NCAA allegations not on WVU players’ minds
MORGANTOWN – If West Virginia’s troubles with the NCAA are going to affect the way the Mountaineers prepare for the 2010 season, there was no indication of it Saturday when practice opened. And why should it be any other way? “I addressed it with the football team and the staff very briefly [Friday] night,” coach [...]
Revamped Rutgers is gunning for WVU
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - When the college football season began in September and his team lost 47-15 at home on national television, it sure looked like a laborious season awaited Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano. “Certainly not what my visions were of what today was going to be like,” he said after the Labor Day loss to Cincinnati. [...]
Healthy defense giving WVU great results
MORGANTOWN – Over the course of the last two games, it has become obvious what a world of difference it makes for West Virginia’s football team to finally have a healthy defense. To wit: With the preseason’s projected 11 best players in the starting lineup for the first time all season, the Mountaineers held No. [...]
Pitt kicked to the curb
Bitancurt’s last-second 43-yard field goal wins it for Mountaineers MORGANTOWN – Right up until the very end, it appeared as if Bill Stewart’s insistence that West Virginia’s football team couldn’t upset No. 8 Pitt by kicking field goals was going to be the Mountaineers’ demise. With Jeremy Kash (48) holding, WVU’s Tyler Bitancurt kicks a [...]
Wannstedt proof that success can take time
MORGANTOWN – In a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately age, Pitt’s football team is finally doing something for its fans. It wasn’t always that way. Dave Wannstedt, after all, is in his fifth season at Pitt. For all or parts of each of the first four it was an uphill struggle. In fact, as recently as the beginning of [...]
WVU has some things to fix, and fast
MORGANTOWN – Suppose for a moment you are Pitt football Coach Dave Wannstedt. You arrive to work this morning and see on your desk a stack of 10 DVDs and a yellow Post-it note that reads “WVU games.” It's a welcome welcome. The Backyard Brawl is 10 days away and a 10th victory this season [...]
WVU’s latest defeat full of head-scratchers
CINCINNATI — The sun beat me up this morning, making me wonder who beat me up last night. Dr. Cutty Sark did all he could, but he could neither change what had transpired on the field at Nippert Stadium nor make any more sense of it at the time. That West Virginia suffered a difficult [...]
Cincy coach waiting to see where chips fall
MORGANTOWN – On the one hand, Brian Kelly should be praised for his rationality. Let’s face it, how many coaches in his position would be willing to all but dismiss the ever-growing reality that no matter what his football team does this season, it isn’t likely to have a prayer of playing for the national [...]
Coaching not always about Xs and Os
MORGANTOWN — Too often we lose sight of the real job football college coaches have in front of them, paying far too much attention whether are running their offense from the spread or the wing-T, whether they use an odd or even front on defense, whether they blitz or play straight zone. The Xs and [...]
Stewart: Louisville has a lot to gain, nothing to lose
The saying goes that the most dangerous animal is a wounded animal. No doubt that West Virginia falls under that category after being totally fleeced by South Florida 30-19 last Friday. Then again, the most dangerous team is often a team with nothing to lose. Here you’ll find Louisville, owner of a 3-5 record and [...]
