? It may have played a role in West Virginia's disappointing performance in its NCAA Tournament first-round loss to Stephen F. Austin a couple of years ago.
The players on this year's team point to that one as being the deepest and most talented of Huggins' recent squads.
"We shouldn't have lost to Stephen F. Austin," Huggins admitted. "We were as sluggish and slow … and if you remember I said that the whole week. The whole week we weren't getting anything done, and they were like not there."
* Former West Virginia University men's basketball standout player DARRYL PRUE was recently named head boys' basketball coach at T.C. Williams. Prue, a two-time All-Atlantic 10 performer for GALE CATLETT, played on NCAA Tournament teams in 1986, 1987 and 1989, worked on John Thompson III's staff at Georgetown and was most recently coaching AAU basketball in Washington, D.C.
Prue also coached at Morgan State.
* WVU Sports Hall of Famer ROY LESTER recently celebrated his 95
thbirthday. Lester played on West Virginia's 1948 Sun Bowl team for coach DUD DEGROOT and was also later a highly successful high school coach at Montgomery High in suburban Washington, D.C., before coaching Maryland for three seasons in 1969, 1970 and 1971.
Lester is originally from Spencer, West Virginia.
* It was nice catching up with former men's soccer standout player JOHN KEATING, now head men's soccer coach at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina, just west of Charlotte.
Keating was in town for Tuesday's West Virginia University men's soccer game against Binghamton, coached by his former WVU teammate and ex-WVU coach PAUL MARCO.
The Mountaineers defeated the Bearcats 2-0 to improve to 7-4 on the season. West Virginia begins conference play on Saturday at Western Michigan.
*How about this tweet from former Louisville coach Rick Pitino?
I'm certain the WVU student section earned the Coliseum's top-five rating from Mr. Pitino, but I'm also pretty sure plenty are disappointed Pitino didn't rate the Coliseum a little higher. Those kids work hard on their material!
* If Penn State transfer De'Janae Boykin can become eligible,
Mike Carey could have as many as four four-year transfers on the court at the same time this season.
He's also got Michigan transfer Kysre Gondrezick, NC State transfer Lucky Rudd and Ohio State transfer Theresa Ekhelar in the program right now.
By the way, Carey told reporters on Wednesday that he really likes this year's team, especially its backcourt with injured All-Big 12 guard Tynice Martin now back in the fold. WVU could have one of the deepest backcourts in the country this year.
And finally, I received an email earlier this week from Wheeling native Sam Murray, WVU's first homecoming king crowned in 1993. He said he will be in Friday night's homecoming parade and will also be on the field Saturday to celebrate the 25
thanniversary of being named WVU's first homecoming king.
Incidentally, that homecoming game back in 1993 was against Louisville, a nail-biting victory for West Virginia that helped propel the Mountaineers to their second undefeated, untied regular season and a berth in the 1994 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans.
Have a great weekend!
