http://www.wvusports.com/blogs.cfm?blog=ccBlog&story=30542
West Virginia will have its final scrimmage of the preseason on Saturday afternoon inside Milan Puskar Stadium and this one will be closed to the media. Last Saturday, the Fourth Estate watched the defense blitz its way to generating five turnovers while the No. 1 group turned back the No. 1 offense nine out of 11 times on third down.
If there are any position battles still undecided, strong performances on Saturday could be the determining factor in final preseason depth chart decisions the staff makes as they transition to Missouri prep next week.
Speaking of Missouri, the Tigers had their first scrimmage of the preseason last Saturday and true freshman wide receiver Dimetrios Mason apparently turned heads with his two-touchdown performance.
According to the Kansas City Star, the speedy Mason has been the “buzz” of fall camp so far.
The Tigers were lacking dynamic playmakers on offense last year and the new coaching staff is hoping some young players such as Mason can pick up the slack.
***
Also concerning Missouri, tickets are still available for the 2016 lid-lifter and can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by going online at WVUGAME.com to this link.
This is the first time in 54 years the Mountaineers are opening the season at home against a Southeastern Conference foe since Vanderbilt began the ’62 season here, a 26-0 West Virginia victory.
That was a great start to an outstanding year that saw WVU win eight of 10 games, including big wins over rivals Virginia Tech, Pitt and Syracuse. The big-name players on that team were Ken Herock and Tom Woodeshick.
***
Justin Crawford
Earlier this week, I wrote about the big-play threat junior college running back Justin Crawford could possibly provide to West Virginia’s offense this fall.
Here is why having an explosive home-run threat in the backfield is so important: Over the last three seasons the Mountaineers have produced just eight rushing plays of 50 yards or longer, and one of those came from quarterback Skyler Howard.
And of those eight 50-plus-yard runs, only four reached the end zone.
Compare that to what happened a decade ago when West Virginia had explosive playmakers Steve Slaton, Noel Devine and Pat White in the backfield. During a six-year period from 2005-2010 when those guys had the ball in their hands, the Mountaineers had 39 runs of 50 yards or longer, and of those 39, 23 went to the house.
That’s an average of 6 ½ runs of 50 yards or longer per year, and that’s putting a lot of pressure on the defense, perhaps even more so than producing long plays in the passing game.
It’s a lot easier to score touchdowns when you’ve got guys who can get out into the open - and not get caught from behind when they are loose.
That’s what West Virginia coaches are hopeful Crawford, the nation’s 2015 junior college player of the year, can bring to the Mountaineer attack this fall.
***
I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of former Mountaineer great Rick Phillips, a starting left tackle on the 1988 team considered the best in school history. I remember Phillips well during his WVU playing days; he was a tough, dedicated performer who got better each year he played for coach Don Nehlen.
Phillips was really the blueprint for the success that Nehlen’s Mountaineer program enjoyed during the 1980s - recruit good, solid players, develop them in the weight room, coach them up and then watch them blossom over a five-year period.
Sadly, Phillips is one of a growing list of offensive linemen from that great era no longer with us. The list includes Jack Linn, Frank Morelli, Bill McLinden, Joe Ayuso and Milton Redwine, as well as their coach, Mike Jacobs.
Great Mountaineers, all gone way too soon.
***
The WVU Berwick Boys reunite. Submitted photo.
On a much happier note, former offensive lineman Tom Robsock stopped by the office for a visit earlier this week. Tom is doing well, living and working in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with two children, aged 14 and 11, who are keeping him and his wife Dawn pretty busy.
Tom also sent me this picture of the five Berwick High stars who got together for a little WVU reunion last fall. They are, from left to right, Robsock, Charlie Fedorco, Bo Orlando, Jake Kelchner and Kurt Kehl, who began the Berwick-to-West Virginia pipeline back in 1980.
Those five guys were responsible for a lot of wins and a lot of bowl games over a 15-year period, that’s for sure!
***
I am confident WVU football fans are really going to enjoy Jeff Culhane’s replacement, Dan Zangrilli, this fall on the Go-Mart Mountaineer Tailgate Show, which leads into regular game coverage with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning.
Dan will be back on at halftime to serve as host of the United Bank Halftime Show, and then at the conclusion of the game to wrap things up with the Highmark, Blue Cross, Blue Shield Fifth Quarter Show on many Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG affiliates throughout the state.
I have become very familiar with Dan’s outstanding work on the Pittsburgh Pirates Pregame Show on the Pirates’ flagship station 93.7 The Fan, which leads into regular network game coverage.
Dan does his homework and I am sure he will be well prepared when he gets behind the IMG microphone for the first time on Saturday, September 3, when West Virginia opens the season against Missouri.
The network has put together another first-rate group with the pairing of Zangrilli, The Signal Caller and, of course, the Wolfman!
***
Nearly all of the comments I’ve seen so far regarding the planned retirement of Bruce Bosley’s No. 77 jersey have been very positive. On Saturday, September 3 when WVU opens the season against Missouri, Bosley will become the third WVU gridder to have his jersey officially retired, the others being Ira Errett Rodgers and Sam Huff.
Bosley, Huff and Rodgers are all members of the College Football Hall of Fame, as are WVU players Fielding Yost, Joe Stydahar, Darryl Talley and Major Harris.
If you are curious, Stydahar wore jersey No. 38 during his senior season in 1935, Talley obviously made his mark at WVU wearing No. 90, while no player at West Virginia University represented No. 9 the way Harris did during his three brilliant seasons under center in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
Back in 1895, when Yost was a WVU tackle, players did not wear numbers.
***
Ryan Dorchester
The other day I had a very fascinating conversation with football’s Ryan Dorchester, who is in charge of the Mountaineers’ recruiting efforts as the program’s director of player personnel.
I’m not sure how we got on the subject of the star rating system that has become so popular with football fans these days, but Dorchester had a very interesting take on the topic.
Years ago, when he was in graduate school, Dorchester decided to do an independent studies project for a statistics class he was taking on the football star rating system for recruiting and its accuracy in predicting future collegiate success.
He created his own scale by using a point system to reflect a player’s performance in college. For instance, an All-American player was awarded five points, an all-conference player four points and so on.
He evaluated 12 different programs from across the country, tracking each signing class during a six-year period by going through the careers of every single player to determine how well they performed in college.
What he discovered was not really that surprising, particularly to those involved in the recruiting business.
“What stood out was a player (statistically) was no more likely to be an All-America in college if he was a five-star player in high school or a two-star,” Dorchester said.
More or less, it’s basically a snapshot in time of what the player is - not what he will become.
“Look at the guys we had drafted last year,” Dorchester explained. “All of those guys were developmental players. (Safety) Karl Joseph was the highest-rated recruit of the bunch, and when Karl went on our (recruiting) board he was listed as a 6-foot, 200-pound linebacker. That’s what everybody had him. Then you watched his tape and you go, ‘Holy smokes, this guy is a killer.’”
It was the same deal with linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski, drafted by the Chicago Bears last spring.
“I wasn’t sure what they saw in Kwit,” Dorchester recalled. “I was like, ‘Why are we taking this guy?’ He had a bad back and a broken arm and he looked like a mummy when he showed up here. I remember thinking to myself, ‘What in the world are we doing? This doesn’t look like a good idea at all.’
“Well, I’m glad we did.”
Since Dorchester has been involved with Mountaineer football, going back to the days of Rich Rodriguez, he said West Virginia has always been at its best when its remained consistent in what it does.
***
Back to Bosley, who is considered to be one of West Virginia University’s all-time greats. If the star system was around back in 1951 when he was playing at Green Bank High, he would have likely been rated no higher than a two-star prospect, because virtually no one knew about him.
West Virginia coach Art Lewis only discovered Bosley by chance, stumbling on him while watching a high school basketball game.
And when the South coaches were looking for some players to fill out their roster for the annual North-South all-star game, they called Lewis to ask him if he had any suggestions.
Lewis told them about Bosley and said they could have him on one condition - no other college coaches were allowed to talk to him during their week of training down in Charleston.
Fred Wyant, a quarterback for the North team, was taken aback the first time he saw Bosley walk into training camp.
“He looked like an Adonis,” Wyant once recalled.
Of West Virginia’s other College Football Hall of Fame members, the two that would have been five-star prep prospects, had those ratings existed then, were Joe Stydahar and Ira Errett Rodgers.
Rodgers was heavily pursued by colleges when he played as a prep player for Bethany College (back then a player could do that), and when he was steered to WVU, Mountaineer supporters had to “babysit” Rodgers in order to keep other schools from poaching him.
As for Stydahar, he actually spent a week at Pitt playing for legendary coach Jock Sutherland during his freshman year before being “stolen” by West Virginia coach Greasy Neale.
No footage exists of Stydahar’s collegiate days at WVU, but a few of the still photos that I’ve seen of him suited up for the Mountaineers clearly shows a man playing among boys. It was obvious the 6-foot-4-inch, 245-pound Stydahar was physically far superior to the players he was facing at the time.
Sam Huff would have probably rated a four-star prospect because he did have a lot of interest from colleges up and down the East Coast, including big-time offers from Army, Pitt and Florida.
Harris would have also been a four-star prospect based on potential, but the big question mark about Western Pennsylvania’s No. 1 athlete was the lack of quality competition he faced while playing in Pittsburgh’s City League, and whether or not he could play quarterback in college.
West Virginia was one of the few schools that recruited Harris solely as a quarterback; others wanted him as a defensive back or wide receiver.
And Darryl Talley would have likely been a two or three-star prospect coming out of East Cleveland, Ohio.
The linebacker broke his ankle early during his senior season, but West Virginia recruiter Gary Stevens had seen enough of him to get a jump on Syracuse, one of the few other major schools pursuing Talley at the time.
Therefore, that would make two five-star prospects out of the six West Virginia players good enough to be voted into the College Football Hall of Fame (I didn’t count Fielding Yost, who played only one season at West Virginia before moving on to Lafayette), which is about right in line with Mr. Dorchester’s grad-school research project results.
Have a great weekend!
West Virginia will have its final scrimmage of the preseason on Saturday afternoon inside Milan Puskar Stadium and this one will be closed to the media. Last Saturday, the Fourth Estate watched the defense blitz its way to generating five turnovers while the No. 1 group turned back the No. 1 offense nine out of 11 times on third down.
If there are any position battles still undecided, strong performances on Saturday could be the determining factor in final preseason depth chart decisions the staff makes as they transition to Missouri prep next week.
Speaking of Missouri, the Tigers had their first scrimmage of the preseason last Saturday and true freshman wide receiver Dimetrios Mason apparently turned heads with his two-touchdown performance.
According to the Kansas City Star, the speedy Mason has been the “buzz” of fall camp so far.
The Tigers were lacking dynamic playmakers on offense last year and the new coaching staff is hoping some young players such as Mason can pick up the slack.
***
Also concerning Missouri, tickets are still available for the 2016 lid-lifter and can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800-WVU GAME or by going online at WVUGAME.com to this link.
This is the first time in 54 years the Mountaineers are opening the season at home against a Southeastern Conference foe since Vanderbilt began the ’62 season here, a 26-0 West Virginia victory.
That was a great start to an outstanding year that saw WVU win eight of 10 games, including big wins over rivals Virginia Tech, Pitt and Syracuse. The big-name players on that team were Ken Herock and Tom Woodeshick.
***
Justin Crawford
Earlier this week, I wrote about the big-play threat junior college running back Justin Crawford could possibly provide to West Virginia’s offense this fall.
Here is why having an explosive home-run threat in the backfield is so important: Over the last three seasons the Mountaineers have produced just eight rushing plays of 50 yards or longer, and one of those came from quarterback Skyler Howard.
And of those eight 50-plus-yard runs, only four reached the end zone.
Compare that to what happened a decade ago when West Virginia had explosive playmakers Steve Slaton, Noel Devine and Pat White in the backfield. During a six-year period from 2005-2010 when those guys had the ball in their hands, the Mountaineers had 39 runs of 50 yards or longer, and of those 39, 23 went to the house.
That’s an average of 6 ½ runs of 50 yards or longer per year, and that’s putting a lot of pressure on the defense, perhaps even more so than producing long plays in the passing game.
It’s a lot easier to score touchdowns when you’ve got guys who can get out into the open - and not get caught from behind when they are loose.
That’s what West Virginia coaches are hopeful Crawford, the nation’s 2015 junior college player of the year, can bring to the Mountaineer attack this fall.
***
I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of former Mountaineer great Rick Phillips, a starting left tackle on the 1988 team considered the best in school history. I remember Phillips well during his WVU playing days; he was a tough, dedicated performer who got better each year he played for coach Don Nehlen.
Phillips was really the blueprint for the success that Nehlen’s Mountaineer program enjoyed during the 1980s - recruit good, solid players, develop them in the weight room, coach them up and then watch them blossom over a five-year period.
Sadly, Phillips is one of a growing list of offensive linemen from that great era no longer with us. The list includes Jack Linn, Frank Morelli, Bill McLinden, Joe Ayuso and Milton Redwine, as well as their coach, Mike Jacobs.
Great Mountaineers, all gone way too soon.
***
The WVU Berwick Boys reunite. Submitted photo.
On a much happier note, former offensive lineman Tom Robsock stopped by the office for a visit earlier this week. Tom is doing well, living and working in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with two children, aged 14 and 11, who are keeping him and his wife Dawn pretty busy.
Tom also sent me this picture of the five Berwick High stars who got together for a little WVU reunion last fall. They are, from left to right, Robsock, Charlie Fedorco, Bo Orlando, Jake Kelchner and Kurt Kehl, who began the Berwick-to-West Virginia pipeline back in 1980.
Those five guys were responsible for a lot of wins and a lot of bowl games over a 15-year period, that’s for sure!
***
I am confident WVU football fans are really going to enjoy Jeff Culhane’s replacement, Dan Zangrilli, this fall on the Go-Mart Mountaineer Tailgate Show, which leads into regular game coverage with Tony Caridi, Dwight Wallace and Jed Drenning.
Dan will be back on at halftime to serve as host of the United Bank Halftime Show, and then at the conclusion of the game to wrap things up with the Highmark, Blue Cross, Blue Shield Fifth Quarter Show on many Mountaineer Sports Network from IMG affiliates throughout the state.
I have become very familiar with Dan’s outstanding work on the Pittsburgh Pirates Pregame Show on the Pirates’ flagship station 93.7 The Fan, which leads into regular network game coverage.
Dan does his homework and I am sure he will be well prepared when he gets behind the IMG microphone for the first time on Saturday, September 3, when West Virginia opens the season against Missouri.
The network has put together another first-rate group with the pairing of Zangrilli, The Signal Caller and, of course, the Wolfman!
***
Nearly all of the comments I’ve seen so far regarding the planned retirement of Bruce Bosley’s No. 77 jersey have been very positive. On Saturday, September 3 when WVU opens the season against Missouri, Bosley will become the third WVU gridder to have his jersey officially retired, the others being Ira Errett Rodgers and Sam Huff.
Bosley, Huff and Rodgers are all members of the College Football Hall of Fame, as are WVU players Fielding Yost, Joe Stydahar, Darryl Talley and Major Harris.
If you are curious, Stydahar wore jersey No. 38 during his senior season in 1935, Talley obviously made his mark at WVU wearing No. 90, while no player at West Virginia University represented No. 9 the way Harris did during his three brilliant seasons under center in 1987, 1988 and 1989.
Back in 1895, when Yost was a WVU tackle, players did not wear numbers.
***
Ryan Dorchester
The other day I had a very fascinating conversation with football’s Ryan Dorchester, who is in charge of the Mountaineers’ recruiting efforts as the program’s director of player personnel.
I’m not sure how we got on the subject of the star rating system that has become so popular with football fans these days, but Dorchester had a very interesting take on the topic.
Years ago, when he was in graduate school, Dorchester decided to do an independent studies project for a statistics class he was taking on the football star rating system for recruiting and its accuracy in predicting future collegiate success.
He created his own scale by using a point system to reflect a player’s performance in college. For instance, an All-American player was awarded five points, an all-conference player four points and so on.
He evaluated 12 different programs from across the country, tracking each signing class during a six-year period by going through the careers of every single player to determine how well they performed in college.
What he discovered was not really that surprising, particularly to those involved in the recruiting business.
“What stood out was a player (statistically) was no more likely to be an All-America in college if he was a five-star player in high school or a two-star,” Dorchester said.
More or less, it’s basically a snapshot in time of what the player is - not what he will become.
“Look at the guys we had drafted last year,” Dorchester explained. “All of those guys were developmental players. (Safety) Karl Joseph was the highest-rated recruit of the bunch, and when Karl went on our (recruiting) board he was listed as a 6-foot, 200-pound linebacker. That’s what everybody had him. Then you watched his tape and you go, ‘Holy smokes, this guy is a killer.’”
It was the same deal with linebacker Nick Kwiatkoski, drafted by the Chicago Bears last spring.
“I wasn’t sure what they saw in Kwit,” Dorchester recalled. “I was like, ‘Why are we taking this guy?’ He had a bad back and a broken arm and he looked like a mummy when he showed up here. I remember thinking to myself, ‘What in the world are we doing? This doesn’t look like a good idea at all.’
“Well, I’m glad we did.”
Since Dorchester has been involved with Mountaineer football, going back to the days of Rich Rodriguez, he said West Virginia has always been at its best when its remained consistent in what it does.
***
Back to Bosley, who is considered to be one of West Virginia University’s all-time greats. If the star system was around back in 1951 when he was playing at Green Bank High, he would have likely been rated no higher than a two-star prospect, because virtually no one knew about him.
West Virginia coach Art Lewis only discovered Bosley by chance, stumbling on him while watching a high school basketball game.
And when the South coaches were looking for some players to fill out their roster for the annual North-South all-star game, they called Lewis to ask him if he had any suggestions.
Lewis told them about Bosley and said they could have him on one condition - no other college coaches were allowed to talk to him during their week of training down in Charleston.
Fred Wyant, a quarterback for the North team, was taken aback the first time he saw Bosley walk into training camp.
“He looked like an Adonis,” Wyant once recalled.
Of West Virginia’s other College Football Hall of Fame members, the two that would have been five-star prep prospects, had those ratings existed then, were Joe Stydahar and Ira Errett Rodgers.
Rodgers was heavily pursued by colleges when he played as a prep player for Bethany College (back then a player could do that), and when he was steered to WVU, Mountaineer supporters had to “babysit” Rodgers in order to keep other schools from poaching him.
As for Stydahar, he actually spent a week at Pitt playing for legendary coach Jock Sutherland during his freshman year before being “stolen” by West Virginia coach Greasy Neale.
No footage exists of Stydahar’s collegiate days at WVU, but a few of the still photos that I’ve seen of him suited up for the Mountaineers clearly shows a man playing among boys. It was obvious the 6-foot-4-inch, 245-pound Stydahar was physically far superior to the players he was facing at the time.
Sam Huff would have probably rated a four-star prospect because he did have a lot of interest from colleges up and down the East Coast, including big-time offers from Army, Pitt and Florida.
Harris would have also been a four-star prospect based on potential, but the big question mark about Western Pennsylvania’s No. 1 athlete was the lack of quality competition he faced while playing in Pittsburgh’s City League, and whether or not he could play quarterback in college.
West Virginia was one of the few schools that recruited Harris solely as a quarterback; others wanted him as a defensive back or wide receiver.
And Darryl Talley would have likely been a two or three-star prospect coming out of East Cleveland, Ohio.
The linebacker broke his ankle early during his senior season, but West Virginia recruiter Gary Stevens had seen enough of him to get a jump on Syracuse, one of the few other major schools pursuing Talley at the time.
Therefore, that would make two five-star prospects out of the six West Virginia players good enough to be voted into the College Football Hall of Fame (I didn’t count Fielding Yost, who played only one season at West Virginia before moving on to Lafayette), which is about right in line with Mr. Dorchester’s grad-school research project results.
Have a great weekend!
