MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Keith Tandy certainly has come a long way from that South Florida game last year when he was picked on all night during the Bulls’ 30-19 victory over the Mountaineers. In fact, today Tandy is one of the national leaders in interceptions with four.
Cornerbacks coach David Lockwood said he could see this day coming.
“He’s a guy that works at it; he studies tape and he puts himself into position to have success,” said Lockwood. “Thus far that’s what he’s doing.”
Lockwood knows that cornerbacks have to be the most confident players on the football field and he has always preaches a what’s-in-the-past-is-in-the-past attitude with his players.
“He’s human but as far as I’m concerned the day after the South Florida game a year ago it was done and over with,” Lockwood said. “We didn’t play those guys anymore until last Thursday night. After a while, just like anything, yeah, it starts to get to you but obviously he’s done a great job of blocking it out since game one this season.”
A couple of Tandy’s interceptions this year have been tipped balls, but that doesn’t make any difference to Lockwood.
“I don’t care if the quarterback runs out and hands it to him, the bottom line is it still goes down as a pick,” said Lockwood. “If he’s not doing his job, preparing and studying tape and recognizing what offenses are trying to do then he’s not in the position to get those tipped balls.”
Once a high school quarterback before becoming an unsure corner to now being one of the team’s assets, Keith Tandy’s football career continues to track upward.
“To starting in a bowl game three years ago to becoming a starter a year ago to starting again this year, it’s been a joy to watch,” said Lockwood. “I knew after the off-season last year the way he worked and the effort he put into it and how much he invested. There were times when he was doing stuff on his own when he didn’t have to do stuff so I knew he was going to have a good year.”
Tandy and offensive tackle Don Barclay made Phil Steele’s midseason All-America teams announced earlier this week. Barclay and Tandy were both on the fourth team.`
More Notes … West Virginia offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen says he is impressed with how hard Syracuse plays, regardless of what is showing on the scoreboard.
“There are always 11 hats around the ball. It doesn’t matter whether they are up 30 or down 30 they play with the same attitude,” he said. “They are just a very blue collar, hard-nosed football team.”
Mullen says watching the Syracuse-USF tape two weeks ago in preparation for last Thursday night’s USF game really had no extra benefit to him for this week because he was studying USF’s defense. What he saw on tape two weeks ago was Syracuse’s offense.
Syracuse has 12 on guys on this year’s defensive two-deep with at least 10 career starts. It is one of the most experienced defenses in the country and Mullen says that shows up on tape.
“There are a lot of old guys, a lot of seniors, and a lot of guys we saw last year,” he said. “They’re a fun group to watch. They are very well coached and they play very, very hard.”
Orange defensive coordinator Scott Shaffer likes to bring a lot of pressure and Mullen expects him to bring a lot of different blitzes on Saturday.
“Half of the game (last year) it was some form of pressure and we anticipate that again this Saturday,” he said.
If you recall, a lot of the success West Virginia had during last year’s game in Syracuse was the result of the defense giving the offense great field position. Statistically, the Syracuse defense has made dramatic improvement since Doug Marrone and Scott Shaffer have come on board.
“The first year we played them it was so uphill for us without (Pat White),” said Mullen of West Virginia’s difficult 17-6 victory in Morgantown in 2008. “We were really playing them with one arm tied behind our back (Jarrett Brown played that game with an injured shoulder). So that was tough to tell.
“Last year, we had some short field opportunities. The scoreboard looked nice but statistically that was a little skewed,” Mullen explained. “Where you can see the most improvement in any football team when you watch tape is effort, attitude, enthusiasm and toughness and those things just jump off the tape. From a scheme standpoint they are very sound and very well coached, you just see them making more plays.”
Mullen said that West Virginia has always had the five-wide package it has been using so frequently against UNLV and South Florida. The reason they have been using it more often is because of Noel Devine’s foot injury sustained at LSU.
“One of our thought processes was … who’s the backup tailback? So one of the angles is we’ll go five-wide and that’s another way to attack that problem,” Mullen explained. “Certainly we feel very confident in it but we still want to control the clock and run the ball and that’s very difficult to do when Noel is on the bench. We don’t enjoy putting Noel on the sideline to get five wides out there when he’s healthy and 100 percent.”
Mullen says Devine is practicing more this week where during the previous two weeks he had spent most of his time in the training room getting treatment.
Sophomore quarterback Geno Smith has the latitude to change plays when he sees fit. Now just how much Smith changes plays at the line of scrimmage is something Mullen says he prefers to keep within the family.
“Is it Geno changing the play? Is it the play call? The film cuts on at a certain time,” Mullen said. “He’s a very talented kid, we are fortunate to have him, and his brain is a weapon and we can use that as part of trying to get the right play call.”
What Mullen wants is for all of his quarterbacks to think when they are out on the field.
“You don’t want a kid out there just going through the motions,” he said. “You want a kid out there that can think and we ask him to think and Geno plays at a certain pace and tempo that helps everybody.
“We are at the point – and even with Barry (Brunetti), Barry is a very sharp young man – they are at the point where the playbook is something they know,” Mullen continued. “Now all we do is look at the opponent: what do we call here and why? What do you see from this coverage? What do you see from this defensive technique? What do you see from this alignment? After you cut up the film, name the defense and look at it, now it’s all about looking at our opponents and what would be good and why and let them do the talking.”
Do you remember those “Up The Middle Meter” signs the fans used to bring to the stadium when Don Nehlen coached? Well, it seems some fans today view the bubble screen as the modern day version of the draw play Nehlen used to call so frequently when he coached at West Virginia.
Mullen says there is a good reason for calling all those bubble screens.
“It’s a run down. It’s no different than turning around and handing the ball off and gaining two yards,” he explained. “The reward is a lot higher. It’s the same risk with higher reward. It just looks as ugly as a dog when it doesn’t hit. I can produce a lot of tape in our two and half years here where that play has gone for a large gain. We call those plays thinking this is the same as a run down. Jock and Tavon are running backs playing wide out and that’s how you make them running back to give them their touches.”
“It’s difficult because they are not very tall kids,” Mullen noted. “They are fast and when you are trying to hit a moving target that small farther away from the quarterback his completion percentage goes down. When we take shots down the field it’s usually with the taller kids, now, having said that, I can produce a lot of tape of Jock catching middle routes. We still do it and will do it and in certain games the opportunity presents itself more.”
Some tweaking by veteran coach Nikki Izzo-Brown has helped the women’s soccer team run off seven straight wins heading into Friday night’s big match with UConn at Dick Dlesk Stadium. At one point in late September the Mountaineers were 4-4-1 and were spinning their wheels after a scoreless tie to South Florida on Sept 26.
“Looking back when we were sitting 4-4-1 and going, how are we going to make this season a success? And how are we going to accomplish our goals? Well, these kids have grinded and they have been really open-minded to doing anything to win,” said Izzo-Brown.
Right now, West Virginia has achieved a first round bye in the Big East tournament with last Sunday’s win over Georgetown and has returned to the national rankings at No. 23 in this week’s Soccer America poll.
“We knew that we wanted to get some more numbers forward and allow certain players to do certain things that they are capable of doing,” Izzo-Brown explained. “But we were also going to put some additional burden on our forwards to make sure they were defending.”
During the seven-match winning streak West Virginia has won games in different ways – defensive struggles, shoot-outs and come-from-behind victories. Against Villanova, the Mountaineers overcame a 3-1 second half deficit to pull out a 4-3 win in overtime. Izzo-Brown’s talents as a communicator and persuader were certainly put to the test at halftime of the Villanova match.
“We’re on the road for two straight weekends for a total of four games and then we come home and we think, ‘Oh we’re just going to come back home and win’ and then at halftime we’re like, ‘Listen, you don’t just put a jersey on and this happens.’ This is a young team and that shows sometimes,” Izzo-Brown noted. “We think we can do and get away with things and we can’t. We have to fight even harder because of our youth and because of our inexperience.”
The last time Izzo-Brown can recall making this many mid-season changes was in 2005 when the Mountaineers were 3-3-3 in mid-September. That year, West Virginia won eight of its last nine matches before losing to Connecticut in the Big East championship game. WVU eventually got to the second round of the NCAA tournament where it lost to Penn State.
“We lost (Lisa) Stoia and (Chrissie) Abbott and all that leadership,” said Izzo-Brown. “It was just different adversities that we had to deal with that year.”
Izzo-Brown, who recently got her 200th career victory at WVU, is once again working her magic this season.
Sophomore Bri Rodriguez is continuing West Virginia’s long tradition of outstanding midfield play. The former No. 1 recruit in the country is expected to earn all-Big East honors this year, which would give the Mountaineers an all-Big East midfielder for the fifth straight year and eight out of the last nine seasons.
It looks like the Big East is going to be a guard-oriented conference this year. The tallest player on this year’s preseason all-Big East first team announced Wednesday? None other than West Virginia’s Kevin Jones, who stands 6-foot-8.
Cincinnati’s Yancy Gates and Syracuse’s Rick Jackson, both 6-9, were listed as preseason honorable mention picks.
According to WVU Sports Marketing Director Matt Wells, basketball season ticket sales are about 600 ahead of where they were at this time last year when West Virginia sold a record 7,700. There is a strong possibility the Mountaineers could sell more than 8,000 season tickets for the first time in school history.
The women’s basketball team is going to have a giant bulls-eye on them this year after being picked second in today’s Big East coaches’ poll. It is the highest predicted finish for the Mountaineers since West Virginia started playing in the league in 1996.
Congratulations are in order for the WVU volleyball team, which snapped its 28-match losing streak to Pitt last Saturday night at the WVU Coliseum when the Mountaineers defeated the Panthers in five sets. WVU’s last victory against the Panthers came in 1981. West Virginia is now 2-38 all-time against Pitt, but is 1-0 against the Panthers under first-year coach Jill Kramer.
Earlier this year, Kramer also stopped Marshall’s winning streak over West Virginia dead in its tracks with a 3-0 victory over the Herd.
Spanning the Web …
Bob Hertzel has written a couple of interesting columns recently. One deals with defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel …
http://timeswv.com/wvu_sports/x693282354/HERTZEL-COLUMN-Casteel-lets-defense-speak-for-him
The other deals with increasing expectations at West Virginia University …
http://timeswv.com/wvu_sports/x1644187951/HERTZEL-COLUMN-Expecting-too-much-of-WVU
… A couple of interesting observations from a guy who has spent decades covering and watching sports.
Connecticut is now going with redshirt freshman Michael Box at quarterback following Wednesday’s announcement that starting quarterback Cody Endres has been suspended for the remainder of the season. Zach Fraser, who started the season as the starter before being demoted at halftime of the Buffalo game, was the team’s No. 3 quarterback. UConn is West Virginia’s next opponent on Friday, Oct. 29, in West Hartford.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5707580&campaign=rss&source=NCFHeadlines
Speaking of personnel losses, Purdue suffered a big blow when Robbie Hummel tore his ACL for a second time during preseason practice and will be lost for the season. The Boilermakers will visit the WVU Coliseum on Jan. 16 for a 4:30 p.m. game that will be televised nationally by CBS.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5691032
ESPN personality Erin Andrews calls West Virginia’s fans “the craziest” in an all-encompassing interview with FanHouse.com’s Brett McMurphy.
http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/2010/10/14/erin-andrews-opens-up-about-career-family-dancing-and-the-law/
This blogger calls the West Virginia-Syracuse game the Big East’s “Lost Rivalry” and he does so with the typical spittoon references we’ve come to expect from our friends up in Western New York. He also tries to manufacture a controversy with some Scooter Berry remarks posted on YouTube. Enjoy …
http://www.nunesmagician.com/2010/10/20/1764391/syracuse-vs-west-virginia-the-big-easts-lost-rivalry
Bob Huggins is taking his fight against cancer up a notch. He has endorsed a line of Huggie Bear products that features cartoons of a bear in his likeness. Proceeds from the line of merchandising will go to raise money for a cancer endowment at West Virginia University named for his late mother, who succumbed to the disease.
http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/16815/bob-huggins-as-a-huggie-bear-cartoon
Certainly our thoughts and prayers are with Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand, who was seriously injured during last Saturday’s overtime win over Army. Here is a place you can go to send your get-well wishes to Eric.
http://www.scarletknights.com/football/eric/getwell.asp
And finally, good news for all of you trying to cross off your to-do lists before the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. It appears Doomsday has been called off for now.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/mayan-calendars-2012-doomsday-prophecy-wrong/story?id=11926347
It looks like there will be no partying like it’s 2011 after all.
Have a great weekend!
