Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Campus Connection: An Overstuffed WVU Sports Notebook
April 26, 2019 12:41 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – During his Big 12 coaches' teleconference earlier this week, Neal Brown listed left guard Michael Brown and Will linebacker Josh Chandler as the team's two most improved players during the spring.
Brown played just 35 snaps last year before taking a redshirt after transferring from Eastern Arizona College, and Chandler got most of his work on special teams where he logged a team-best 7 ½ special teams tackles and 14 total, including one for a loss.
The offensive line appeared to be Neal Brown's biggest concern coming out of the spring, but he painted a somewhat rosier picture on Tuesday.
"I think we've got two guys in Josh Sills and Colton McKivitz that are high-end, Big 12 players that have played and played at a high level," the coach said. "I think they are potential all-conference players, and they had really good springs. We've got another three or four guys that showed steady improvement as we went through the spring. I think Chase Behrndt has a chance of being a capable center in our league. I think Mike Brown has made a ton of improvement – size, speed and strength, he is a Big 12 football player – and Kelby Wickline is one of our most improved players also at the tackle position."
Brown did concede the offensive line needs to add more depth.
"Briason Mays was probably our sixth guy during the spring, but we probably need to add at least one or two bodies as we go through the summer here. The guys that have played I feel really good about and the guys that haven't, I think we've got to continue to develop them as we go through the summer."
Brown will be getting back junior Jacob Buccigrossi, who saw action in more than 150 plays last year at guard and center. The Pittsburgh resident has battled injury problems for a good portion of the three years he's spent in the Mountaineer program however.
And this from Brown …
The coach was asked about West Virginia's unique geographical location as the Eastern-most school in the Big 12 and the travel issues it presents. Brown, conceded that, but he did cite one big advantage West Virginia has as a Big 12 school located near the East Coast.
"There are some disadvantages to it from a travel perspective, but there are some advantages to it as well in the fact that from a recruiting standpoint we don't really recruit versus our conference foes," he explained. "We are able to offer some things to East Coast kids, whether it's guys in our immediate geographic fit in Philadelphia, the DMV, Pittsburgh, Columbus and even into New Jersey or down into the Southeast, which is kind of our secondary area. We can offer them the opportunity to play in the Big 12. The Big 12 is a unique league. There are some things that are clearly defining between us and the ACC, the SEC and Big Ten."
* Speaking of geography, this graphic showed up on ESPN during last night's NFL Draft coverage. It works if the year was 1862, but not 2019.
Someone is trying, though, so let's be sure to hand out another participation trophy for the person responsible for this!
* No West Virginia players were selected during Thursday's first round, although there was some internet chatter that had quarterback Will Grier going late to either New Orleans or New England - two teams apparently looking for a young quarterback to groom for the future.
In the 83 years the NFL has been drafting players, the Mountaineers have never had a quarterback chosen in the first-round. Fred Wyant, the 36thplayer taken in the third round of the 1956 NFL Draft, remains the highest WVU quarterback ever picked.
Geno Smith (39th) went three spots later than Wyant in the second round of the 2013 draft. Pat White went No. 44 in the second round as a Wildcat quarterback in 2009, and Oliver Luck also was taken 44thin the second round in 1982.
Jeff Hostetler was the 59thpick in the third round of the 1984 draft.
The only other Mountaineer quarterbacks selected in the draft were Kelly Moan, the 58thpick in the seventh round in 1938, Jimmy Walthall, the 114thpick in the 13thround in 1948, Major Harris, the 317thpick in the 12thround in 1990 and Marc Bulger, the 168thpick in the sixth round in 2000.
Rasheed Marshall was the 174thpick in the fifth round in 2005 by the San Francisco 49ers, but he was selected as a wide receiver.
That's it for WVU quarterbacks.
By the way, Grier didn't get picked on Thursday night, but he is an NFL quarterback in my opinion. I also think he will be playing in the league longer than one or two of the guys who were chosen last night.
* Incidentally, a very happy birthday to Mountaineer great Fred Wyant, who turns 85 years young today!
* How often is it that we see just one running back and two wide receivers taken in the first round, with all three going near the end of the first round? After quarterbacks, the most coveted football players this year were the big boys up front on both sides of the ball.
* The momentum keeps building for junior pitcher Alek Manoah, profiled yesterday by Baseball America.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/west-virginia-ace-alek-manoah-brings-big-presence-to-the-mound/
Penning the story was none other than his former pitching coach Dave Serrano, who now works as a correspondent for the popular publication.
I see a lot of similarities with the way Manoah is coming on this year compared to Chris Enochs' junior season in 1997 when he was taken 11thoverall in the Major League Draft by the Oakland A's. Enochs got everybody's attention in the Cape Cod League during the summertime, developed a secondary pitch to complement his mid-90s fastball and then blew up during his junior season.
Does that sound familiar?
Manoah's next home outing a week from today against TCU lefthander Nick Nodolo is shaping up to be the most eagerly anticipated mound pairing involving a WVU pitcher since Enochs faced off against Jason Grili and Seton Hall in the opening game of the 1997 Big East Tournament in Norwich, Connecticut. Several general managers were in the stands that afternoon and several could be in Morgantown next Friday night to see Manoah and Lodolo.
West Virginia's Saturday afternoon game against the Horned Frogs will be televised locally on AT&T Sportsnet and online through WVUsports.com to out-of-market viewers. The telecast will be simulcasted with the regular Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College radio broadcast featuring Dan Zangrilli and Ernie Galusky.
I am told advance ticket sales for the three weekend games against TCU are going extremely well. Any remaining tickets can be purchased through WVUGAME.com.
* Our resident professional baseball expert Grant Dovey informs me that David Carpenter is still active in the pros with the Nashville Sounds, the Triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers.
The 33-year-old righthander has pitched three scoreless innings as an extra bullpen arm for the Sounds. The East Fairmont High product last pitched in the majors for the Washington Nationals in 2015.
Meanwhile, Jedd Gyorko, now in his seventh season in the bigs, has seen his at bats dramatically reduced this year with the offseason acquisition of first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, which moved Matt Carpenter from first to third. Gyorko has just one hit in 13 at bats through the Cardinals' first 24 games this year.
Former Mountaineer lefthander John Means continues to solidify his spot in Baltimore's starting rotation with a recent 4-3 victory over Chicago, his third win of the season. The Olathe, Kansas, native has a sparkling 1.74 earned run average in 20.2 innings of work so far this year.
And, WVU's other alum in the majors, Harrison Musgrave, shows a 4.50 earned run average in eight relief appearances as Colorado's lefthanded setup man in the bullpen.
* Williamstown's Maddie Gardner's 14-feet, 8-inch pole vault at last weekend's Virginia Challenge was the highest regular season vault for a Big 12 performer since 2014, according to WVU women's track SID Joe Mitchin.
Gardner now has the fourth-highest vault in the country this year and is ranked No. 1 in the East region with two regular season meets remaining.
You can catch Maddie and her Mountaineer teammates this weekend at the State Farm Friends of Track Mountaineer Showcase at the beautiful brand new Track & Field Complex at Mylan Park.
* Got this link from our good friend and great WVU supporter Jon Hickey living in New Castle, Delaware: https://www.tmz.com/2019/04/25/wilt-chamberlain-100-point-game-scorers-sheet-hits-auction-block/
Anybody got an extra $100,000 sitting around to buy the scoresheet from Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game?
* WVU Director of Athletics Shane Lyons and coach Neal Brown will be in Scottsdale, Arizona, for next week's Big 12 football meetings at the Hyatt at Gainey Ranch. Lyons represents the Big 12 on the Division I Football Council as its chair.
Those meetings will take place later this summer.
* Athletics department staffers Steve Uryasz, Terri Howes, Graham Reger and Ashley Bailey were forced to sit through another rain delay Friday morning at this year's Big 12 golf championships – the fourth consecutive year the event has had some sort of weather delay.
The good news for them is their idle time is being spent at The Greenbrier!
* Yesterday's announcement that men's basketball will be facing Ohio State in the first-ever Cleveland Classic at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse means it will be just the 17thtime these two border rivals will meet on the hardwood.
In addition to the Buckeyes, West Virginia's 2019-20 non-conference slate will include a road game at Pitt, a road trip to face St. John's in the new Big 12/Big East Challenge, a meeting against an undetermined SEC opponent in the Big 12/SEC Challenge and a game against either South Carolina or Wichita State in Cancun, Mexico.
Last year's schedule was considered the 11thtoughest in the country, and the slate Bob Huggins is putting together for next season is shaping up to be just as difficult.
* And finally, I was saddened to learn of yesterday's passing of Boston Celtics great John Havlicek in Jupiter, Florida, at age 79.
The Bridgeport, Ohio, native had a tie to West Virginia University through his high school coach Bobby Carroll, a teammate of Fred Schaus at WVU in the late 1940s. In fact, the first letter Havlicek ever received during his junior year at Bridgeport came from Schaus.
Havlicek once recalled Schaus' letter in his autobiography, Hondo: "The first college interest in me came when I was a junior. I received a letter from Fred Schaus at West Virginia, and I thought that was quite an honor. At that time, the whole idea of making anything out of myself through basketball was foreign."
Havlicek said he knew very little about college basketball other than San Francisco with Bill Russell winning the national championship, Hot Rod Hundley and Jerry West at WVU and the outstanding Duquesne team with the Ricketts brothers and Sihugo Green. That was about the extent of his college basketball knowledge at the time.
Schaus picks up the story from there.
"We knew about him because of Coach Carroll, and we knew about him early. That was important many times in recruiting to get in on the ground floor during their sophomore or junior year before everybody knows about them," he recalled in 2005. "They had a North-South all-star game, and I tried to get it set up that Havlicek was going to room with Ed Bode, who we were recruiting that year from a little school in Southeastern Ohio.
"Apparently, Havlicek was late getting there and so they put him with Jerry Lucas. If I had any chance of getting Havlicek, I sure as hell didn't have any chance when Lucas and Havlicek spent the weekend together," Schaus added.
Had Ohio State not discovered Havlicek, the outstanding forward's college career could have coincided with All-American players Jerry West and Rod Thorn at WVU.
"He could have filled in nicely there, huh?" Schaus sighed.
Yes he would have!
And now you know the rest of the story. Have a great weekend everyone!
Brown played just 35 snaps last year before taking a redshirt after transferring from Eastern Arizona College, and Chandler got most of his work on special teams where he logged a team-best 7 ½ special teams tackles and 14 total, including one for a loss.
The offensive line appeared to be Neal Brown's biggest concern coming out of the spring, but he painted a somewhat rosier picture on Tuesday.
"I think we've got two guys in Josh Sills and Colton McKivitz that are high-end, Big 12 players that have played and played at a high level," the coach said. "I think they are potential all-conference players, and they had really good springs. We've got another three or four guys that showed steady improvement as we went through the spring. I think Chase Behrndt has a chance of being a capable center in our league. I think Mike Brown has made a ton of improvement – size, speed and strength, he is a Big 12 football player – and Kelby Wickline is one of our most improved players also at the tackle position."
Brown did concede the offensive line needs to add more depth.
"Briason Mays was probably our sixth guy during the spring, but we probably need to add at least one or two bodies as we go through the summer here. The guys that have played I feel really good about and the guys that haven't, I think we've got to continue to develop them as we go through the summer."
Brown will be getting back junior Jacob Buccigrossi, who saw action in more than 150 plays last year at guard and center. The Pittsburgh resident has battled injury problems for a good portion of the three years he's spent in the Mountaineer program however.
And this from Brown …
The coach was asked about West Virginia's unique geographical location as the Eastern-most school in the Big 12 and the travel issues it presents. Brown, conceded that, but he did cite one big advantage West Virginia has as a Big 12 school located near the East Coast.
"There are some disadvantages to it from a travel perspective, but there are some advantages to it as well in the fact that from a recruiting standpoint we don't really recruit versus our conference foes," he explained. "We are able to offer some things to East Coast kids, whether it's guys in our immediate geographic fit in Philadelphia, the DMV, Pittsburgh, Columbus and even into New Jersey or down into the Southeast, which is kind of our secondary area. We can offer them the opportunity to play in the Big 12. The Big 12 is a unique league. There are some things that are clearly defining between us and the ACC, the SEC and Big Ten."
* Speaking of geography, this graphic showed up on ESPN during last night's NFL Draft coverage. It works if the year was 1862, but not 2019.Someone is trying, though, so let's be sure to hand out another participation trophy for the person responsible for this!
* No West Virginia players were selected during Thursday's first round, although there was some internet chatter that had quarterback Will Grier going late to either New Orleans or New England - two teams apparently looking for a young quarterback to groom for the future.
In the 83 years the NFL has been drafting players, the Mountaineers have never had a quarterback chosen in the first-round. Fred Wyant, the 36thplayer taken in the third round of the 1956 NFL Draft, remains the highest WVU quarterback ever picked.
Geno Smith (39th) went three spots later than Wyant in the second round of the 2013 draft. Pat White went No. 44 in the second round as a Wildcat quarterback in 2009, and Oliver Luck also was taken 44thin the second round in 1982.
Jeff Hostetler was the 59thpick in the third round of the 1984 draft.
The only other Mountaineer quarterbacks selected in the draft were Kelly Moan, the 58thpick in the seventh round in 1938, Jimmy Walthall, the 114thpick in the 13thround in 1948, Major Harris, the 317thpick in the 12thround in 1990 and Marc Bulger, the 168thpick in the sixth round in 2000.
Rasheed Marshall was the 174thpick in the fifth round in 2005 by the San Francisco 49ers, but he was selected as a wide receiver.
That's it for WVU quarterbacks.
By the way, Grier didn't get picked on Thursday night, but he is an NFL quarterback in my opinion. I also think he will be playing in the league longer than one or two of the guys who were chosen last night.
* Incidentally, a very happy birthday to Mountaineer great Fred Wyant, who turns 85 years young today!
* How often is it that we see just one running back and two wide receivers taken in the first round, with all three going near the end of the first round? After quarterbacks, the most coveted football players this year were the big boys up front on both sides of the ball.
* The momentum keeps building for junior pitcher Alek Manoah, profiled yesterday by Baseball America.https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/west-virginia-ace-alek-manoah-brings-big-presence-to-the-mound/
Penning the story was none other than his former pitching coach Dave Serrano, who now works as a correspondent for the popular publication.
I see a lot of similarities with the way Manoah is coming on this year compared to Chris Enochs' junior season in 1997 when he was taken 11thoverall in the Major League Draft by the Oakland A's. Enochs got everybody's attention in the Cape Cod League during the summertime, developed a secondary pitch to complement his mid-90s fastball and then blew up during his junior season.
Does that sound familiar?
Manoah's next home outing a week from today against TCU lefthander Nick Nodolo is shaping up to be the most eagerly anticipated mound pairing involving a WVU pitcher since Enochs faced off against Jason Grili and Seton Hall in the opening game of the 1997 Big East Tournament in Norwich, Connecticut. Several general managers were in the stands that afternoon and several could be in Morgantown next Friday night to see Manoah and Lodolo.
West Virginia's Saturday afternoon game against the Horned Frogs will be televised locally on AT&T Sportsnet and online through WVUsports.com to out-of-market viewers. The telecast will be simulcasted with the regular Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College radio broadcast featuring Dan Zangrilli and Ernie Galusky.
I am told advance ticket sales for the three weekend games against TCU are going extremely well. Any remaining tickets can be purchased through WVUGAME.com.
* Our resident professional baseball expert Grant Dovey informs me that David Carpenter is still active in the pros with the Nashville Sounds, the Triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers.
The 33-year-old righthander has pitched three scoreless innings as an extra bullpen arm for the Sounds. The East Fairmont High product last pitched in the majors for the Washington Nationals in 2015.
Meanwhile, Jedd Gyorko, now in his seventh season in the bigs, has seen his at bats dramatically reduced this year with the offseason acquisition of first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, which moved Matt Carpenter from first to third. Gyorko has just one hit in 13 at bats through the Cardinals' first 24 games this year.
Former Mountaineer lefthander John Means continues to solidify his spot in Baltimore's starting rotation with a recent 4-3 victory over Chicago, his third win of the season. The Olathe, Kansas, native has a sparkling 1.74 earned run average in 20.2 innings of work so far this year.
And, WVU's other alum in the majors, Harrison Musgrave, shows a 4.50 earned run average in eight relief appearances as Colorado's lefthanded setup man in the bullpen.
* Williamstown's Maddie Gardner's 14-feet, 8-inch pole vault at last weekend's Virginia Challenge was the highest regular season vault for a Big 12 performer since 2014, according to WVU women's track SID Joe Mitchin.Gardner now has the fourth-highest vault in the country this year and is ranked No. 1 in the East region with two regular season meets remaining.
You can catch Maddie and her Mountaineer teammates this weekend at the State Farm Friends of Track Mountaineer Showcase at the beautiful brand new Track & Field Complex at Mylan Park.
* Got this link from our good friend and great WVU supporter Jon Hickey living in New Castle, Delaware: https://www.tmz.com/2019/04/25/wilt-chamberlain-100-point-game-scorers-sheet-hits-auction-block/
Anybody got an extra $100,000 sitting around to buy the scoresheet from Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game?
* WVU Director of Athletics Shane Lyons and coach Neal Brown will be in Scottsdale, Arizona, for next week's Big 12 football meetings at the Hyatt at Gainey Ranch. Lyons represents the Big 12 on the Division I Football Council as its chair.
Those meetings will take place later this summer.
* Athletics department staffers Steve Uryasz, Terri Howes, Graham Reger and Ashley Bailey were forced to sit through another rain delay Friday morning at this year's Big 12 golf championships – the fourth consecutive year the event has had some sort of weather delay. The good news for them is their idle time is being spent at The Greenbrier!
* Yesterday's announcement that men's basketball will be facing Ohio State in the first-ever Cleveland Classic at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse means it will be just the 17thtime these two border rivals will meet on the hardwood.
In addition to the Buckeyes, West Virginia's 2019-20 non-conference slate will include a road game at Pitt, a road trip to face St. John's in the new Big 12/Big East Challenge, a meeting against an undetermined SEC opponent in the Big 12/SEC Challenge and a game against either South Carolina or Wichita State in Cancun, Mexico.
Last year's schedule was considered the 11thtoughest in the country, and the slate Bob Huggins is putting together for next season is shaping up to be just as difficult.
* And finally, I was saddened to learn of yesterday's passing of Boston Celtics great John Havlicek in Jupiter, Florida, at age 79.
The Bridgeport, Ohio, native had a tie to West Virginia University through his high school coach Bobby Carroll, a teammate of Fred Schaus at WVU in the late 1940s. In fact, the first letter Havlicek ever received during his junior year at Bridgeport came from Schaus.
Havlicek once recalled Schaus' letter in his autobiography, Hondo: "The first college interest in me came when I was a junior. I received a letter from Fred Schaus at West Virginia, and I thought that was quite an honor. At that time, the whole idea of making anything out of myself through basketball was foreign."
Havlicek said he knew very little about college basketball other than San Francisco with Bill Russell winning the national championship, Hot Rod Hundley and Jerry West at WVU and the outstanding Duquesne team with the Ricketts brothers and Sihugo Green. That was about the extent of his college basketball knowledge at the time.
Schaus picks up the story from there.
"We knew about him because of Coach Carroll, and we knew about him early. That was important many times in recruiting to get in on the ground floor during their sophomore or junior year before everybody knows about them," he recalled in 2005. "They had a North-South all-star game, and I tried to get it set up that Havlicek was going to room with Ed Bode, who we were recruiting that year from a little school in Southeastern Ohio.
"Apparently, Havlicek was late getting there and so they put him with Jerry Lucas. If I had any chance of getting Havlicek, I sure as hell didn't have any chance when Lucas and Havlicek spent the weekend together," Schaus added.
Had Ohio State not discovered Havlicek, the outstanding forward's college career could have coincided with All-American players Jerry West and Rod Thorn at WVU.
"He could have filled in nicely there, huh?" Schaus sighed.
Yes he would have!
And now you know the rest of the story. Have a great weekend everyone!
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