Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Chemistry Is More Than A Class For These Mountaineers
August 13, 2018 04:15 PM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Perhaps one of the most unappreciated aspects of West Virginia's undefeated football team in 1988, which will be celebrating its 30-year reunion later this fall, was how close those players were on and off the field.
Sure, they had some outstanding top-shelf talent such as quarterback Major Harris, wide receiver Reggie Rembert and defensive linemen Renaldo Turnbull and Mike Fox.
But the heart and soul of that football team resided in its large number of dedicated, fully invested fifth-year seniors such as Kevin Koken and John Stroia on offense, and Bo Orlando and Robert Pickett on defense.
They were good college football players and even better guys who genuinely liked each other.
There have been other instances through the years when the sum of the parts has been much greater than its whole. That was certainly the case back in 1975 when a team far less talented than a year before rallied around their embattled football coach and won nine games, upset NC State in the Peach Bowl and sent Bobby Bowden off to Florida State in style.
More recently, Dana Holgorsen's 2016 squad that won 10 games and finished tied for second in the Big 12 standings was more about its whole than the sum of its individual parts.
I bring this up because some of this is beginning to emerge in the short amount of time this year's football team has been together.
Quarterback Will Grier and wide receiver David Sills V are nearly inseparable from the time they arrive at the Milan Puskar Center until they are the last ones to leave.
They have made a conscious effort to lead and encourage, not point fingers and criticize, which is nearly as important as the great plays they are going to make on the field this year.
It's also linebacker David Long Jr. or cornerback Hakeem Bailey peering around the corner trying to make funny faces to a teammate doing an interview, just to get them to break out into smile and not take things too seriously all the time.
It's some of the guys trying to come up with a name for offensive guard Josh Sills' innovative new hairstyle, which blends some of the most impressive mullet haircuts we've seen from the 1980s and 90s into something more contemporary with his own little twist.
Defensive end Ezekiel Rose, who has his own unique hairstyle, said he is inclined to call Sills' mullet "Goldilocks" because of the bleach-blond thing that he's got going on in the back that looks part John Daly, part Billy Ray Cyrus, part Jaromir Jagr and part David Ghantt (For the record, Sills says his father hates the look).
"I love it," teammate David Sills says. By the way, Josh is adamant they are related someplace down the line, although he doesn't yet have the proof.
"We have to be … Sills is not a common last name," he correctly pointed out.
True, it's definitely not Brown or Smith.
Josh is also the one guy on the team who seems to be able to push veteran offensive line coach Joe Wickline's buttons the best. Coach Wick dishes it right back to him and the others, reminding them every chance he gets that the last time he was ever wrong was back in 1974 at a 7-Eleven.
They all crack up each time he repeats that line.
"These guys I truly like being around," veteran defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said Saturday. "I told our group, last year's group, at times, they were painful to coach. But this year's group, and I know we haven't played a game yet, but I just enjoy being around them, whether it's eating in the cafeteria or hanging out in the weight room and watching them work. I just like being around these guys."
Gibson admits some of this has occurred by design through the recruiting process, but some of it is just dumb luck.
"Yeah, I'd like to say (the coaching staff is responsible for weeding out the matches from the mismatches through recruiting), but we had guys that came here two months ago who became available and they are just a natural fit for us," Gibson noted. "Some of the guys, yes, their personality and what you know … but the others? We just got lucky, and you need that every once in a while."
You can even see from afar how well this team genuinely gets along with each other.
And don't discount for a second the value that can have late in football games when the third-and-ones are much tougher to get or late in the season when the weather is not always great and everyone is getting worn down.
It does matter and part of what happened to last year's team at the end of the season when the Mountaineers dropped their final three games is the veteran guys weren't able to step up and deal with the loss of West Virginia's best player.
Good teams have good players. Great teams have good players who all buy into the plan and have each other's backs.
Great is what this year's team wants to become, and so far, everyone is saying and doing all the right things.
"It's just a different vibe out there," Long Jr. said Monday afternoon. "We're all working hard and feeding off of each other's energy."
Teammate JoVanni Stewart agrees.
"We've given effort to become more like a family, and it's like the little stuff hanging around each other outside of football," he said. "At first it felt like we were giving effort just to do that, but now it's kind of second nature because we did it so much in the summer.
"We always like to say 'fake hype' … we try to eliminate that," Stewart continued. "I think everybody has bought in and they have a passion for each other to do well and that's helping."
"Most of what we talked about this offseason is having a group of people who have a better attitude in the locker room and just going out to practice and not being a vampire, taking away all of our energy," Long Jr. added.
Will it help when the calendar flips to November and the full effect of those 11 Power 5 football teams on West Virginia's schedule comes into play?
Will they remember all of the bonding-type things that they did during the summertime?
Does it even matter?
Based on experience, the answer is unequivocally yes.
Those things do matter a great deal and the teams that stick together and block out all of the external noises are the ones that are usually the most successful at the end of the season.
Sure, you've got to have good football players, and West Virginia appears to have more of them than usual this year in all three phases, but having good players doesn't always translate into success.
Experience has proven that as well.
Monday Sound
Sure, they had some outstanding top-shelf talent such as quarterback Major Harris, wide receiver Reggie Rembert and defensive linemen Renaldo Turnbull and Mike Fox.
But the heart and soul of that football team resided in its large number of dedicated, fully invested fifth-year seniors such as Kevin Koken and John Stroia on offense, and Bo Orlando and Robert Pickett on defense.
They were good college football players and even better guys who genuinely liked each other.
There have been other instances through the years when the sum of the parts has been much greater than its whole. That was certainly the case back in 1975 when a team far less talented than a year before rallied around their embattled football coach and won nine games, upset NC State in the Peach Bowl and sent Bobby Bowden off to Florida State in style.
More recently, Dana Holgorsen's 2016 squad that won 10 games and finished tied for second in the Big 12 standings was more about its whole than the sum of its individual parts.
I bring this up because some of this is beginning to emerge in the short amount of time this year's football team has been together.
Quarterback Will Grier and wide receiver David Sills V are nearly inseparable from the time they arrive at the Milan Puskar Center until they are the last ones to leave.
They have made a conscious effort to lead and encourage, not point fingers and criticize, which is nearly as important as the great plays they are going to make on the field this year.
It's also linebacker David Long Jr. or cornerback Hakeem Bailey peering around the corner trying to make funny faces to a teammate doing an interview, just to get them to break out into smile and not take things too seriously all the time.It's some of the guys trying to come up with a name for offensive guard Josh Sills' innovative new hairstyle, which blends some of the most impressive mullet haircuts we've seen from the 1980s and 90s into something more contemporary with his own little twist.
Defensive end Ezekiel Rose, who has his own unique hairstyle, said he is inclined to call Sills' mullet "Goldilocks" because of the bleach-blond thing that he's got going on in the back that looks part John Daly, part Billy Ray Cyrus, part Jaromir Jagr and part David Ghantt (For the record, Sills says his father hates the look).
"I love it," teammate David Sills says. By the way, Josh is adamant they are related someplace down the line, although he doesn't yet have the proof.
"We have to be … Sills is not a common last name," he correctly pointed out.
True, it's definitely not Brown or Smith.
Josh is also the one guy on the team who seems to be able to push veteran offensive line coach Joe Wickline's buttons the best. Coach Wick dishes it right back to him and the others, reminding them every chance he gets that the last time he was ever wrong was back in 1974 at a 7-Eleven.
They all crack up each time he repeats that line.
"These guys I truly like being around," veteran defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said Saturday. "I told our group, last year's group, at times, they were painful to coach. But this year's group, and I know we haven't played a game yet, but I just enjoy being around them, whether it's eating in the cafeteria or hanging out in the weight room and watching them work. I just like being around these guys."
Gibson admits some of this has occurred by design through the recruiting process, but some of it is just dumb luck.
"Yeah, I'd like to say (the coaching staff is responsible for weeding out the matches from the mismatches through recruiting), but we had guys that came here two months ago who became available and they are just a natural fit for us," Gibson noted. "Some of the guys, yes, their personality and what you know … but the others? We just got lucky, and you need that every once in a while."
You can even see from afar how well this team genuinely gets along with each other.
And don't discount for a second the value that can have late in football games when the third-and-ones are much tougher to get or late in the season when the weather is not always great and everyone is getting worn down.
It does matter and part of what happened to last year's team at the end of the season when the Mountaineers dropped their final three games is the veteran guys weren't able to step up and deal with the loss of West Virginia's best player.
Good teams have good players. Great teams have good players who all buy into the plan and have each other's backs.
Great is what this year's team wants to become, and so far, everyone is saying and doing all the right things.
"It's just a different vibe out there," Long Jr. said Monday afternoon. "We're all working hard and feeding off of each other's energy."
Teammate JoVanni Stewart agrees."We've given effort to become more like a family, and it's like the little stuff hanging around each other outside of football," he said. "At first it felt like we were giving effort just to do that, but now it's kind of second nature because we did it so much in the summer.
"We always like to say 'fake hype' … we try to eliminate that," Stewart continued. "I think everybody has bought in and they have a passion for each other to do well and that's helping."
"Most of what we talked about this offseason is having a group of people who have a better attitude in the locker room and just going out to practice and not being a vampire, taking away all of our energy," Long Jr. added.
Will it help when the calendar flips to November and the full effect of those 11 Power 5 football teams on West Virginia's schedule comes into play?
Will they remember all of the bonding-type things that they did during the summertime?
Does it even matter?
Based on experience, the answer is unequivocally yes.
Those things do matter a great deal and the teams that stick together and block out all of the external noises are the ones that are usually the most successful at the end of the season.
Sure, you've got to have good football players, and West Virginia appears to have more of them than usual this year in all three phases, but having good players doesn't always translate into success.
Experience has proven that as well.
Monday Sound
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