Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Campus Connection: Midweek Notes
March 26, 2019 04:42 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Each time Neal Brown has met with the media he's had to answer at least one question about his quarterbacks Jack Allison, Trey Lowe III and Austin Kendall.
That's only natural because the quarterback handles the football on nearly every play. But there's another guy out on the field who handles the football just as much as the quarterback - the center - and there are as many questions surrounding that position this year for the Mountaineers.
Right now, the guy getting most of the reps with the ones is junior Chase Behrndt of Wildwood, Missouri.
Behrndt came to WVU three years ago to play offensive guard for Ron Crook. He saw action in two games during his redshirt freshman season in 2017 for Joe Wickline and appeared in 11 games last year, making three starts.
Now, Chase is making the move to center for his third offensive line coach in four years, Matt Moore.
"His body type is a center," Moore explained. "He's smart. He's been around long enough where he's respected, and he's got great voice control and communication (skills). That's the big thing, being able to communicate with the other guys."
Last year's backup center, Jacob Buccigrossi, once again is dealing with injury issues this spring that are causing him to miss vital time on the field. That is giving Behrndt and redshirt freshman Briason Mays an opportunity to develop timing with the three quarterbacks.
Moore said he is challenging Behrndt to get a little bit better every day.
"He's learning. That's a tough position when you haven't played it that much, or played it at all," Moore explained. "He's going to get better every day."
As for Mays, Moore said he's still a work in progress.
"I've got to see what he can do," he said.
Saturday Spring Football Practice Leftovers
- Moore said Saturday's morning workout was mostly outside zone blocking and not much power, which is something he plans on drilling into much deeper as the spring progresses.
Moore serves as co-offensive coordinator, but his focus right now has been exclusively on the offensive line.
"There are enough guys here who can watch the ball," Moore explained. "There are very few people that like to watch the guys that don't have the ball."
He's right. One of the few guys I know who is nutty enough to spend an entire practice watching the offensive line is coach Greg Hunter, a former college offensive lineman at Wisconsin Oshkosh.
Tyler Orlosky falls into that category, too, but he has to because he's on the coaching staff as a graduate assistant coach.
"(Orlosky) is very knowledgeable," Moore said. "He's really like my assistant offensive line coach. He does such a great job and the guys respect him.
- Moore was one of the few coaches sporting shorts for Saturday's brisk morning practice. He said he will only wear shorts when the weather is mild; he's not interested in proving how tough he is.
"There are going to be some days up here when I feel like I will be wearing at least one pair of sweat pants," Moore laughed.
In more than 30 years of observing West Virginia football practices, the gold standard when it comes to coaches wearing shorts and a t-shirt in any weather was the late Mike Jacobs.
Jake didn't own a practice shirt with sleeves, and he only wore slacks during games because he had to. He also never wore a whistle around his neck because he could whistle just as loud with his tongue.
- Wide receiver T.J. Simmons was asked about talented sophomore inside linebacker VanDarius Cowan of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Cowan, like Simmons once did, sat out after transferring from Alabama.
Cowan actually appeared in seven games for the Crimson Tide as a true freshman in 2017.
"I met him when I was there and got to know him a little bit," Simmons said. "I'm one of the reasons he came up here. He called me and was telling me he was going to transfer and I'm like, 'Yeah, this is a good fit for somebody who wants to come and settle down and focus on developing their talents and being the best player that they can be."
Simmons admits the year off can be very difficult, especially for a player as touted as Cowan was coming out of high school. Cowan was considered one of the top outside linebacker prospects in the country.
"To have to sit out and then coming into the spring, you don't have any film so the new coaches don't really know what you can do," Simmons said. "You're behind on the depth chart and stuff like that. It's hard on your personality and hard on your mind. It's just something he's got to fight through."
More WVU Sports Tidbits
- The company former Mountaineer players Jon Ohliger, Grant Wiley and Najee Goode founded, Veepio, was profiled in a recent issue of Sports Business Journal.
The story focused primarily on Goode, the company's chief of user engagement, who also doubles as an outside linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts.
Veepio is a mobile-devices-only technology company that provides links to e-commerce sites by touching photos and videos. Their program tags areas within photos and videos to send users to other sites without leaving the page they are viewing. This enables increased user engagement and greater e-commerce sales.
Veepio, based in New York City, currently has a partnership with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Ohliger is Veepio's CEO while Wiley serves as chief of culture.
Goode is one of several investors in Veepio, along with former Eagles teammates Tyrell Adams, Kenjon Barner, Bryan Braman, Jon Najarian, DeMeco Ryans and Jerel Worthy.
- I was somewhat surprised when David Long Jr. told me after last week's Pro Day that most of the NFL teams are looking at him as an inside linebacker. Twenty years ago, the NFL had no interest in 5-foot-11-inch, 225-pound middle linebackers, which demonstrates how drastically the game has changed since then.
One recent list I saw rated Long as the sixth-best inside linebacker prospect in this year's draft. According to the website DraftScout.com, the five-year average for middle linebackers taken in the draft is 12, which puts him in the middle of the pack.
- The servers for West Virginia's website partner, Sidearm, were very busy streaming Mountaineer CBI tournament games. The Mountaineers' opening-round game against Grand Canyon last Wednesday night generated more than 88,000 page views and 51,000 unique views.
Last night's Coastal Carolina game produced more than 103,000 page views and nearly 60,000 unique views for WVU's quarterfinal round loss to the Chanticleers.
And that doesn't include those who watched the game on Roku or Apple TV via the downloadable West Virginia University app.
- I received an email last week from our old friend Joe Martin, who once worked as a graduate assistant for the Mountaineer Sports Network before spreading his wings in the TV business, first for NASCAR and now for the Golf Channel and NBC.
Joe is in Austin, Texas, this week for the PGA Tour World Match Play and he informed me that his older brother, Kenny Smith, a two-year letterman for the Mountaineer baseball team, is going to be inducted into the Frederick Community College Hall of Fame.
Kenny had an impressive 21-1 record during his two seasons pitching for Dale Ramsburg at WVU in 1986 and 1987, his only loss coming against Clemson in the first round of the NCAA Regionals in Huntsville, Alabama.
Coincidentally, the guy who played a role in handing Smith his only defeat as a collegiate pitcher was none other than Randy Mazey, West Virginia's current baseball coach.
Mazey played centerfield that day and went 1-for-4 with a two-run single in the Tigers' 8-0 victory.
Smith gave up six runs, four earned, on eight hits in seven innings of work in his only Division I loss.
He later spent four years pitching in the St. Louis Cardinals organization where he advanced to Double-A in 1990.
Kenny, also a member of the Frederick County Alvin G. Quinn Sports Hall of Fame, will be officially enshrined on Saturday, April 13.
- How about the season former Mountaineer guard Tarik Phillip is having with the Memphis Hustle in the NBA G League? The Brooklyn, New York, native is averaging 13.8 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 48 games so far this season, shooting 47 percent from the field and 78.3 percent from the free throw line.
Phillip's best season at West Virginia came in 2017 when he averaged 9.5 points and 3.0 assists per game for the 28-9 Mountaineers that year.
As for the current Mountaineers, the disappointing 2018-19 season ended in a complete circle with Monday night's 109-91 loss to Coastal Carolina in the CBI quarterfinals.
WVU began the year four months ago with a 99-94 overtime loss to Buffalo, and it never got much better. The season started with promising freshman center Derek Culver sitting on the bench serving a Bob Huggins-imposed suspension for disciplinary reasons, and it ended Monday night with Culver back on the bench for the first half after showing up late for pregame warmups.
A disappointed Huggins spent the vast majority of his postgame press conference last night lamenting his team's inconsistent play and lack of maturity.
"This whole mess got started because I compromised my principles," the coach explained. "You try to help people and some people you can't help. You've got 13 guys on one team and you can't do everything in the world for one guy when it's detrimental to 12 others."
Huggins said his best teams at West Virginia were the ones when the hardest workers were also his best players. It was that way with Joe Alexander and Da'Sean Butler, as well as with Jevon Carter.
What set those three apart from the others wasn't just how hard they worked, but it was the way they worked – always with a purpose.
I frequently spend time walking inside the inner ring of the WVU Coliseum after hours and the player I used to see most frequently down on the floor by himself working on his game was JC.
He wasn't just casually jacking up 3s with his headphones on or shooting a little bit before taking a break to read his phone – he worked it.
That little step-back move that we saw him use last year was the product of doing it time and again by himself with nobody else around.
He practiced that move until it became second nature to him. That is far, far different than just hanging around after practice and shooting to be shooting. That's no different than sitting in your office after hours cruising Facebook pages and acting like you're doing extra work.
So when you read all of these tweets about guys getting up extra shots after practice, be sure to keep that in the back of your mind whenever you read them.
- And finally, it's great to see veteran WVU women's basketball assistant coach Lester Rowe back on his feet at practice this afternoon. Coach Rowe has been hobbled by a torn Achilles heel and was getting around with the aid of a walker.
The 22-10 Mountaineer women face Northwestern in a WNIT third-round game at the WVU Coliseum on Wednesday night. Tipoff is 7 p.m.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
That's only natural because the quarterback handles the football on nearly every play. But there's another guy out on the field who handles the football just as much as the quarterback - the center - and there are as many questions surrounding that position this year for the Mountaineers.
Right now, the guy getting most of the reps with the ones is junior Chase Behrndt of Wildwood, Missouri.
Behrndt came to WVU three years ago to play offensive guard for Ron Crook. He saw action in two games during his redshirt freshman season in 2017 for Joe Wickline and appeared in 11 games last year, making three starts.Now, Chase is making the move to center for his third offensive line coach in four years, Matt Moore.
"His body type is a center," Moore explained. "He's smart. He's been around long enough where he's respected, and he's got great voice control and communication (skills). That's the big thing, being able to communicate with the other guys."
Last year's backup center, Jacob Buccigrossi, once again is dealing with injury issues this spring that are causing him to miss vital time on the field. That is giving Behrndt and redshirt freshman Briason Mays an opportunity to develop timing with the three quarterbacks.
Moore said he is challenging Behrndt to get a little bit better every day.
"He's learning. That's a tough position when you haven't played it that much, or played it at all," Moore explained. "He's going to get better every day."
As for Mays, Moore said he's still a work in progress.
"I've got to see what he can do," he said.
Saturday Spring Football Practice Leftovers
- Moore said Saturday's morning workout was mostly outside zone blocking and not much power, which is something he plans on drilling into much deeper as the spring progresses.Moore serves as co-offensive coordinator, but his focus right now has been exclusively on the offensive line.
"There are enough guys here who can watch the ball," Moore explained. "There are very few people that like to watch the guys that don't have the ball."
He's right. One of the few guys I know who is nutty enough to spend an entire practice watching the offensive line is coach Greg Hunter, a former college offensive lineman at Wisconsin Oshkosh.
Tyler Orlosky falls into that category, too, but he has to because he's on the coaching staff as a graduate assistant coach.
"(Orlosky) is very knowledgeable," Moore said. "He's really like my assistant offensive line coach. He does such a great job and the guys respect him.
- Moore was one of the few coaches sporting shorts for Saturday's brisk morning practice. He said he will only wear shorts when the weather is mild; he's not interested in proving how tough he is.
"There are going to be some days up here when I feel like I will be wearing at least one pair of sweat pants," Moore laughed.
In more than 30 years of observing West Virginia football practices, the gold standard when it comes to coaches wearing shorts and a t-shirt in any weather was the late Mike Jacobs.
Jake didn't own a practice shirt with sleeves, and he only wore slacks during games because he had to. He also never wore a whistle around his neck because he could whistle just as loud with his tongue.
- Wide receiver T.J. Simmons was asked about talented sophomore inside linebacker VanDarius Cowan of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Cowan, like Simmons once did, sat out after transferring from Alabama.
Cowan actually appeared in seven games for the Crimson Tide as a true freshman in 2017.
"I met him when I was there and got to know him a little bit," Simmons said. "I'm one of the reasons he came up here. He called me and was telling me he was going to transfer and I'm like, 'Yeah, this is a good fit for somebody who wants to come and settle down and focus on developing their talents and being the best player that they can be."
Simmons admits the year off can be very difficult, especially for a player as touted as Cowan was coming out of high school. Cowan was considered one of the top outside linebacker prospects in the country.
"To have to sit out and then coming into the spring, you don't have any film so the new coaches don't really know what you can do," Simmons said. "You're behind on the depth chart and stuff like that. It's hard on your personality and hard on your mind. It's just something he's got to fight through."
More WVU Sports Tidbits
- The company former Mountaineer players Jon Ohliger, Grant Wiley and Najee Goode founded, Veepio, was profiled in a recent issue of Sports Business Journal.The story focused primarily on Goode, the company's chief of user engagement, who also doubles as an outside linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts.
Veepio is a mobile-devices-only technology company that provides links to e-commerce sites by touching photos and videos. Their program tags areas within photos and videos to send users to other sites without leaving the page they are viewing. This enables increased user engagement and greater e-commerce sales.
Veepio, based in New York City, currently has a partnership with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Ohliger is Veepio's CEO while Wiley serves as chief of culture.
Goode is one of several investors in Veepio, along with former Eagles teammates Tyrell Adams, Kenjon Barner, Bryan Braman, Jon Najarian, DeMeco Ryans and Jerel Worthy.
- I was somewhat surprised when David Long Jr. told me after last week's Pro Day that most of the NFL teams are looking at him as an inside linebacker. Twenty years ago, the NFL had no interest in 5-foot-11-inch, 225-pound middle linebackers, which demonstrates how drastically the game has changed since then.
One recent list I saw rated Long as the sixth-best inside linebacker prospect in this year's draft. According to the website DraftScout.com, the five-year average for middle linebackers taken in the draft is 12, which puts him in the middle of the pack.
- The servers for West Virginia's website partner, Sidearm, were very busy streaming Mountaineer CBI tournament games. The Mountaineers' opening-round game against Grand Canyon last Wednesday night generated more than 88,000 page views and 51,000 unique views.
Last night's Coastal Carolina game produced more than 103,000 page views and nearly 60,000 unique views for WVU's quarterfinal round loss to the Chanticleers.
And that doesn't include those who watched the game on Roku or Apple TV via the downloadable West Virginia University app.
- I received an email last week from our old friend Joe Martin, who once worked as a graduate assistant for the Mountaineer Sports Network before spreading his wings in the TV business, first for NASCAR and now for the Golf Channel and NBC.
Joe is in Austin, Texas, this week for the PGA Tour World Match Play and he informed me that his older brother, Kenny Smith, a two-year letterman for the Mountaineer baseball team, is going to be inducted into the Frederick Community College Hall of Fame.
Kenny had an impressive 21-1 record during his two seasons pitching for Dale Ramsburg at WVU in 1986 and 1987, his only loss coming against Clemson in the first round of the NCAA Regionals in Huntsville, Alabama.
Coincidentally, the guy who played a role in handing Smith his only defeat as a collegiate pitcher was none other than Randy Mazey, West Virginia's current baseball coach.
Mazey played centerfield that day and went 1-for-4 with a two-run single in the Tigers' 8-0 victory.
Smith gave up six runs, four earned, on eight hits in seven innings of work in his only Division I loss.
He later spent four years pitching in the St. Louis Cardinals organization where he advanced to Double-A in 1990.
Kenny, also a member of the Frederick County Alvin G. Quinn Sports Hall of Fame, will be officially enshrined on Saturday, April 13.
- How about the season former Mountaineer guard Tarik Phillip is having with the Memphis Hustle in the NBA G League? The Brooklyn, New York, native is averaging 13.8 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.8 assists in 48 games so far this season, shooting 47 percent from the field and 78.3 percent from the free throw line.Phillip's best season at West Virginia came in 2017 when he averaged 9.5 points and 3.0 assists per game for the 28-9 Mountaineers that year.
As for the current Mountaineers, the disappointing 2018-19 season ended in a complete circle with Monday night's 109-91 loss to Coastal Carolina in the CBI quarterfinals.
WVU began the year four months ago with a 99-94 overtime loss to Buffalo, and it never got much better. The season started with promising freshman center Derek Culver sitting on the bench serving a Bob Huggins-imposed suspension for disciplinary reasons, and it ended Monday night with Culver back on the bench for the first half after showing up late for pregame warmups.
A disappointed Huggins spent the vast majority of his postgame press conference last night lamenting his team's inconsistent play and lack of maturity.
"This whole mess got started because I compromised my principles," the coach explained. "You try to help people and some people you can't help. You've got 13 guys on one team and you can't do everything in the world for one guy when it's detrimental to 12 others."
Huggins said his best teams at West Virginia were the ones when the hardest workers were also his best players. It was that way with Joe Alexander and Da'Sean Butler, as well as with Jevon Carter.
What set those three apart from the others wasn't just how hard they worked, but it was the way they worked – always with a purpose.
I frequently spend time walking inside the inner ring of the WVU Coliseum after hours and the player I used to see most frequently down on the floor by himself working on his game was JC.He wasn't just casually jacking up 3s with his headphones on or shooting a little bit before taking a break to read his phone – he worked it.
That little step-back move that we saw him use last year was the product of doing it time and again by himself with nobody else around.
He practiced that move until it became second nature to him. That is far, far different than just hanging around after practice and shooting to be shooting. That's no different than sitting in your office after hours cruising Facebook pages and acting like you're doing extra work.
So when you read all of these tweets about guys getting up extra shots after practice, be sure to keep that in the back of your mind whenever you read them.
- And finally, it's great to see veteran WVU women's basketball assistant coach Lester Rowe back on his feet at practice this afternoon. Coach Rowe has been hobbled by a torn Achilles heel and was getting around with the aid of a walker. The 22-10 Mountaineer women face Northwestern in a WNIT third-round game at the WVU Coliseum on Wednesday night. Tipoff is 7 p.m.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Players Mentioned
OL
/ Football
LB
/ Football
QB
/ Football
LB
/ Football
QB
/ Football
OL
/ Football
WR
/ FootballCoach Pat Kirkland | April 15
Thursday, April 16
Andrew Powdrell | April 15
Wednesday, April 15
Coach Rich Rodriguez | April 15
Wednesday, April 15
Mic'd Up with Coach Rich Rodriguez
Wednesday, April 15
